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>Not do stupid GPUs Hard disagree here x100. Investing in GPUs in the time when Nvidia and AMD started to gouge the market is actually the best decision Intel

>Not do stupid GPUs Hard disagree here x100. Investing in GPUs in the time when Nvidia and AMD started to gouge the market is actually the best decision Intel did in recent times. It's the piece of semiconductor with some of the highest margins in the business and they already own a lot of the patents and IP building blocks to make it happen. The only stupid thing they did was not getting into GPUs earlier so they would already be on the market during the pandemic GPU shortage and AI boom.

bhouston 2y ago
I think the issue is that Intel has a culture and focus. It is cpus. It is a large company and this is where the revenue comes from and it has momentum. There are a lot of strategic shifts Intel could do but their timeline to paying off at the scale Intel needs is very long. What I see is a bunch of endeavours that get killed off too quickly because they were not paying off fast enough and this creates mistrust in the community around Intel’s new initiatives that are not core that make them harder to succeed going forward. It is a bit of a death spiral. Basically big companies find it hard to learn new tricks when their core offering starts to fail. The time to learn new tricks was a while ago, now it is too late.
- Cumpiler69 2y ago
  >I think the issue is that Intel has a culture and focus. It is cpus. It is a large company and this is where the revenue comes from and it has momentum. With this logic, Apple should have also stayed with making Macs when it had financial troubles in in 1999, since that's its focus, not venture into making stupid stuff like Mp3 players and phones, everyone knows that's the core focus of Sony and Nokia who will rules those markets forever.
  - bhouston 2y ago
    Apple under Steve Jobs is exceptional and not the rule. Trying to use that the fact Einstein or Muhammad Ali or any other genius in his area could do something or did something is not a counterpoint.
  - AnimalMuppet 2y ago
    Yes, Apple succeeded. But the number of companies that attempt such branching out and succeed are few compared to how many try. The CEO of company X may think that he's as talented as Steve Jobs, but is he really?
    - astrange 2y ago
      One way you can look at it is that Apple succeeded at those by taking things that weren't their product (radios, flashlights, calculators, etc) and turning them into their product (computers).
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
  - kergonath 2y ago
    > With this logic, Apple should have also stayed with making Macs when it had financial troubles in in 1999, since that's its focus, not venture into making stupid stuff like Mp3 players and phones, everyone knows that's the core focus of Sony and Nokia who will rules those markets forever. You’re off by a few years. Jobs axed any project not related to the Mac when he came back in 1997, so they actually did what you say they did not. The iPod project started around 1999-2000 when Apple was in a massive growth phase after the iMac and the G3 and then G4 desktops. Also, in the alternate reality where the iPod did not massively succeed, it would very likely have been killed or remain as a hobby like the Apple TV. Apple might not be as huge as they are now, but the Mac was doing great at the time.
- brokencode 2y ago
  I’d argue that focus is what Intel fundamentally lacks. Or any kind of real vision. If they had focused more on mobile CPUs, GPUs, or especially GPGPUs a decade ago, they could have more product diversity now to hold them over. Instead, they dipped their toes into a new market every few years and then ran away screaming when they realized how difficult and it would be to gain market share. If they had any actual vision, they could have a line of ARM CPUs now to compete with the onslaught in all major CPU markets. They should have listened to their customers and market forces instead of trying to force x86 down everyone’s throats.
  - Cumpiler69 2y ago
    >they could have a line of ARM CPUs now to compete with the onslaught in all major CPU markets. Disagree. Selling ARM chips with high profit margins is tough. There's too much competition from the likes of Samsung, MediaTek and until the US ban, Hi Silicon(Huawei). ARM chips are a race to the bottom in terms of price with a market dominated by companies from Asia. There's no guarantee Intel could have had a competitive ARM design that could beat Apple's or Qualcom's.
    - everfrustrated 2y ago
      Intel did have an ARM license at one point. The margins would have never been acceptable to Intel. Annapurna Labs / P. A Semi probably sold to Amazon / Apple respectively for the same reason.
    - bhouston 2y ago
      > There's too much competition from the likes of Samsung, MediaTek and until the US ban, Hi Silicon(Huawei). ARM chips are a race to the bottom in terms of price with a market dominated by companies from Asia Yes, without proprietary technology, margins are slim. But Qualcomm has somewhat succeeded in this area anyhow. I guess they took the ARM base but innovated on top of it in order to command higher margins.
      - deleted 2y ago
        [deleted]
NotYourLawyer 2y ago
Yeah that was so stupid of them to not see into the future and predict AI.
- Cumpiler69 2y ago
  You don't need the AI boom. Gaming GPUs were already a decent money maker, then add the GPGPU boom.
  - rob74 2y ago
    Yes, gaming GPUs are a decent money maker - but Intel GPUs can currently only compete in the midrange segment, where there is a lot less money to be made. And to change that, they need to invest a lot more money (with uncertain outcome). And for AI it's basically the same story - with the added difficulty of Nvidias CUDA moat, which even AMD is having trouble with.
- lesuorac 2y ago
  I'm not sure you needed to predict AI. GPUs exist because CPUs just aren't fast enough. Whether or not people are going to start making GPU-only computers is debatable (although there has clearly been a lot of CPU+GPU single chips).
  - kllrnohj 2y ago
    What a frankly weird oversimplification? GPUs don't exist because CPUs aren't fast enough. GPUs exist because CPUs aren't parallel enough. And to achieve that parallelism, they sacrifice massive amounts of performance to get it. A GPU-only computer would be absolutely horrendous to use. It'd be incredibly slow and unresponsive as GPUs just absolutely suck at running single-threaded code or branchy code.
    - lesuorac 2y ago
      I mean you can splits hairs about the difference between CPU and GPUs all you want. The overall point is that work is being increasingly done _not_ on the CPU. If your business is CPUs-only then you're going to have rough times as the world moves away from a CPU-centric world. You don't need to predict AI; you just need to see that alternatives are being looked at by competitors and you'll lose an edge if you don't also look at them. It's not going to matter much if you have a crappy CPU if most of the work is done on the GPU. Its like how iPhones don't advertise themselves as surround sound; phones aren't about calling people anymore so no reason to advertise legacy features.
Workaccount2 2y ago
Intel just has to make a decent/mediocre GPU with 64GB+ memory at a $500 price point and they will instantly become the defacto local transformer leader. It's a true "build it and they will come" situation. Undercut the big boys with affordable on-prem AI.
- Cumpiler69 2y ago
  >Intel just has to make a decent/mediocre GPU with 64GB+ memory at a $500 price point and they will instantly become the defacto local LLM leader Intel should have appointed people form the HN comment section as their CEO, as they clearly know more about running a giant chip design and fabrication company than the guy who worked there for 10+ years.
  - A4ET8a8uTh0 2y ago
    You are jesting, but there is some wisdom to that post. No reasonable person is suggesting global company changes direction on the basis of one post on the internet, but the advice provided is not without merit. Surely, a company of that size can do some research to see if it is a viable path. In fact, if it does anything right, it should have people like that ready to do appropriate analysis. I have my thoughts on the matter and cautiously welcomed their move to GPUs ( though admittedly on the basis that we -- consumers -- need more than amd/nvidia duopoly in that space; so I am not exactly unbiased ).
    - Cumpiler69 2y ago
      >but there is some wisdom to that post. That's just speculation. There's no guarantee that would have happened. Nobody has a crystal ball to guarantee that as the outcome. It's like saying if someone would have killed Hitler as a baby, that would have prevented WW2.
      - A4ET8a8uTh0 2y ago
        I think you may be either misinterpreting my post or misunderstanding the sequence of events. What do you think has happened so far? Your mental model of the world may help me understanding the point you are trying to make.
bubblethink 2y ago
>The only stupid thing they did was not getting into GPUs earlier Intel has been "getting into" GPUs for two decades now going back to Larrabee. They are just not good at it.
- JohnBooty 2y ago
  What is holding Intel back, there? Engineering chops? AMD and nVidia already patented too much of the good stuff? Too much existing code optimized for AMD and nVidia quirks?
  - mewse-hn 2y ago
    Extreme outsider perspective but they seemed like dilettantes. They'd dip their toe into doing GPUs and then cancel the project every couple years. A few weeks ago Gelsinger even commented he saw "less need for discrete graphics in the market going forward" - just seemed like a very Intel thing to say
    - JohnBooty 2y ago
      As a fellow outsider, that makes a lot of sense to me. Even if Intel started outperforming nVidia today... who would want to put serious effort into making their stuff work with Intel hardware in a market they're likely to pull out of at any moment?
  - bubblethink 2y ago
    The early stuff (Larabee, KNL, KNC etc.) was hamstrung by x86. Wrong architecture for the types of things GPUs are good at. Their igpus have generally been good but that's not competing in the compute segment. Then they acquired a few startups (Nervana, Habana) that didn't really work out either. And now they finally have a discrete GPU lineup that is making slow progress. We'll see.

bhouston 2y ago

I think the issue is that Intel has a culture and focus. It is cpus. It is a large company and this is where the revenue comes from and it has momentum. There are a lot of strategic shifts Intel could do but their timeline to paying off at the scale Intel needs is very long. What I see is a bunch of endeavours that get killed off too quickly because they were not paying off fast enough and this creates mistrust in the community around Intel’s new initiatives that are not core that make them harder to succeed going forward. It is a bit of a death spiral. Basically big companies find it hard to learn new tricks when their core offering starts to fail. The time to learn new tricks was a while ago, now it is too late.

Cumpiler69 2y ago
>I think the issue is that Intel has a culture and focus. It is cpus. It is a large company and this is where the revenue comes from and it has momentum. With this logic, Apple should have also stayed with making Macs when it had financial troubles in in 1999, since that's its focus, not venture into making stupid stuff like Mp3 players and phones, everyone knows that's the core focus of Sony and Nokia who will rules those markets forever.
- bhouston 2y ago
  Apple under Steve Jobs is exceptional and not the rule. Trying to use that the fact Einstein or Muhammad Ali or any other genius in his area could do something or did something is not a counterpoint.
- AnimalMuppet 2y ago
  Yes, Apple succeeded. But the number of companies that attempt such branching out and succeed are few compared to how many try. The CEO of company X may think that he's as talented as Steve Jobs, but is he really?
  - astrange 2y ago
    One way you can look at it is that Apple succeeded at those by taking things that weren't their product (radios, flashlights, calculators, etc) and turning them into their product (computers).
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- kergonath 2y ago
  > With this logic, Apple should have also stayed with making Macs when it had financial troubles in in 1999, since that's its focus, not venture into making stupid stuff like Mp3 players and phones, everyone knows that's the core focus of Sony and Nokia who will rules those markets forever. You’re off by a few years. Jobs axed any project not related to the Mac when he came back in 1997, so they actually did what you say they did not. The iPod project started around 1999-2000 when Apple was in a massive growth phase after the iMac and the G3 and then G4 desktops. Also, in the alternate reality where the iPod did not massively succeed, it would very likely have been killed or remain as a hobby like the Apple TV. Apple might not be as huge as they are now, but the Mac was doing great at the time.
brokencode 2y ago
I’d argue that focus is what Intel fundamentally lacks. Or any kind of real vision. If they had focused more on mobile CPUs, GPUs, or especially GPGPUs a decade ago, they could have more product diversity now to hold them over. Instead, they dipped their toes into a new market every few years and then ran away screaming when they realized how difficult and it would be to gain market share. If they had any actual vision, they could have a line of ARM CPUs now to compete with the onslaught in all major CPU markets. They should have listened to their customers and market forces instead of trying to force x86 down everyone’s throats.
- Cumpiler69 2y ago
  >they could have a line of ARM CPUs now to compete with the onslaught in all major CPU markets. Disagree. Selling ARM chips with high profit margins is tough. There's too much competition from the likes of Samsung, MediaTek and until the US ban, Hi Silicon(Huawei). ARM chips are a race to the bottom in terms of price with a market dominated by companies from Asia. There's no guarantee Intel could have had a competitive ARM design that could beat Apple's or Qualcom's.
  - everfrustrated 2y ago
    Intel did have an ARM license at one point. The margins would have never been acceptable to Intel. Annapurna Labs / P. A Semi probably sold to Amazon / Apple respectively for the same reason.
  - bhouston 2y ago
    > There's too much competition from the likes of Samsung, MediaTek and until the US ban, Hi Silicon(Huawei). ARM chips are a race to the bottom in terms of price with a market dominated by companies from Asia Yes, without proprietary technology, margins are slim. But Qualcomm has somewhat succeeded in this area anyhow. I guess they took the ARM base but innovated on top of it in order to command higher margins.
    - deleted 2y ago
      [deleted]

NotYourLawyer 2y ago

Yeah that was so stupid of them to not see into the future and predict AI.

Cumpiler69 2y ago
You don't need the AI boom. Gaming GPUs were already a decent money maker, then add the GPGPU boom.
- rob74 2y ago
  Yes, gaming GPUs are a decent money maker - but Intel GPUs can currently only compete in the midrange segment, where there is a lot less money to be made. And to change that, they need to invest a lot more money (with uncertain outcome). And for AI it's basically the same story - with the added difficulty of Nvidias CUDA moat, which even AMD is having trouble with.
lesuorac 2y ago
I'm not sure you needed to predict AI. GPUs exist because CPUs just aren't fast enough. Whether or not people are going to start making GPU-only computers is debatable (although there has clearly been a lot of CPU+GPU single chips).
- kllrnohj 2y ago
  What a frankly weird oversimplification? GPUs don't exist because CPUs aren't fast enough. GPUs exist because CPUs aren't parallel enough. And to achieve that parallelism, they sacrifice massive amounts of performance to get it. A GPU-only computer would be absolutely horrendous to use. It'd be incredibly slow and unresponsive as GPUs just absolutely suck at running single-threaded code or branchy code.
  - lesuorac 2y ago
    I mean you can splits hairs about the difference between CPU and GPUs all you want. The overall point is that work is being increasingly done _not_ on the CPU. If your business is CPUs-only then you're going to have rough times as the world moves away from a CPU-centric world. You don't need to predict AI; you just need to see that alternatives are being looked at by competitors and you'll lose an edge if you don't also look at them. It's not going to matter much if you have a crappy CPU if most of the work is done on the GPU. Its like how iPhones don't advertise themselves as surround sound; phones aren't about calling people anymore so no reason to advertise legacy features.

Workaccount2 2y ago

Intel just has to make a decent/mediocre GPU with 64GB+ memory at a $500 price point and they will instantly become the defacto local transformer leader. It's a true "build it and they will come" situation. Undercut the big boys with affordable on-prem AI.

Cumpiler69 2y ago
>Intel just has to make a decent/mediocre GPU with 64GB+ memory at a $500 price point and they will instantly become the defacto local LLM leader Intel should have appointed people form the HN comment section as their CEO, as they clearly know more about running a giant chip design and fabrication company than the guy who worked there for 10+ years.
- A4ET8a8uTh0 2y ago
  You are jesting, but there is some wisdom to that post. No reasonable person is suggesting global company changes direction on the basis of one post on the internet, but the advice provided is not without merit. Surely, a company of that size can do some research to see if it is a viable path. In fact, if it does anything right, it should have people like that ready to do appropriate analysis. I have my thoughts on the matter and cautiously welcomed their move to GPUs ( though admittedly on the basis that we -- consumers -- need more than amd/nvidia duopoly in that space; so I am not exactly unbiased ).
  - Cumpiler69 2y ago
    >but there is some wisdom to that post. That's just speculation. There's no guarantee that would have happened. Nobody has a crystal ball to guarantee that as the outcome. It's like saying if someone would have killed Hitler as a baby, that would have prevented WW2.
    - A4ET8a8uTh0 2y ago
      I think you may be either misinterpreting my post or misunderstanding the sequence of events. What do you think has happened so far? Your mental model of the world may help me understanding the point you are trying to make.

bubblethink 2y ago

>The only stupid thing they did was not getting into GPUs earlier Intel has been "getting into" GPUs for two decades now going back to Larrabee. They are just not good at it.

JohnBooty 2y ago
What is holding Intel back, there? Engineering chops? AMD and nVidia already patented too much of the good stuff? Too much existing code optimized for AMD and nVidia quirks?
- mewse-hn 2y ago
  Extreme outsider perspective but they seemed like dilettantes. They'd dip their toe into doing GPUs and then cancel the project every couple years. A few weeks ago Gelsinger even commented he saw "less need for discrete graphics in the market going forward" - just seemed like a very Intel thing to say
  - JohnBooty 2y ago
    As a fellow outsider, that makes a lot of sense to me. Even if Intel started outperforming nVidia today... who would want to put serious effort into making their stuff work with Intel hardware in a market they're likely to pull out of at any moment?
- bubblethink 2y ago
  The early stuff (Larabee, KNL, KNC etc.) was hamstrung by x86. Wrong architecture for the types of things GPUs are good at. Their igpus have generally been good but that's not competing in the compute segment. Then they acquired a few startups (Nervana, Habana) that didn't really work out either. And now they finally have a discrete GPU lineup that is making slow progress. We'll see.