9 ms·

The Itanium sales forecasts never fail to make me laugh. Aged like the finest wine: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/88/Itanium_Sales_Forecasts

by pram 3y ago

The Itanium sales forecasts never fail to make me laugh. Aged like the finest wine: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/88/Itanium_Sales_Forecasts_edit.png https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/88/Itanium_...

nullc 3y ago
Easily one of the best illustrations on Wikipedia.
tux3 3y ago
Contrast with the notorious IAE solar forecast: https://zenmo.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/iea-vs-reality-photovoltaics-2018.png https://zenmo.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/iea-vs-reality-... Statistics and modeling are complicated, granted. But when your model diverges from reality 5 years in a row, perhaps you should just extrapolate the current line next time around. (In the case of the Itanic, that would have been the line at 0. Still a better forecast than what they did!)
- duskwuff 3y ago
  > Contrast with the notorious IAE solar forecast "There's no way this level of growth can be sustainable." "Surely we've hit a stable level by now." "Maybe that last year was a fluke." Love to see it. :)
  - MBCook 3y ago
    The motorcar is a fad! Surely after 115 years it will be over!
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
  - jodrellblank 3y ago
    > ""There's no way this level of growth can be sustainable."" Those are GW of added capacity per year, their prediction flatlining is predicting sustaining the same level of growth.
    - duskwuff 3y ago
      And yet, they were still (mis)predicting that each year would be an inflection point on that growth.
- mahkeiro 3y ago
  Especially funny when you know that the figure for 2022 is 320GW which is completely off this chart!
  - riffraff 3y ago
    Were the post 2018 projections still this wrong? I'd love to see an updated chart
- cbmuser 3y ago
  [flagged]
  - genmud 3y ago
    This makes their modeling errors even more egregious and embarrassing. If you know governments are subsidizing it, and there are no foreseeable plans to cut said subsidies, you would be a fool to not forecast growth.
  - photonerd 3y ago
    Wait until you learn about the oil industry…
  - the_why_of_y 3y ago
    The governments have to subsidize solar, so it can compete with government subsidized fossil fuels. You may be surprised to learn that global fossil fuel subsidies rose from $4.5 trillion in 2015 to $7 trillion in 2022. https://www.statista.com/chart/31016/volume-of-global-fossil-fuel-subsidies-timeline/ https://www.statista.com/chart/31016/volume-of-global-fossil...
    - vasdae 3y ago
      "Indirect subsidies" sounds like a dubious metric.
      - dtech 3y ago
        Why? If you tax A and not B, that is not much different from taxing both but subsidizing B. Most reasonable definitions of subsidies include it.
- eigenvalue 3y ago
  In this situation I would assume that the political/internal pressures from the member companies and advisory board were dominating factors as opposed to the forecasters being total dummies. There must have been some reasons why it was not appealing to assume the growth could keep ramping like that. Because it’s an obviously insane forecast after the first few data points are in.
  - ethbr1 3y ago
    I'd love to hear someone chip in with what it takes to make a solar panel and the rate limiting factors. E.g. if a solar panel factory (simplifying into a single entity) already exists, is there any reason not to run it at 100% production capacity? What consumables are used?
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
    - adrianN 3y ago
      Solar panels are just doped silicon, some wiring and support frames.
      - jnsaff2 3y ago
        Silicon for solar panels has to be 99.999999 percent pure—six 9s after the decimal. Computer chips are even more demanding. Their silicon needs to be 99.99999999999 percent pure—eleven 9s.
        ethbr1 3y ago
        How consumable-intensive is doped silicone production? Afaik, it's more strict metallurgy (materialurgy?): temperature, time, some physical process. Point being, I'd be curious on the actual cost of material inputs, if the price of solar panels crashes. How low can they go... and still be worth making?
        3y ago
jmyeet 3y ago
There's a lesson here. Intel basically wanted to get away from x86 because it was licensed to AMD (and Cyrix) due to an earlier (and essentially unlimited) licensing agreement. In the late 90s, the likes of DEC, HP and Sun ruled the server and workstation space. Intel wanted in on this space and didn't want AMD to be able to produce compatible parts so... enter EPIC [1]. The projections (as you point to) were wildly optimistic. Of course the whole thing was heavily delayed, produced in small volume, offered limited to no performance gain, required a ground up write of pretty much everything and was super expensive. What could go wrong? What did AMD do? It just invented 64 bit extensions to x86 (ie x86-64). Was it ideal? No. You probably wouldn't design an instruction set and architecture this way if you were starting from nothing but you aren't starting from nothing. AMD released the wildly successful Opteron (and Athlon 64) and for 5-10 years completley ate Intel's lunch. Cheap parts, good performance, easy migration part, etc. Intel got to use these extensions by the same licensing agreement. This coincided with the Gigahertz wars on the desktop front. From the Pentium for almost a decade Intel focused on Gigahertz and once thought they could run this up all the way to 10GHz+. We know how that went. Clock speed was a key marketing bullet point. AMD processors had higher IPC but that (at that time) was a harder sell. About the time Opteron came out the Gigahertz wars were hitting the 3GHz barrier and Intel was stuck. At the same time their mobile parts used a completely different architecture. Thsi was Centrino with the Core Duo processors. These had much higher IPC (than Pentium lines) and more power efficiency. Some early enthusiasts constructed desktops from these mobile chips and the results were great. Losing out to Opteron/Athlon and hitting the 3GHz barrier ultimately forced Intel to abandon their desktop architecture in favor of Centrino. Intel hung on as long as they could to milk some extra profit but eventually Core Duo was the future and this ultimately because the foundation for the Core processors we have today (but by now there have been many revisions). It might be more accurate to describe the Pentium years as the Netburst architecture years (IIRC). But the lesson here is that a complete rewrite was an almost fatal mistake for Intel. It's almost always a mistake. You can't ignore what's there now and your desire to lock out competition doesn't necessarily translate to something customers actually want or need. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Explicitly_parallel_instruction_computing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Explicitly_parallel_instructio...
- dixie_land 3y ago
pelasaco 3y ago
[flagged]
nicetryguy 3y ago
Drake cringing: Shuns IA-32 Drake pointing: Runs IA-32

by pram 3y ago

nullc 3y ago

Easily one of the best illustrations on Wikipedia.

tux3 3y ago

Contrast with the notorious IAE solar forecast: https://zenmo.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/iea-vs-reality-photovoltaics-2018.png https://zenmo.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/iea-vs-reality-... Statistics and modeling are complicated, granted. But when your model diverges from reality 5 years in a row, perhaps you should just extrapolate the current line next time around. (In the case of the Itanic, that would have been the line at 0. Still a better forecast than what they did!)

duskwuff 3y ago
> Contrast with the notorious IAE solar forecast "There's no way this level of growth can be sustainable." "Surely we've hit a stable level by now." "Maybe that last year was a fluke." Love to see it. :)
- MBCook 3y ago
  The motorcar is a fad! Surely after 115 years it will be over!
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
- jodrellblank 3y ago
  > ""There's no way this level of growth can be sustainable."" Those are GW of added capacity per year, their prediction flatlining is predicting sustaining the same level of growth.
  - duskwuff 3y ago
    And yet, they were still (mis)predicting that each year would be an inflection point on that growth.
mahkeiro 3y ago
Especially funny when you know that the figure for 2022 is 320GW which is completely off this chart!
- riffraff 3y ago
  Were the post 2018 projections still this wrong? I'd love to see an updated chart
cbmuser 3y ago
[flagged]
- genmud 3y ago
  This makes their modeling errors even more egregious and embarrassing. If you know governments are subsidizing it, and there are no foreseeable plans to cut said subsidies, you would be a fool to not forecast growth.
- photonerd 3y ago
  Wait until you learn about the oil industry…
- the_why_of_y 3y ago
  The governments have to subsidize solar, so it can compete with government subsidized fossil fuels. You may be surprised to learn that global fossil fuel subsidies rose from $4.5 trillion in 2015 to $7 trillion in 2022. https://www.statista.com/chart/31016/volume-of-global-fossil-fuel-subsidies-timeline/ https://www.statista.com/chart/31016/volume-of-global-fossil...
  - vasdae 3y ago
    "Indirect subsidies" sounds like a dubious metric.
    - dtech 3y ago
      Why? If you tax A and not B, that is not much different from taxing both but subsidizing B. Most reasonable definitions of subsidies include it.
eigenvalue 3y ago
In this situation I would assume that the political/internal pressures from the member companies and advisory board were dominating factors as opposed to the forecasters being total dummies. There must have been some reasons why it was not appealing to assume the growth could keep ramping like that. Because it’s an obviously insane forecast after the first few data points are in.
- ethbr1 3y ago
  I'd love to hear someone chip in with what it takes to make a solar panel and the rate limiting factors. E.g. if a solar panel factory (simplifying into a single entity) already exists, is there any reason not to run it at 100% production capacity? What consumables are used?
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - adrianN 3y ago
    Solar panels are just doped silicon, some wiring and support frames.
    - jnsaff2 3y ago
      Silicon for solar panels has to be 99.999999 percent pure—six 9s after the decimal. Computer chips are even more demanding. Their silicon needs to be 99.99999999999 percent pure—eleven 9s.
      - ethbr1 3y ago
        How consumable-intensive is doped silicone production? Afaik, it's more strict metallurgy (materialurgy?): temperature, time, some physical process. Point being, I'd be curious on the actual cost of material inputs, if the price of solar panels crashes. How low can they go... and still be worth making?
        3y ago

jmyeet 3y ago

There's a lesson here. Intel basically wanted to get away from x86 because it was licensed to AMD (and Cyrix) due to an earlier (and essentially unlimited) licensing agreement. In the late 90s, the likes of DEC, HP and Sun ruled the server and workstation space. Intel wanted in on this space and didn't want AMD to be able to produce compatible parts so... enter EPIC [1]. The projections (as you point to) were wildly optimistic. Of course the whole thing was heavily delayed, produced in small volume, offered limited to no performance gain, required a ground up write of pretty much everything and was super expensive. What could go wrong? What did AMD do? It just invented 64 bit extensions to x86 (ie x86-64). Was it ideal? No. You probably wouldn't design an instruction set and architecture this way if you were starting from nothing but you aren't starting from nothing. AMD released the wildly successful Opteron (and Athlon 64) and for 5-10 years completley ate Intel's lunch. Cheap parts, good performance, easy migration part, etc. Intel got to use these extensions by the same licensing agreement. This coincided with the Gigahertz wars on the desktop front. From the Pentium for almost a decade Intel focused on Gigahertz and once thought they could run this up all the way to 10GHz+. We know how that went. Clock speed was a key marketing bullet point. AMD processors had higher IPC but that (at that time) was a harder sell. About the time Opteron came out the Gigahertz wars were hitting the 3GHz barrier and Intel was stuck. At the same time their mobile parts used a completely different architecture. Thsi was Centrino with the Core Duo processors. These had much higher IPC (than Pentium lines) and more power efficiency. Some early enthusiasts constructed desktops from these mobile chips and the results were great. Losing out to Opteron/Athlon and hitting the 3GHz barrier ultimately forced Intel to abandon their desktop architecture in favor of Centrino. Intel hung on as long as they could to milk some extra profit but eventually Core Duo was the future and this ultimately because the foundation for the Core processors we have today (but by now there have been many revisions). It might be more accurate to describe the Pentium years as the Netburst architecture years (IIRC). But the lesson here is that a complete rewrite was an almost fatal mistake for Intel. It's almost always a mistake. You can't ignore what's there now and your desire to lock out competition doesn't necessarily translate to something customers actually want or need. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Explicitly_parallel_instruction_computing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Explicitly_parallel_instructio...

dixie_land 3y ago

pelasaco 3y ago

[flagged]

nicetryguy 3y ago

Drake cringing: Shuns IA-32 Drake pointing: Runs IA-32