6 ms·

None of the other items Intel has let go of are an existential must have. GPUs are a must have in any computer big or small. Raw number crunching is core to the

None of the other items Intel has let go of are an existential must have. GPUs are a must have in any computer big or small. Raw number crunching is core to the very profitable HPC market. Players like Nvidia have fully custom interlinks that threaten to dry up even the CPU sales Intel still gets in this market. GPU is a focus on mobile where expectations have been much raised. This group is supposedly 6 years old. But reciprocally, the other players have been pouring money in over decades. GPUs are fantastically complicated systems. Getting started here is enormously challenging, with vast demands. Just shipping is a huge accomplishment. Time to grow into it & adjust is necessary. It's such a huge challenge, and I really hope AXG is given the time, resources, iterations, & access to fabs it'll take to get up to speed.

khitchdee 4y ago
Intel should double down on its core business which is selling x86 chips for Windows PCs. If it loses to AMD+TSMC here, there's nowhere left to hide. IFS is very long term and a new business opportunity in a market where Intel is not the leader. x86 for Windows is their bread and butter. They need to throw everything else out and downsize to just excelling at what they've always done. My guess is AXG is a separate division than the division that makes the graphics for their core microprocessors.
- mschuster91 4y ago
  > Intel should double down on its core business which is selling x86 chips for Windows PCs. If it loses to AMD+TSMC here, there's nowhere left to hide. IFS is very long term and a new business opportunity in a market where Intel is not the leader. The very second someone else but Apple brings a competitive ARM desktop CPU to the market, it's game over for Intel. x86_64 literally cannot compete with modern ARM designs simply because of how much utter garbage from about thirty years worth of history it has accumulated and absolutely needs to support in the future because even the boot process still requires all that crap, whereas ARM was never shy about cutting out stuff and breaking backwards compatibility to stay performant. The only luck that Intel has at the moment is that Samsung and Qualcomm are dumpster fires - Samsung has enough problems getting a phone to run at a halfway decent performance with their Exynos line and Qualcomm managed to completely botch their exclusive deal with Microsoft [1] (hardly surprising to anyone who has ever had the misfortune to have to work with their crap). A small startup that is not bound by ages of legacy and corporate red tape should be able to complete such a project - Annapurna Labs have proven it's possible to break into the server ARM CPU market well enough to get acquired by Amazon. [1] https://www.xda-developers.com/qualcomm-exclusivity-deal-microsoft-windows-on-arm/ https://www.xda-developers.com/qualcomm-exclusivity-deal-mic...
  - khitchdee 4y ago
    Apple will always be niche because they are too expensive. ARM based PC client processors accounted for about 9% of the total market. But I don't expect that number will grow a lot higher due to cost of Macs. Also, you can't bring out a desktop PC based on Linux because that a very slowly growing market segment and MacOS is proprietary. Don't think Apple will start another PowerComputing type scenario where they open their platform to others. It's not a matter of performance for this reason (price). So, on Windows, assuming Macs don't take away any more market share from Windows, they need to beat AMD+TSMC.
    - spookie 4y ago
      > Also, you can't bring out a desktop PC based on Linux because that a very slowly growing market segment Wouldn't bet on that one
    - mschuster91 4y ago
      > So, on Windows, assuming Macs don't take away any more market share from Windows, they need to beat AMD+TSMC. No. All it needs is - Microsoft and Qualcomm breaking their unholy and IMHO questionably legal alliance - an ARM CPU vendor willing to do the same as Apple did and add support for accelerating translation of x86 code (IIRC, memory access models/barriers are done differently between x86 and ARM, and Apple simply extended their cores to be able to use the same memory access/barrier model as x86 on translated-x86 threads) - an ARM CPU vendor willing to implement basic functionality like PCIe actually according to spec - even the Raspberry Pi which is the closest you can get to a mass market general-purpose ARM computer has that broken [1] - someone (tm) willing to define a common standard of bootup sequence/standard feature set. Might be possible that UEFI fills the role; the current ARM bootloaders are a hot mess compared to the old and tried BIOS/boot sector x86 approach, and most (!) ARM CPUs/BSPs aren't exactly built with "the hardware attached to the chips may change at will" in mind. Rosetta isn't patented to my knowledge, absolutely nothing is stopping Microsoft from doing the same as part of Windows. [1] https://www.hackster.io/news/jeff-geerling-shows-off-an-amd-radeon-gpu-running-on-the-raspberry-pi-cm4-after-a-fashion-3f2fd7c5b516 https://www.hackster.io/news/jeff-geerling-shows-off-an-amd-...
pjmlp 4y ago
Intel famously used to lie on their OpenGL drivers, asserting features were supported, but were actually software rendered. Larrabe was shown at GDCE 2009 as if going to render the competition useless, then faded away. Their GPU debugger marketing sessions used to be focused on how to optimise games for integrated GPUs. I really don't get how they keep missing the mark versus AMD and NVidia in both GPU design and developer tooling.
- pinewurst 4y ago
  Don't forget Intel's world-beating i740!
  - Miraste 4y ago
    Ah, the i740. Because VRAM is a conspiracy cooked up by 3DFX and Nvidia to take your money, and real gamers don't need any.
  - muro 4y ago
    Anyone who bought one will not forgive them that one.
ChuckNorris89 4y ago
>None of the other items Intel has let go of are an existential must have. Except mobile ARM chips and mobile LTE modems, both of which Intel sold off, and those are some of the most desirable things to make right now. Just ask Quallcomm.
- mrandish 4y ago
  Yep. Competent mobile ARM and LTE modem cores would be very nice to have in their tech stack right about now. I think a credible (if not fully competent), GPU stack is pretty essential for strategic relevance going forward. This seems like something they have to make work.

khitchdee 4y ago

Intel should double down on its core business which is selling x86 chips for Windows PCs. If it loses to AMD+TSMC here, there's nowhere left to hide. IFS is very long term and a new business opportunity in a market where Intel is not the leader. x86 for Windows is their bread and butter. They need to throw everything else out and downsize to just excelling at what they've always done. My guess is AXG is a separate division than the division that makes the graphics for their core microprocessors.

mschuster91 4y ago
> Intel should double down on its core business which is selling x86 chips for Windows PCs. If it loses to AMD+TSMC here, there's nowhere left to hide. IFS is very long term and a new business opportunity in a market where Intel is not the leader. The very second someone else but Apple brings a competitive ARM desktop CPU to the market, it's game over for Intel. x86_64 literally cannot compete with modern ARM designs simply because of how much utter garbage from about thirty years worth of history it has accumulated and absolutely needs to support in the future because even the boot process still requires all that crap, whereas ARM was never shy about cutting out stuff and breaking backwards compatibility to stay performant. The only luck that Intel has at the moment is that Samsung and Qualcomm are dumpster fires - Samsung has enough problems getting a phone to run at a halfway decent performance with their Exynos line and Qualcomm managed to completely botch their exclusive deal with Microsoft [1] (hardly surprising to anyone who has ever had the misfortune to have to work with their crap). A small startup that is not bound by ages of legacy and corporate red tape should be able to complete such a project - Annapurna Labs have proven it's possible to break into the server ARM CPU market well enough to get acquired by Amazon. [1] https://www.xda-developers.com/qualcomm-exclusivity-deal-microsoft-windows-on-arm/ https://www.xda-developers.com/qualcomm-exclusivity-deal-mic...
- khitchdee 4y ago
  Apple will always be niche because they are too expensive. ARM based PC client processors accounted for about 9% of the total market. But I don't expect that number will grow a lot higher due to cost of Macs. Also, you can't bring out a desktop PC based on Linux because that a very slowly growing market segment and MacOS is proprietary. Don't think Apple will start another PowerComputing type scenario where they open their platform to others. It's not a matter of performance for this reason (price). So, on Windows, assuming Macs don't take away any more market share from Windows, they need to beat AMD+TSMC.
  - spookie 4y ago
    > Also, you can't bring out a desktop PC based on Linux because that a very slowly growing market segment Wouldn't bet on that one
  - mschuster91 4y ago
    > So, on Windows, assuming Macs don't take away any more market share from Windows, they need to beat AMD+TSMC. No. All it needs is - Microsoft and Qualcomm breaking their unholy and IMHO questionably legal alliance - an ARM CPU vendor willing to do the same as Apple did and add support for accelerating translation of x86 code (IIRC, memory access models/barriers are done differently between x86 and ARM, and Apple simply extended their cores to be able to use the same memory access/barrier model as x86 on translated-x86 threads) - an ARM CPU vendor willing to implement basic functionality like PCIe actually according to spec - even the Raspberry Pi which is the closest you can get to a mass market general-purpose ARM computer has that broken [1] - someone (tm) willing to define a common standard of bootup sequence/standard feature set. Might be possible that UEFI fills the role; the current ARM bootloaders are a hot mess compared to the old and tried BIOS/boot sector x86 approach, and most (!) ARM CPUs/BSPs aren't exactly built with "the hardware attached to the chips may change at will" in mind. Rosetta isn't patented to my knowledge, absolutely nothing is stopping Microsoft from doing the same as part of Windows. [1] https://www.hackster.io/news/jeff-geerling-shows-off-an-amd-radeon-gpu-running-on-the-raspberry-pi-cm4-after-a-fashion-3f2fd7c5b516 https://www.hackster.io/news/jeff-geerling-shows-off-an-amd-...

pjmlp 4y ago

Intel famously used to lie on their OpenGL drivers, asserting features were supported, but were actually software rendered. Larrabe was shown at GDCE 2009 as if going to render the competition useless, then faded away. Their GPU debugger marketing sessions used to be focused on how to optimise games for integrated GPUs. I really don't get how they keep missing the mark versus AMD and NVidia in both GPU design and developer tooling.

pinewurst 4y ago
Don't forget Intel's world-beating i740!
- Miraste 4y ago
  Ah, the i740. Because VRAM is a conspiracy cooked up by 3DFX and Nvidia to take your money, and real gamers don't need any.
- muro 4y ago
  Anyone who bought one will not forgive them that one.

ChuckNorris89 4y ago

>None of the other items Intel has let go of are an existential must have. Except mobile ARM chips and mobile LTE modems, both of which Intel sold off, and those are some of the most desirable things to make right now. Just ask Quallcomm.

mrandish 4y ago
Yep. Competent mobile ARM and LTE modem cores would be very nice to have in their tech stack right about now. I think a credible (if not fully competent), GPU stack is pretty essential for strategic relevance going forward. This seems like something they have to make work.