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>Intel has failed, or at least failed to distinguish itself, in every single market it has entered since IBM chose the 8088 forty years ago: This is just wrong

>Intel has failed, or at least failed to distinguish itself, in every single market it has entered since IBM chose the 8088 forty years ago: This is just wrong, unless you mean by "distinguish itself" as "redefine the market" or something superlative like that. Intel's big successes have been in chips that support their CPUs. Motherboard chipsets (northbridges), WiFi chips (basically the standard in many laptops), etc. Also, their GPUs have been very successful, but only for integrated graphics. Just look at countless corporate laptops over the last 10-15 years: all the parts inside are by Intel: CPU+iGPU, WiFi, USB, etc. Load up Linux on one, and then run "lspci". Corporate laptops have been dominated by Intel for ages. Also, Intel has done well with a lot of enterprise-grade and server components, like Ethernet adapters. Yeah, they did miss the high-end GPU market, but for most computers you really don't want a high-end GPU: they're expensive and power-hungry, and far more than you need for using Excel and Word and watching videos on YouTube. Laptops with discrete GPUs have horrible battery life; I'm unfortunately stuck with one of these beasts for my work, when I don't use its capabilities at all, and the battery doesn't last more than 1-2 hours despite the thing weighing a ton. (Someone high-up in the company thought that we "need" these things just because we're devs.)

johnklos 4y ago
Aside from wifi chips, you haven't mentioned anything that Intel does that the person to whom you're responding hasn't mentioned. Support chips go with CPUs, and integrated video is also part of their CPUs. What "enterprise" gear have they done, besides ethernet controllers? I think the point stands - aside from some not very significant cases, Intel has been a one trick pony for ages. They haven't even been doing their one trick very well - both AMD and Apple have handed Intel their ass in the last several years. Think of how many times Intel caught themselves out - they've taken too many shortcuts to try to one up and we've suffered as a result. Skylake bugs? All the variants of Spectre and Meltdown? 14 nm for countless years? Netburst? Atom CPUs that brick themselves after a while and require literal, physical replacement? Intel's current products focus on benchmarks and marketing more than on actual performance - they throw hundreds of watts at a CPU to get faster immediate performance, but their CPUs can't maintain that for long. Sure, it might win a bit at games, but I wouldn't want an Intel for compiling.
- midoridensha 4y ago
  I'm not sure what you expect here: for Intel to dominate a bunch of very different silicon-based product lines? They already dominate(d) CPUs and chipsets and WiFi chips, what more do you want? Let's compare to Facebook: what do they dominate? The Facebook social network service, and I suppose Instagram, plus some other "support" stuff like Messenger. How about Ebay? Are they some kind of failure because they're a "one trick pony" with their auction site? Is Comcast a failure because all they have is cable TV and cable internet? I guess Toyota is a failure too because all they make is motor vehicles. I find your criticism frankly bizarre.
  - johnklos 4y ago
    1) I wouldn't say they dominate the wifi chip market. They're not particularly power efficient, but they're often part of the package that one gets when one gets Intel chipsets. 2) "Dominating" in CPU chipsets is... Well, it's a silly metric, because it's included in their CPU business. It's not like they're providing CPU chipsets for competing CPUs. So yes, I'd expect one of the largest chipmakers on the planet to have SOME aptitude making products other than CPUs and their chipsets, wifi chips and ethernet chips. How about storage controllers? They had Xscale until they sold it. How about flash? They've made some good SSDs, but never differentiated themselves in any of speed, quality or performance. GPUs? We know how that has gone - even though they have years of experience with integrated GPUs, they're shipping drivers that are embarrassingly bad. Low power, portable SOCs? The Atom has horrible performance/watt, so much so that MIPS and PowerPC are still used significantly more often than x86 in set top boxes, NAT routers, and so on. Their attempts to make a chipset for cable modems gave us the infamous Intel Puma chipset that has been plagued with problems for years and that Intel still hasn't fixed, after knowing about those problems and releasing a whole new generation. I still stand by the one trick pony comparison, unless you can think of some business where Intel stands out.

johnklos 4y ago

Aside from wifi chips, you haven't mentioned anything that Intel does that the person to whom you're responding hasn't mentioned. Support chips go with CPUs, and integrated video is also part of their CPUs. What "enterprise" gear have they done, besides ethernet controllers? I think the point stands - aside from some not very significant cases, Intel has been a one trick pony for ages. They haven't even been doing their one trick very well - both AMD and Apple have handed Intel their ass in the last several years. Think of how many times Intel caught themselves out - they've taken too many shortcuts to try to one up and we've suffered as a result. Skylake bugs? All the variants of Spectre and Meltdown? 14 nm for countless years? Netburst? Atom CPUs that brick themselves after a while and require literal, physical replacement? Intel's current products focus on benchmarks and marketing more than on actual performance - they throw hundreds of watts at a CPU to get faster immediate performance, but their CPUs can't maintain that for long. Sure, it might win a bit at games, but I wouldn't want an Intel for compiling.

midoridensha 4y ago
I'm not sure what you expect here: for Intel to dominate a bunch of very different silicon-based product lines? They already dominate(d) CPUs and chipsets and WiFi chips, what more do you want? Let's compare to Facebook: what do they dominate? The Facebook social network service, and I suppose Instagram, plus some other "support" stuff like Messenger. How about Ebay? Are they some kind of failure because they're a "one trick pony" with their auction site? Is Comcast a failure because all they have is cable TV and cable internet? I guess Toyota is a failure too because all they make is motor vehicles. I find your criticism frankly bizarre.
- johnklos 4y ago
  1) I wouldn't say they dominate the wifi chip market. They're not particularly power efficient, but they're often part of the package that one gets when one gets Intel chipsets. 2) "Dominating" in CPU chipsets is... Well, it's a silly metric, because it's included in their CPU business. It's not like they're providing CPU chipsets for competing CPUs. So yes, I'd expect one of the largest chipmakers on the planet to have SOME aptitude making products other than CPUs and their chipsets, wifi chips and ethernet chips. How about storage controllers? They had Xscale until they sold it. How about flash? They've made some good SSDs, but never differentiated themselves in any of speed, quality or performance. GPUs? We know how that has gone - even though they have years of experience with integrated GPUs, they're shipping drivers that are embarrassingly bad. Low power, portable SOCs? The Atom has horrible performance/watt, so much so that MIPS and PowerPC are still used significantly more often than x86 in set top boxes, NAT routers, and so on. Their attempts to make a chipset for cable modems gave us the infamous Intel Puma chipset that has been plagued with problems for years and that Intel still hasn't fixed, after knowing about those problems and releasing a whole new generation. I still stand by the one trick pony comparison, unless you can think of some business where Intel stands out.