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With Intel continuing to flounder, and given all of the issues with their CPU products over the past handful of years - one has to wonder if Intel ever was actu

by Alupis 2y ago

With Intel continuing to flounder, and given all of the issues with their CPU products over the past handful of years - one has to wonder if Intel ever was actually good at designing and manufacturing CPU's. Think back to the Pentium 4 and Athlon days... think about all the anti-competitive, illegal and/or unsavory business practices Intel employed during that era to gain dominance. They literally shut out AMD via illegal behavior - and received a slap on the wrist many years later. Their illegal behavior led to AMD being forced (via unfairly reduced revenue by way of anti-competitive Intel practices) to spin off Global Foundries, and forced to employ only second-tier engineers, managers, executives, etc. Where would we be if Intel and AMD had actually competed freely during that era. It seems likely Intel would not have been the darling of so many PC enthusiasts, and would not be dominant in business computing either. Here we are today, with Intel seemingly unable to find their way out of a paper bag...

tssge 2y ago
You have to look more far back than just the Pentium 4 days. Intel absolutely were some of the greatest innovators on the industry if you look at 70s, 80s and 90s. I would say they simply were the best, but dropped the ball at least when AMD64 became a thing. How the mighty have fallen... It's hard to overstate Intel's importance in regards to the modern CPU: they invented the microprocessor itself. (Though I'd like to state it's a bit controversial whether they only were the first to come up with a commercially available one or whether they actually invented the concept itself) Also, there are many things outside the CPU that we take for granted today that were of Intel's innovation. A great example would be PCIe that Intel invented and essentially standardized. More recent example would be USB4. Regarding CPUs they have some truly legendary chips, like the Intel 8086. This chip from the 70s is still in use today in your everyday products (as a clone though). It can be found TODAY in common products like computer mice, keyboards, AC, TV remotes and so on. Anything that is a commodity and needs some simple processing power has usually some derivative of 8086 inside it, granted ESP32 and such are taking over nowadays. Of course the x86 instruction set comes from that very chip. I guess the name speaks for itself how big of a thing that was. There's too much to fit inside one comment about how innovative Intel truly used to be, but they have a pretty good page for their history here: https://timeline.intel.com/ https://timeline.intel.com/
- Alupis 2y ago
  I guess it was innovation until competition got tough, then it was squash-mode, no matter how illegal or unsavory. During that era, can we honestly say Intel was still innovating in the CPU line? Have they innovated in CPU's recently? It seems not so much... Look at the Core series - moderately incremental improvements for nearly two decades now? Many of which have significant, unfixable design flaws. AMD got their act together, and with significantly fewer resources ended up totally leap-frogging Intel in nearly all CPU metrics. How did this not happen at Intel after all these years? AMD had some objectively better CPU's during the Athlon era - until they ran out of money mostly due to Intel's anti-competitive behavior. The "what-if" scenario is interesting to ponder...
  - ethbr1 2y ago
    > AMD got their act together, and with significantly fewer resources ended up totally leap-frogging Intel in nearly all CPU metrics. How did this not happen at Intel after all these years? AMD outsourced foundry issues to TSMC.
    - Alupis 2y ago
      And so could Intel if they wanted. Instead, they seem more interested in designing yet another socket and asking everyone to upgrade all of their hardware for a moderate performance bump...
      - gruez 2y ago
        >Instead, they seem more interested in designing yet another socket and asking everyone to upgrade all of their hardware for a moderate performance bump... Who's upgrading their cpus after 1-2 generations?
        Alupis 2y ago
        AMD folks, because you can use the same socket for many generations of CPU's, providing a drop-in 10-minute upgrade...
ethbr1 2y ago
Intel's golden eras were the 8086, 2/3/486, Pentium I/Pro/II era (1978-1998) and the Core era (aka son of Pentium M) before they ran into process issues (2006-2015). Current execution stumbles do not diminish historical triumphs -- Pentium II and Nehalem were and are amazing.
- nubinetwork 2y ago
  The Pentium Pro was a turd if you weren't executing purely 32bit code.
  - ethbr1 2y ago
    They fixed that in the II though. Crazy remembering a time when there was that much 16-bit code in the wild.
- segasaturn 2y ago
  I remember back when the choice was between Athlon 64 X2 and Core 2 Duo and it felt like with either choice you couldn't go wrong.
- FMecha 2y ago
  >Current execution stumbles do not diminish historical triumphs Not for those who have "$THING was never good" mindset after repeated, multiple stumbles in a row. You see this with anything that closed/died in disgrace. I imagine there are people out there who think that Intel might file for bankruptcy/insolvency if they can't right themselves from this issue.
  - Alupis 2y ago
    Frankly - every comment in this thread that touts Intel's technical achievements in the CPU space are citing things that happened nearly 30 years ago, or longer. Intel, in the past 20 years, has floundered and misfired constantly. It's not a stretch to assert the only reason Intel is still around is due to their illegal business practices in the early and mid 2000's. Intel became synonymous with CPU's because they were literally (and illegally) the only option for 99% of the computer buying market.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]

by Alupis 2y ago

tssge 2y ago

You have to look more far back than just the Pentium 4 days. Intel absolutely were some of the greatest innovators on the industry if you look at 70s, 80s and 90s. I would say they simply were the best, but dropped the ball at least when AMD64 became a thing. How the mighty have fallen... It's hard to overstate Intel's importance in regards to the modern CPU: they invented the microprocessor itself. (Though I'd like to state it's a bit controversial whether they only were the first to come up with a commercially available one or whether they actually invented the concept itself) Also, there are many things outside the CPU that we take for granted today that were of Intel's innovation. A great example would be PCIe that Intel invented and essentially standardized. More recent example would be USB4. Regarding CPUs they have some truly legendary chips, like the Intel 8086. This chip from the 70s is still in use today in your everyday products (as a clone though). It can be found TODAY in common products like computer mice, keyboards, AC, TV remotes and so on. Anything that is a commodity and needs some simple processing power has usually some derivative of 8086 inside it, granted ESP32 and such are taking over nowadays. Of course the x86 instruction set comes from that very chip. I guess the name speaks for itself how big of a thing that was. There's too much to fit inside one comment about how innovative Intel truly used to be, but they have a pretty good page for their history here: https://timeline.intel.com/ https://timeline.intel.com/

Alupis 2y ago
I guess it was innovation until competition got tough, then it was squash-mode, no matter how illegal or unsavory. During that era, can we honestly say Intel was still innovating in the CPU line? Have they innovated in CPU's recently? It seems not so much... Look at the Core series - moderately incremental improvements for nearly two decades now? Many of which have significant, unfixable design flaws. AMD got their act together, and with significantly fewer resources ended up totally leap-frogging Intel in nearly all CPU metrics. How did this not happen at Intel after all these years? AMD had some objectively better CPU's during the Athlon era - until they ran out of money mostly due to Intel's anti-competitive behavior. The "what-if" scenario is interesting to ponder...
- ethbr1 2y ago
  > AMD got their act together, and with significantly fewer resources ended up totally leap-frogging Intel in nearly all CPU metrics. How did this not happen at Intel after all these years? AMD outsourced foundry issues to TSMC.
  - Alupis 2y ago
    And so could Intel if they wanted. Instead, they seem more interested in designing yet another socket and asking everyone to upgrade all of their hardware for a moderate performance bump...
    - gruez 2y ago
      >Instead, they seem more interested in designing yet another socket and asking everyone to upgrade all of their hardware for a moderate performance bump... Who's upgrading their cpus after 1-2 generations?
      - Alupis 2y ago
        AMD folks, because you can use the same socket for many generations of CPU's, providing a drop-in 10-minute upgrade...

ethbr1 2y ago

Intel's golden eras were the 8086, 2/3/486, Pentium I/Pro/II era (1978-1998) and the Core era (aka son of Pentium M) before they ran into process issues (2006-2015). Current execution stumbles do not diminish historical triumphs -- Pentium II and Nehalem were and are amazing.

nubinetwork 2y ago
The Pentium Pro was a turd if you weren't executing purely 32bit code.
- ethbr1 2y ago
  They fixed that in the II though. Crazy remembering a time when there was that much 16-bit code in the wild.
segasaturn 2y ago
I remember back when the choice was between Athlon 64 X2 and Core 2 Duo and it felt like with either choice you couldn't go wrong.
FMecha 2y ago
>Current execution stumbles do not diminish historical triumphs Not for those who have "$THING was never good" mindset after repeated, multiple stumbles in a row. You see this with anything that closed/died in disgrace. I imagine there are people out there who think that Intel might file for bankruptcy/insolvency if they can't right themselves from this issue.
- Alupis 2y ago
  Frankly - every comment in this thread that touts Intel's technical achievements in the CPU space are citing things that happened nearly 30 years ago, or longer. Intel, in the past 20 years, has floundered and misfired constantly. It's not a stretch to assert the only reason Intel is still around is due to their illegal business practices in the early and mid 2000's. Intel became synonymous with CPU's because they were literally (and illegally) the only option for 99% of the computer buying market.

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]