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A lot of these are symptoms of the root cause: a bad product. Ultrabooks aren't a terrible concept; they're the Wintel version of Macbook Airs. Making a non-App

A lot of these are symptoms of the root cause: a bad product. Ultrabooks aren't a terrible concept; they're the Wintel version of Macbook Airs. Making a non-Apple Apple device is a fine business strategy, and Samsung has made plenty of money off of it. The problem was that Intel chips continually crippled them, making them hot and slow with no battery life. People don't like Celerons and iGPUs because they all run at the speed of molasses. Any of these branding decisions would have worked fine, if the products did. But no amount of marketing will fix bad engineering.

soulbadguy 2y ago
bad product is a symptoms of a even deeper cause... Lack of competition. The decline of intel started long ago. The financial results here are just very very lagging indicator of that. The lack of competition combined with very agressive anti competitive practice allow them to survive on pretty bad product line. In a healthy market, competition would have force intel to improve well before the point we are now
- jakobson14 2y ago
  They are only moving because AMD is finally providing that competition, but it's not fair to say that "if only AMD had gotten their act together sooner, intel would be a better comapny." Ultimately, intel chose to let intel rot while AMD was out of the picture. (ignoring that intel's backroom deals with Dell and co. are a big part of what pushed AMD out)
  - PaulHoule 2y ago
    AMD and ARM-based solutions too. I can't picture wanting to run Windows on ARM for a few product generations but for server use I'd have no problem w/ Linux on ARM.
adrian_b 2y ago
While the Intel laptop CPUs may have been not good enough, that is not where Intel has lost money. The current financial results have shown decent profits for the consumer CPUs, which could have been greater if Intel had succeeded to produce more Meteor Lake CPUs. Intel could not produce as many Meteor Lake CPUs as the demand because their new Intel 4 manufacturing process has low production yields. While Intel lost money in their foundry, that was unavoidable due to the high expenses needed for catching up with TSMC. Where Intel had great losses was in server CPUs. The reason for these losses must have been that Intel had to grant very large discounts to the big buyers of server CPUs, in order to convince them to not buy superior AMD server CPUs. These losses in server CPUs were easily predictable, because even if Intel has succeeded to reach in time all the publicly announced milestones of their roadmap, their roadmap itself does not hope to reach parity with the AMD server CPUs before H2 2025 (and that assuming that AMD will not introduce Zen 6 during 2025, which would move the target). It looks like Intel has made a PR mistake. Even if their public roadmap has shown all the time that they will continue to have big losses for at least one more year, that was obvious only for technical people, who could compare the future Intel products with the AMD products, because Intel has not said any word in their roadmap about what the competition will have at the same time. For non-technical people, the Intel press releases sounded more optimistic than they should have been, leading to disappointment caused by financial results that should not have been surprising.
- Tuna-Fish 2y ago
  > The current financial results have shown decent profits for the consumer CPUs, Only after serious financial alchemy. The client group has a decent op margin, but the foundry group has an absolutely terrible one, and the client group sells products that they buy (internally) from the foundry group at arbitrarily set prices. What would the client margins be if the internal price they pay for their products was set so that the foundry breaks even?
  - walterbell 2y ago
    Are client margins different for Lunar Lake, where the compute/platform tiles are made by TSMC?
  - formerly_proven 2y ago
    iirc the reason for that split in margins is precisely because Intel started pricing their foundry internally as-if they were external sales (i.e. made at competitive prices).
einpoklum 2y ago
> Ultrabooks aren't a terrible concept; they're the Wintel version of Macbook Airs. I'd say both are a terrible concept. I mean, it sells, but it's still terrible. A laptop being thin is not really such a virtue and people's life would be better with a decent-travel keyboard, better heat dissipation and more ports than with 5-10mm less laptop height.
- paganel 2y ago
  I don't really care that much about brands nor laptops for that matter, but my M1 Air is really, really nice given the money I've paid for it. Why should I burden myself with carrying a big laptop thing when I can instead carry a Macbook Air that is much lighter and which does very good job?
- Almondsetat 2y ago
  Who are you to say what would make people's lives better?
  - PaulHoule 2y ago
    An actual computer user who's probably at least as qualified as whoever made these decisions at Intel.
    - Almondsetat 2y ago
      I'm an actual computer user and I disagree. Now what?
      - fredoliveira 2y ago
        Now, hopefully, we all come to a simple realization: opinions vary.
- wtallis 2y ago
  Heat dissipation and lots of ports are why I have a desktop. I don't want that from my MacBook Air. A fan isn't necessary or desirable for a machine that is primarily used for web browsing, watching movies, and light gaming.
jakobson14 2y ago
ultimately it was a focus on marketing that led them to kill engineering (if itanium and the many failures and lucky breaks that led up to it hadn't already convinced you that intel might never have had good engineering)
- PaulHoule 2y ago
  Intel tried to get away from x86 over and over again with radically overengineered architectures that didn't work (as well as mainstream architectures) and failed: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_iAPX_432 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_iAPX_432 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_i860 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_i860 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Itanium https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Itanium
Panzer04 2y ago
I don't think I agree at all with your assertions about ultrabooks and blaming intel CPUs. To be honest, all x86 processors are reasonably efficient if you pick the right power points to run them at. My experience with my laptops is that windows will arbitrarily use 2-3x idle power draw while on battery for no apparent reason. There is no reason for a CPU to be running higher than idle the vast majority of the time in a laptop, for tasks that you would be using a laptop for on battery. I think most laptops are just poorly designed and Windows isn't reliable about using minimal power. MFGs make big laptops with 60whr batteries (instead of 100wh), they put bloatware on them that consume excess power at idle, MS Windows doesn't reliably ensure low power consumption on battery (seriously, I have to hibernate/shut down my laptop when I stop using it, otherwise it will consume its entire battery in 8hrs during sleep mode, somehow), and so on. Most problems with Windows laptops aren't Intel's fault, IMO. I agree that Intel really should clarify, at least, the difference between their "Celeron" class (e-core only) and "Core" class processors (with P cores), since there's such a massive difference in performance capability between them.
- WalterBright 2y ago
  > There is no reason for a CPU to be running higher than idle the vast majority of the time in a laptop, for tasks that you would be using a laptop for on battery. True. I once got suspicious and opened the process list window. I had installed a server so I could stream to my Roku device, and I wasn't streaming, yet the server was sucking up quite a bit of compute time, all the time. I uninstalled it.
- Dalewyn 2y ago
  >Most problems with Windows laptops aren't Intel's fault, IMO. Intel works very thoroughly with Microsoft, and it is absolutely on Intel for bringing forth the most inexcusable failure mode: Laptops "sleeping" with the CPU still on and proceeding to cook themselves in your backpack because they thought they were still on mains power. Why is this on Intel? Because they removed a C-state that actually slept properly in favor of a C-state that theoretically saved more power but in practice almost never works with how people actually use laptops. AMD might also share the blame here. I don't know, because I don't care to know further with how stupid everything is.

soulbadguy 2y ago

bad product is a symptoms of a even deeper cause... Lack of competition. The decline of intel started long ago. The financial results here are just very very lagging indicator of that. The lack of competition combined with very agressive anti competitive practice allow them to survive on pretty bad product line. In a healthy market, competition would have force intel to improve well before the point we are now

jakobson14 2y ago
They are only moving because AMD is finally providing that competition, but it's not fair to say that "if only AMD had gotten their act together sooner, intel would be a better comapny." Ultimately, intel chose to let intel rot while AMD was out of the picture. (ignoring that intel's backroom deals with Dell and co. are a big part of what pushed AMD out)
- PaulHoule 2y ago
  AMD and ARM-based solutions too. I can't picture wanting to run Windows on ARM for a few product generations but for server use I'd have no problem w/ Linux on ARM.

adrian_b 2y ago

While the Intel laptop CPUs may have been not good enough, that is not where Intel has lost money. The current financial results have shown decent profits for the consumer CPUs, which could have been greater if Intel had succeeded to produce more Meteor Lake CPUs. Intel could not produce as many Meteor Lake CPUs as the demand because their new Intel 4 manufacturing process has low production yields. While Intel lost money in their foundry, that was unavoidable due to the high expenses needed for catching up with TSMC. Where Intel had great losses was in server CPUs. The reason for these losses must have been that Intel had to grant very large discounts to the big buyers of server CPUs, in order to convince them to not buy superior AMD server CPUs. These losses in server CPUs were easily predictable, because even if Intel has succeeded to reach in time all the publicly announced milestones of their roadmap, their roadmap itself does not hope to reach parity with the AMD server CPUs before H2 2025 (and that assuming that AMD will not introduce Zen 6 during 2025, which would move the target). It looks like Intel has made a PR mistake. Even if their public roadmap has shown all the time that they will continue to have big losses for at least one more year, that was obvious only for technical people, who could compare the future Intel products with the AMD products, because Intel has not said any word in their roadmap about what the competition will have at the same time. For non-technical people, the Intel press releases sounded more optimistic than they should have been, leading to disappointment caused by financial results that should not have been surprising.

Tuna-Fish 2y ago
> The current financial results have shown decent profits for the consumer CPUs, Only after serious financial alchemy. The client group has a decent op margin, but the foundry group has an absolutely terrible one, and the client group sells products that they buy (internally) from the foundry group at arbitrarily set prices. What would the client margins be if the internal price they pay for their products was set so that the foundry breaks even?
- walterbell 2y ago
  Are client margins different for Lunar Lake, where the compute/platform tiles are made by TSMC?
- formerly_proven 2y ago
  iirc the reason for that split in margins is precisely because Intel started pricing their foundry internally as-if they were external sales (i.e. made at competitive prices).

einpoklum 2y ago

> Ultrabooks aren't a terrible concept; they're the Wintel version of Macbook Airs. I'd say both are a terrible concept. I mean, it sells, but it's still terrible. A laptop being thin is not really such a virtue and people's life would be better with a decent-travel keyboard, better heat dissipation and more ports than with 5-10mm less laptop height.

paganel 2y ago
I don't really care that much about brands nor laptops for that matter, but my M1 Air is really, really nice given the money I've paid for it. Why should I burden myself with carrying a big laptop thing when I can instead carry a Macbook Air that is much lighter and which does very good job?
Almondsetat 2y ago
Who are you to say what would make people's lives better?
- PaulHoule 2y ago
  An actual computer user who's probably at least as qualified as whoever made these decisions at Intel.
  - Almondsetat 2y ago
    I'm an actual computer user and I disagree. Now what?
    - fredoliveira 2y ago
      Now, hopefully, we all come to a simple realization: opinions vary.
wtallis 2y ago
Heat dissipation and lots of ports are why I have a desktop. I don't want that from my MacBook Air. A fan isn't necessary or desirable for a machine that is primarily used for web browsing, watching movies, and light gaming.

jakobson14 2y ago

ultimately it was a focus on marketing that led them to kill engineering (if itanium and the many failures and lucky breaks that led up to it hadn't already convinced you that intel might never have had good engineering)

PaulHoule 2y ago
Intel tried to get away from x86 over and over again with radically overengineered architectures that didn't work (as well as mainstream architectures) and failed: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_iAPX_432 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_iAPX_432 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_i860 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_i860 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Itanium https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Itanium

Panzer04 2y ago

I don't think I agree at all with your assertions about ultrabooks and blaming intel CPUs. To be honest, all x86 processors are reasonably efficient if you pick the right power points to run them at. My experience with my laptops is that windows will arbitrarily use 2-3x idle power draw while on battery for no apparent reason. There is no reason for a CPU to be running higher than idle the vast majority of the time in a laptop, for tasks that you would be using a laptop for on battery. I think most laptops are just poorly designed and Windows isn't reliable about using minimal power. MFGs make big laptops with 60whr batteries (instead of 100wh), they put bloatware on them that consume excess power at idle, MS Windows doesn't reliably ensure low power consumption on battery (seriously, I have to hibernate/shut down my laptop when I stop using it, otherwise it will consume its entire battery in 8hrs during sleep mode, somehow), and so on. Most problems with Windows laptops aren't Intel's fault, IMO. I agree that Intel really should clarify, at least, the difference between their "Celeron" class (e-core only) and "Core" class processors (with P cores), since there's such a massive difference in performance capability between them.

WalterBright 2y ago
> There is no reason for a CPU to be running higher than idle the vast majority of the time in a laptop, for tasks that you would be using a laptop for on battery. True. I once got suspicious and opened the process list window. I had installed a server so I could stream to my Roku device, and I wasn't streaming, yet the server was sucking up quite a bit of compute time, all the time. I uninstalled it.
Dalewyn 2y ago
>Most problems with Windows laptops aren't Intel's fault, IMO. Intel works very thoroughly with Microsoft, and it is absolutely on Intel for bringing forth the most inexcusable failure mode: Laptops "sleeping" with the CPU still on and proceeding to cook themselves in your backpack because they thought they were still on mains power. Why is this on Intel? Because they removed a C-state that actually slept properly in favor of a C-state that theoretically saved more power but in practice almost never works with how people actually use laptops. AMD might also share the blame here. I don't know, because I don't care to know further with how stupid everything is.