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To be honest, it’s a little hard to really take this seriously. The number of times I’ve watched Intel make Serious Declarations of Significant Strategic Realig

To be honest, it’s a little hard to really take this seriously. The number of times I’ve watched Intel make Serious Declarations of Significant Strategic Realignments in the last decade or so only to watch them inevitably shed all the new divisions and product lines to Focus On Core Products makes it hard to really give this the attention it might warrant.

oldgradstudent 3y ago
It's not just the last decade Does anyone remember ViiV, or explain what exactly it was?
- paulmd 3y ago
  just looks like centrino or the multimedia PC standard: a basket of technologies (and like centrino/ultrabook, all intel ones) that define a standard for media PCs and set-top hardware that would support a certain distribution model. now of course a lot of people didn't get what centrino was either (or what vpro is today!). it's a little hard to market these hardware standards when it's not something obvious like "the multimedia PC standard" that consumers grok. But it's the same kind of idea: we're going to need X, Y and Z hardware and feature support to do this workload or customer use-case. If your PC has it, then it's Centrino/Ultrabook/whatever! But again I think it's true that people respond more intuitively to the idea of branding the product and not the platform. "Ultrabook" or “Multimedia PC Level 3” makes more sense as a concept to people than "Centrino" or "Viiv". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_Viiv https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_Viiv https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centrino https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centrino https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_vPro https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_vPro https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multimedia_PC https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multimedia_PC https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultrabook https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultrabook
  - MenhirMike 3y ago
    Centrino was an absolute slam-dunk success that did significantly bring x86 laptop computers forward (it may not be complete hyperbole to say that the Pentium M is the most important Intel CPU of this century), but in some ways it became obsolete by its own success: As all laptop manufacturers followed and gave us Ultrabooks that were amazing, Centrino as a brand didn't become a differentiator anymore, and Viiv just wasn't offering anything important enough - though the brand made perfect sense, given how hot Media Center PCs were for a short while.
mhh__ 3y ago
The difference now is that Intel is being run by an engineer again so at very least there might be some top-down strategy.
- brucethemoose2 3y ago
  And yet they are still delaying releases, canceling promising products, and making some questionable technical choices (like overhauling AVX512 and bifurcating the new standard, instead of uniting it like ARM and AMD did, among others). I like Pat, I like what Pat says, I get plans are long term, but it still feels like the rubber is not meeting the road.
  - tester756 3y ago
    >canceling promising products Like? I hope you aren't talking about Optane
    - someperson 3y ago
      What was wrong with Optane?
      - jiggawatts 3y ago
        It was supposed to be cheaper than the equivalent amount of ordinary DRAM but ended up more expensive and slower.
        networkchad 3y ago
        [dead]
      - tester756 3y ago
        There was nothing wrong with Optane (I'm talking about non-volatile memory, it is important because there were a few products under Optane name) I believe that was/is impressive tech. You could have disk and ram in one stick aka kinda unified memory. Think of it: instead of purchasing RAM+Disk, you purchase one stick and configure it as e.g 40% of the capacity works as a disk and 60% as a "RAM". But saying that they "cancelled" doesn't tell the whole story. IIRC: they couldnt find a fab which would produce them after Micron sold their fab.
imachine1980_ 3y ago
they are making only one bet now, (two if you account discrete gpu), making the production of the chip different division than the design of the x86 processors, and selling as service , most of this chips are arm or risc-v base so this is more a necessity to change the brand awardness and say "we will produce your non x86 chips", and we are in the committees of this technologies.
- BirAdam 3y ago
  Not only is IFS a separate division, it's almost a different company. The x86 group has to purchase foundry services IIRC.
spiralpolitik 3y ago
There is a rubicon coming up for Intel. At some point the fab side will be separated out into a separate company. Intel is currently leaving money on the table on the fab side under its current structure as nobody is going to trust Intel to make their latest and greatest while the chip design side is under the same roof. The alternative is that the fab side goes down with Intel when the bottom drops out of x86.

oldgradstudent 3y ago

It's not just the last decade Does anyone remember ViiV, or explain what exactly it was?

paulmd 3y ago
just looks like centrino or the multimedia PC standard: a basket of technologies (and like centrino/ultrabook, all intel ones) that define a standard for media PCs and set-top hardware that would support a certain distribution model. now of course a lot of people didn't get what centrino was either (or what vpro is today!). it's a little hard to market these hardware standards when it's not something obvious like "the multimedia PC standard" that consumers grok. But it's the same kind of idea: we're going to need X, Y and Z hardware and feature support to do this workload or customer use-case. If your PC has it, then it's Centrino/Ultrabook/whatever! But again I think it's true that people respond more intuitively to the idea of branding the product and not the platform. "Ultrabook" or “Multimedia PC Level 3” makes more sense as a concept to people than "Centrino" or "Viiv". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_Viiv https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_Viiv https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centrino https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centrino https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_vPro https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_vPro https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multimedia_PC https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multimedia_PC https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultrabook https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultrabook
- MenhirMike 3y ago
  Centrino was an absolute slam-dunk success that did significantly bring x86 laptop computers forward (it may not be complete hyperbole to say that the Pentium M is the most important Intel CPU of this century), but in some ways it became obsolete by its own success: As all laptop manufacturers followed and gave us Ultrabooks that were amazing, Centrino as a brand didn't become a differentiator anymore, and Viiv just wasn't offering anything important enough - though the brand made perfect sense, given how hot Media Center PCs were for a short while.

mhh__ 3y ago

The difference now is that Intel is being run by an engineer again so at very least there might be some top-down strategy.

brucethemoose2 3y ago
And yet they are still delaying releases, canceling promising products, and making some questionable technical choices (like overhauling AVX512 and bifurcating the new standard, instead of uniting it like ARM and AMD did, among others). I like Pat, I like what Pat says, I get plans are long term, but it still feels like the rubber is not meeting the road.
- tester756 3y ago
  >canceling promising products Like? I hope you aren't talking about Optane
  - someperson 3y ago
    What was wrong with Optane?
    - jiggawatts 3y ago
      It was supposed to be cheaper than the equivalent amount of ordinary DRAM but ended up more expensive and slower.
      - networkchad 3y ago
        [dead]
    - tester756 3y ago
      There was nothing wrong with Optane (I'm talking about non-volatile memory, it is important because there were a few products under Optane name) I believe that was/is impressive tech. You could have disk and ram in one stick aka kinda unified memory. Think of it: instead of purchasing RAM+Disk, you purchase one stick and configure it as e.g 40% of the capacity works as a disk and 60% as a "RAM". But saying that they "cancelled" doesn't tell the whole story. IIRC: they couldnt find a fab which would produce them after Micron sold their fab.

imachine1980_ 3y ago

they are making only one bet now, (two if you account discrete gpu), making the production of the chip different division than the design of the x86 processors, and selling as service , most of this chips are arm or risc-v base so this is more a necessity to change the brand awardness and say "we will produce your non x86 chips", and we are in the committees of this technologies.

BirAdam 3y ago
Not only is IFS a separate division, it's almost a different company. The x86 group has to purchase foundry services IIRC.

spiralpolitik 3y ago

There is a rubicon coming up for Intel. At some point the fab side will be separated out into a separate company. Intel is currently leaving money on the table on the fab side under its current structure as nobody is going to trust Intel to make their latest and greatest while the chip design side is under the same roof. The alternative is that the fab side goes down with Intel when the bottom drops out of x86.