4 ms·

The entire company culture is trash? Lots of incompetent people at higher levels? Intel lost something post 2010.

osnium123 2y ago
Do you think the US govt should just give up on Intel, retract the CHIPs money from them and give it all to Samsung and TSMC? Having domestic fabs is nice but if a company is incompetent, it’s a waste of taxpayer money.
- more_corn 2y ago
  Should? Yes. Can? No. Also TSMC got sick of all the bullshit and declined the future US partnership fabs. Probably due to the unions throwing their weight around and threatening to delay if they didn’t play ball. Someone with national security authority should have sat those idiots down and had a chat.
- JohnFen 2y ago
  Why give it to Samsung or TSMC? That money could be used to seed a different domestic company. I don't think domestic fabs are just a "nice to have". Given how dependent we are on these sorts of chips, I think having a domestic producer is critically important.
  - osnium123 2y ago
    The barrier to entry is very high to building leading edge fabs so you need to give it to an existing entity
    - JohnFen 2y ago
      Sure, but (just brainstorming here, not espousing any strong opinions) there are more fab companies in the US than people think. They're just making lower-density chips rather than the high-end stuff. You wouldn't have to start from nothing, you could build on something that already exists. My primary point and strong opinion here is that I don't think the issue is as binary as a decision to prop up intel vs a decision to give up on domestic production. There is a whole world of other possible options. Particularly since, no matter what, there is no solution to this problem in the short term. Whatever is done, it will take a long time to produce real fruit.
      - osnium123 2y ago
        How would you feel about forcing Intel sell the fabs off to a healthier third party like TI or Micron or GlobalFoundries?
        buildbot 2y ago
        Arguably half intel's problem is that their fabs are not performing like they used to. The first 10nm chips were disasters, the endless 14nm revisions as a stopgap, and now the various issues with intel 7…
        osnium123 2y ago
        Agreed. That’s the heart of the questions. If Intel’s fabs are not performing as they did in the past, why should the taxpayer subsidize that organization through the CHIPS Act? It seems like rewarding technical incompetence and if the fabs don’t deliver, it’s not good for national security either.
        JohnFen 2y ago
        I'm not a big fan of forcing private entities to relinquish their property. There has to be a really solid reason for it (such as that the owner is going to use it in a way that is harmful to others). But buying it? That would be OK.
  - osnium123 2y ago
    Also, Intel and GF’s struggles to advance beyond could suggest that domestic technology development teams are simply not capable of going good process development. The only options is to rely on Samsung and TSMC to build semi successful fabs in the US.
trealira 2y ago
I've never worked there, but according to "The Story of ISPC," Intel has a very cutthroat culture. Some extracts: > The problem was that just a few jerks, especially in positions of power or influence, could fuck you up real good. > Intel had more than its share of them and therefore, everyone at Intel balanced some amount of technical work with some amount of politics work. You had to. Politics was more than the standard “advocate for yourself” stuff; at minimum it was periodically defending yourself against attacks from others who wanted your territory and would try to get your project shut down so they could take it. > Some people there approached their work with little in way of technological contributions, but a lot of politics. It turned out that that could be a perfectly successful career strategy—undermining others as necessary to maintain and advance your position without ever actually delivering much of substance yourself. Those were the jerks. From https://pharr.org/matt/blog/2018/04/20/ispc-volta-going-all-in https://pharr.org/matt/blog/2018/04/20/ispc-volta-going-all-... > As it turns out, some teams would jealously guard their source code, only making binary releases available to other teams at Intel, and only at well-defined delivery points. It was one defense against the jerks. > Here’s how it went: if you were working on something that others wanted to attack, sometimes they’d take the in-progress version of the system and pick it apart, finding a bunch of examples where it didn’t yet work well, and putting together an argument that your thing was in terrible shape wasn’t working, and thus should be canceled. > And sometimes that sort of tactic actually worked; management was shockingly receptive to this sort of hysteria. Maybe it was that they were too far away from the technology to be able to evaluate the arguments on their merits, or maybe again it was an appreciation for gladiatorial combat as decision making process. > The best case scenario was that the your team would have to spend a lot of time convincing management that they were actually on track and that things were fine. The easier thing was to just not share your code in the first place. From https://pharr.org/matt/blog/2018/04/22/ispc-volta-first-results https://pharr.org/matt/blog/2018/04/22/ispc-volta-first-resu...
- potamic 2y ago
  This is unfortunately very common in the corporate world, especially once an organisation grows to a certain size. It's the nature of animals to be territorial and competitive so there is a primal force behind this. But humans are intelligent and build societies. Good societies understand game theory and incorporate cooperation to maximise benefits for everyone in the long run. I feel this doesn't happen well enough within corporate societies which tend to be much more vicious and hostile in their own realm compared to the outside world. There is a lot of content out there on org building, leadership and what not but I've not come across anything which addresses this fundamental issue. What kind of structures do you need to build to incentivise high degrees of cooperation and discourage unhealthy competition? What would the evolution in terms of next generation of org structures look like?

Do you think the US govt should just give up on Intel, retract the CHIPs money from them and give it all to Samsung and TSMC? Having domestic fabs is nice but if a company is incompetent, it’s a waste of taxpayer money.

more_corn 2y ago
Should? Yes. Can? No. Also TSMC got sick of all the bullshit and declined the future US partnership fabs. Probably due to the unions throwing their weight around and threatening to delay if they didn’t play ball. Someone with national security authority should have sat those idiots down and had a chat.
JohnFen 2y ago
Why give it to Samsung or TSMC? That money could be used to seed a different domestic company. I don't think domestic fabs are just a "nice to have". Given how dependent we are on these sorts of chips, I think having a domestic producer is critically important.
- osnium123 2y ago
  The barrier to entry is very high to building leading edge fabs so you need to give it to an existing entity
  - JohnFen 2y ago
    Sure, but (just brainstorming here, not espousing any strong opinions) there are more fab companies in the US than people think. They're just making lower-density chips rather than the high-end stuff. You wouldn't have to start from nothing, you could build on something that already exists. My primary point and strong opinion here is that I don't think the issue is as binary as a decision to prop up intel vs a decision to give up on domestic production. There is a whole world of other possible options. Particularly since, no matter what, there is no solution to this problem in the short term. Whatever is done, it will take a long time to produce real fruit.
    - osnium123 2y ago
      How would you feel about forcing Intel sell the fabs off to a healthier third party like TI or Micron or GlobalFoundries?
      - buildbot 2y ago
        Arguably half intel's problem is that their fabs are not performing like they used to. The first 10nm chips were disasters, the endless 14nm revisions as a stopgap, and now the various issues with intel 7…
        osnium123 2y ago
        Agreed. That’s the heart of the questions. If Intel’s fabs are not performing as they did in the past, why should the taxpayer subsidize that organization through the CHIPS Act? It seems like rewarding technical incompetence and if the fabs don’t deliver, it’s not good for national security either.
      - JohnFen 2y ago
        I'm not a big fan of forcing private entities to relinquish their property. There has to be a really solid reason for it (such as that the owner is going to use it in a way that is harmful to others). But buying it? That would be OK.
- osnium123 2y ago
  Also, Intel and GF’s struggles to advance beyond could suggest that domestic technology development teams are simply not capable of going good process development. The only options is to rely on Samsung and TSMC to build semi successful fabs in the US.

trealira 2y ago

I've never worked there, but according to "The Story of ISPC," Intel has a very cutthroat culture. Some extracts: > The problem was that just a few jerks, especially in positions of power or influence, could fuck you up real good. > Intel had more than its share of them and therefore, everyone at Intel balanced some amount of technical work with some amount of politics work. You had to. Politics was more than the standard “advocate for yourself” stuff; at minimum it was periodically defending yourself against attacks from others who wanted your territory and would try to get your project shut down so they could take it. > Some people there approached their work with little in way of technological contributions, but a lot of politics. It turned out that that could be a perfectly successful career strategy—undermining others as necessary to maintain and advance your position without ever actually delivering much of substance yourself. Those were the jerks. From https://pharr.org/matt/blog/2018/04/20/ispc-volta-going-all-in https://pharr.org/matt/blog/2018/04/20/ispc-volta-going-all-... > As it turns out, some teams would jealously guard their source code, only making binary releases available to other teams at Intel, and only at well-defined delivery points. It was one defense against the jerks. > Here’s how it went: if you were working on something that others wanted to attack, sometimes they’d take the in-progress version of the system and pick it apart, finding a bunch of examples where it didn’t yet work well, and putting together an argument that your thing was in terrible shape wasn’t working, and thus should be canceled. > And sometimes that sort of tactic actually worked; management was shockingly receptive to this sort of hysteria. Maybe it was that they were too far away from the technology to be able to evaluate the arguments on their merits, or maybe again it was an appreciation for gladiatorial combat as decision making process. > The best case scenario was that the your team would have to spend a lot of time convincing management that they were actually on track and that things were fine. The easier thing was to just not share your code in the first place. From https://pharr.org/matt/blog/2018/04/22/ispc-volta-first-results https://pharr.org/matt/blog/2018/04/22/ispc-volta-first-resu...

potamic 2y ago
This is unfortunately very common in the corporate world, especially once an organisation grows to a certain size. It's the nature of animals to be territorial and competitive so there is a primal force behind this. But humans are intelligent and build societies. Good societies understand game theory and incorporate cooperation to maximise benefits for everyone in the long run. I feel this doesn't happen well enough within corporate societies which tend to be much more vicious and hostile in their own realm compared to the outside world. There is a lot of content out there on org building, leadership and what not but I've not come across anything which addresses this fundamental issue. What kind of structures do you need to build to incentivise high degrees of cooperation and discourage unhealthy competition? What would the evolution in terms of next generation of org structures look like?