4 ms·
Well that's because Intel has nothing but beancounters milking it for bonuses and stock options running it. This is not news to anyone who watches Intel for the
by AtlasBarfed 4y ago
Well that's because Intel has nothing but beancounters milking it for bonuses and stock options running it. This is not news to anyone who watches Intel for the last couple decades.
Things like this require vision, patience, investment, outreach. Things that Intel is all horrible at. They are a monopoly that wants to sit in their executive suites and ship out N+1 Moore's Law chip. Engineers? Keep them in the other buildings, and avoid them as much as possible.
Intel made, what 10 billion in PROFITS last year? With a "B". And times have been semi-lean the last few years. We are talking about a monopoly that could have invested 50 billion dollars (current dollar adjusted) in the overall OSS and alternate computing platform over the last 40 years.
Intel should have:
- a production linux distribution highlighting their hardware features with wide support for x86. This should have happened 25 years ago. Keep Microsoft's feet to the flame. Sure, charge money for it, who cares if it doesn't sell. It keeps Microsoft actively utilizing your hardware, which Intel has always had a problem with.
- Hell, at this point, they should be funding ReactOS, whatever Beos got open sourced as, one/some of the BSDs, OpenSolaris. Redox. All of it. They should be very very interested in getting as many x86 machines and x86 peripherals running anywhere they can. The writing is on the wall with the M1/M2 -- Microsoft will go ARM hardcore if Qualcomm or AMD crank out a M1/M2 competitor that is superior to x86. Intel is being stupid if they aren't covering their bases with OSS OSes.
- get off your asses and get x86 on a mobile device and embedded. This is related to support of other operating systems. x86 can run in so many embedded and mobile, but because Intel didn't have the OS support flexibility, it hamstrings moving x86 and their silicon into non-Windows non-PC areas.
- one thing (I guess) that Intel does well software-wise is their compilers. Why are these expensive? Why do they cost anything at all? This is related to OS support and lots of computing platforms besides PCs. If the compilers and tools were free, there was good support of OSs in lots of different computing platforms, Intel would have good diversification.
- a competitive discrete graphics card. You're telling me AMD and NVidia can do this, but you can't? Seriously? It's not silicon, I highly doubt that. What it probably is ... Intel just doesn't like talking to software people, and games software? You don't need the best, but you can certainly do better than the IGP afterthoughts they do provide.
- why exactly does Samsung have dominance in SSDs? Like, didn't Intel invent them?
Intel might be a lost cause on the mobile phone market. You know why they missed that so bad?
#1 reason: they didn't have sufficient outreach in Linux, if they did, they'd probably have been the preferred architecture of the devs
#2 reason: of course related to that, they didn't have support in non-PC computing platforms. If they supported more semi-embedded (even if pure embedded wasn't a good match for x86), then they'd have been ready for the emerging devices that became the smartphone.
You know what? So much of what I just explained applies to AMD too, although they probably are more willing to support non-x86/ARM/RISC-V. AMD now has a billion or two a year to do OS outreach and better compiler tools and all that. And with OS outreach, you can make sure the code generated isn't Intel-optimized, like Intel loves to do. Your OS support, Your drivers can be AMD optimized.
I get AMD has been severely revenue constrained for about a decade when they sat on their asses when Intel was being dumb with Netburst, but AMD is somewhat back on top. Will AMD sit on their hands again?
- ac29 4y ago> Intel made, what 10 billion in PROFITS last year? With a "B". And times have been semi-lean the last few years. There are multiple measures of profit, but none of them are $10B. Per the 10-K for 2022, Intel's operating income was $2.3B and their net income was $8B. Net Income was higher than Operating Income because Intel had gains in equity holdings, interest payments, and favorable tax treatment. Put another way, 3/4 of the year's bottom line profitability was not from building and selling things. It should also be noted that almost all of their profits were in Q1. Q2 and Q4 actually had negative income (both operational and net). A big part of that is due to aggressive investments in advancing their fab capabilities (which is a multiyear process that wont deliver much outside the lab until 2024/25).
- irq-1 4y agoGross Profits have been around 42/43 Billion a year: https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/INTC/financials?p=INTC https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/INTC/financials?p=INTC
- readthenotes1 4y agowhen in worked for a different chip maker, we had a slogan "we lose a penny on every device but make up for it in volume" Gross profit before operating expenses hardly means anything
- mjevans 4y agoRe: Graphics / GPUs Intel's new ARC cards are a clear step in that direction. Their leadership also seems to be targeting a fully Vulkan / post OpenGL + post DirectX world. It's why the drivers are so big, the hardware only supports the modern methods and anything reliant on the old process requires a compatibility layer.
- pclmulqdq 4y agoThey didn't fail embedded for lack of trying. Their offering needed WAY too much silicon and power to provide the same computing power as a smaller ARM chip. This may be fundamental to x86 - there's so much cruft in the instruction set that you need a huge chunk of silicon to decode it.