6 ms·

Intel is laying off over 10k employees

135 points by ssahoo 2y ago

zamalek 2y ago
> Intel will reduce its R&D and marketing spend by billions each year through Isn't squandering incredible engineering resources exactly how Intel got into this situation in the first place?
- nine_zeros 2y ago
  Not if the priority is shareholder value as opposed to innovation
- high_na_euv 2y ago
  There are probably hundreds or thousands of projects, so who knows what they are going to kill
- radicaldreamer 2y ago
  Intel is notorious for having bloated R&D and keeping those projects funded despite not going anywhere, while missing mobile completely, perf/watt and now missing AI/ML as well.
  - ravenstine 2y ago
    Couldn't existing R&D employees be better utilized instead of being laid off?
    - s1artibartfast 2y ago
      They obviously think the answer is no. There is this interesting phenomenon where people outside an organization view R&D potential as elastic. That is to say, there is always a positive return on investment for the marginal R&D dollar. It is clearly not in the case or every company would have exponential growth simply by reinvesting in R&D. In reality, it is difficult to create growth from R&D at all, let alone the marginal dollar.
      - shiroiushi 2y ago
        >There is this interesting phenomenon where people outside an organization view R&D potential as elastic. That is to say, there is always a positive return on investment for the marginal R&D dollar. I don't think that's the view here; instead, I think the idea is that R&D personnel could be reassigned to work on something more profitable, rather than simply laying them off. Assigning R&D people to work on something unprofitable or a dead-end is the fault of management and their poor vision, not the people assigned to research that stuff.
        wavemode 2y ago
        That implies that there are job openings in those "more profitable" areas. Indeed, wouldn't every company love to just reallocate all of its employees to the areas that are most profitable. But alas, adding eight more women to the project of birthing a baby does not reduce pregnancy time to one month.
        johnnyanmac 2y ago
        >That implies that there are job openings in those "more profitable" areas. if they are more profitable, they probably have more space and budget by defauly. Outside of these strange times, it's not like Tech has historically been oversaturated and companies shy away from hiring new talent.
        wavemode 2y ago
        > if they are more profitable, they probably have more space and budget by defauly Not sure what you're basing this assertion on. I've never been at any tech company where the fact that a project is profitable somehow inherently means that we can just keep adding engineers to it and those additional engineers will magically increase the revenue the project generates. In fact there's almost no industry where such an assumption would be logical. Even if your work has a very straightforward financial model, like manufacturing where you simply make Y dollars for every X parts you produce, that still does not imply you can just keep adding assembly line workers. At a certain point you have to consider whether there are even enough purchase orders to cover the volume of goods you're creating, or if they are just going to become wasted surplus sitting in a warehouse.
  - sidewndr46 2y ago
    I mean it isn't like they developed a graphics cards line nobody wants to use recently or anything like that
    - duskwuff 2y ago
      I've heard a rumor that's where a lot of the cuts are focused, actually.
      - timschmidt 2y ago
        That would be unfortunate. Without a competent GPU it will be increasingly difficult to compete against AMD and Nvidia who have all the pieces necessary to produce high end gaming PCs / workstations / datacenter GPU compute. Developing a competent GPU solution isn't really optional if one wants to compete in those spaces, despite the large up-front cost, which Intel seems to have mostly already paid. Intel similarly cut their project Larrabee / Knights Landing / Knights Mill product line, which could have thrust x86 into the AI space in a way no other platform does offers today. They just quit too soon. Which suggests lack of vision or inability to properly communicate that vision to the management / board / investors.
        msie 2y ago
        Seems obvious so I suspect the cuts are going to boost some executive's compensation. Short-term gain over long-term gain.
        sidewndr46 2y ago
        Cutting all those projects seems more like an inability to communicate those products to developers. I'm hardly pro - NVIDIA but somehow they've really excelled at convincing software developers that their product is the platform to build on
        timschmidt 2y ago
        Everything AI already runs on x86. Knight's Mill had 72 cores with 244 threads with AVX512, connected to 16gb of 400gb/s local DRAM and up to 384gb of 115gb/s DRAM. Very similar bandwidth to GPUs of the era but with the addition of more DRAM on a second performance tier a little further away from the CPU. AMD's having a ton of success with Epyc and Threadripper putting up very similar numbers. The development story for Knight's Mill was a lot simpler than for any GPU. Consequently, I don't think developers were the ones who needed convincing.
ChrisArchitect 2y ago
[dupe] More discussion on official release: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41133084 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41133084
layer8 2y ago
Pat Gelsinger’s memo is worth reading.
mandeepj 2y ago
Techcrunch reporting 15k

135 points by ssahoo 2y ago

> Intel will reduce its R&D and marketing spend by billions each year through Isn't squandering incredible engineering resources exactly how Intel got into this situation in the first place?

nine_zeros 2y ago
Not if the priority is shareholder value as opposed to innovation
high_na_euv 2y ago
There are probably hundreds or thousands of projects, so who knows what they are going to kill
radicaldreamer 2y ago
Intel is notorious for having bloated R&D and keeping those projects funded despite not going anywhere, while missing mobile completely, perf/watt and now missing AI/ML as well.
- ravenstine 2y ago
  Couldn't existing R&D employees be better utilized instead of being laid off?
  - s1artibartfast 2y ago
    They obviously think the answer is no. There is this interesting phenomenon where people outside an organization view R&D potential as elastic. That is to say, there is always a positive return on investment for the marginal R&D dollar. It is clearly not in the case or every company would have exponential growth simply by reinvesting in R&D. In reality, it is difficult to create growth from R&D at all, let alone the marginal dollar.
    - shiroiushi 2y ago
      >There is this interesting phenomenon where people outside an organization view R&D potential as elastic. That is to say, there is always a positive return on investment for the marginal R&D dollar. I don't think that's the view here; instead, I think the idea is that R&D personnel could be reassigned to work on something more profitable, rather than simply laying them off. Assigning R&D people to work on something unprofitable or a dead-end is the fault of management and their poor vision, not the people assigned to research that stuff.
      - wavemode 2y ago
        That implies that there are job openings in those "more profitable" areas. Indeed, wouldn't every company love to just reallocate all of its employees to the areas that are most profitable. But alas, adding eight more women to the project of birthing a baby does not reduce pregnancy time to one month.
        johnnyanmac 2y ago
        >That implies that there are job openings in those "more profitable" areas. if they are more profitable, they probably have more space and budget by defauly. Outside of these strange times, it's not like Tech has historically been oversaturated and companies shy away from hiring new talent.
        wavemode 2y ago
        > if they are more profitable, they probably have more space and budget by defauly Not sure what you're basing this assertion on. I've never been at any tech company where the fact that a project is profitable somehow inherently means that we can just keep adding engineers to it and those additional engineers will magically increase the revenue the project generates. In fact there's almost no industry where such an assumption would be logical. Even if your work has a very straightforward financial model, like manufacturing where you simply make Y dollars for every X parts you produce, that still does not imply you can just keep adding assembly line workers. At a certain point you have to consider whether there are even enough purchase orders to cover the volume of goods you're creating, or if they are just going to become wasted surplus sitting in a warehouse.
- sidewndr46 2y ago
  I mean it isn't like they developed a graphics cards line nobody wants to use recently or anything like that
  - duskwuff 2y ago
    I've heard a rumor that's where a lot of the cuts are focused, actually.
    - timschmidt 2y ago
      That would be unfortunate. Without a competent GPU it will be increasingly difficult to compete against AMD and Nvidia who have all the pieces necessary to produce high end gaming PCs / workstations / datacenter GPU compute. Developing a competent GPU solution isn't really optional if one wants to compete in those spaces, despite the large up-front cost, which Intel seems to have mostly already paid. Intel similarly cut their project Larrabee / Knights Landing / Knights Mill product line, which could have thrust x86 into the AI space in a way no other platform does offers today. They just quit too soon. Which suggests lack of vision or inability to properly communicate that vision to the management / board / investors.
      - msie 2y ago
        Seems obvious so I suspect the cuts are going to boost some executive's compensation. Short-term gain over long-term gain.
      - sidewndr46 2y ago
        Cutting all those projects seems more like an inability to communicate those products to developers. I'm hardly pro - NVIDIA but somehow they've really excelled at convincing software developers that their product is the platform to build on
        timschmidt 2y ago
        Everything AI already runs on x86. Knight's Mill had 72 cores with 244 threads with AVX512, connected to 16gb of 400gb/s local DRAM and up to 384gb of 115gb/s DRAM. Very similar bandwidth to GPUs of the era but with the addition of more DRAM on a second performance tier a little further away from the CPU. AMD's having a ton of success with Epyc and Threadripper putting up very similar numbers. The development story for Knight's Mill was a lot simpler than for any GPU. Consequently, I don't think developers were the ones who needed convincing.

ChrisArchitect 2y ago

[dupe] More discussion on official release: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41133084 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41133084

layer8 2y ago

Pat Gelsinger’s memo is worth reading.

mandeepj 2y ago

Techcrunch reporting 15k