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I feel like this is a mistake. Pat's strategy is aggressive but what the company needs. Intel's stock is jumping at this announcement, but I look at it as a ba
by etempleton 2y ago
I feel like this is a mistake. Pat's strategy is aggressive but what the company needs.
Intel's stock is jumping at this announcement, but I look at it as a bad signal for Intel 18a. If 18a was looking to be a smash hit then I don't think Pat gets retired. If 18a is a success then it is an even more short-sighted decision by the board.
What this likely means is two-fold:
1. Intel 18a is being delayed further and/or there are significant issues that will hamstring performance.
2. Pat is/was unwilling to split the foundry and design business / be part of a M&A but the board wants to do one or the other.
If 18a is not ready I think the best case scenario for Intel is a merger with AMD. The US Govt would probably co-sign on it for national security concerns overriding the fact that it creates an absolute monopoly on x86 processors. The moat of the two companies together would give the new combined company plenty of time to ramp up their fabs.
- alganet 2y agoSure, let's create a monopoly around one of the most valuable commodities in the world. What could go wrong?
- steelframe 2y agoI think Apple Silicon has shown us that x86 doesn't have the monopoly potential it once had.
- alganet 2y agoApple Silicon was designed to be efficient at emulating x86-64. If you take that away, it becomes irrelevant (like many other ARM-based processors that struggle to be a good product because of compatibility). Apple has a promising path for x86 liberation, but it is not there yet.
- alganet 2y ago> One of the key reasons why Rosetta 2 provides such a high level of translation efficiency is the support of x86-64 memory ordering in the Apple M1 SOC. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1383762124000390 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S138376212...
- ryao 2y agoTSO might be slower than ARM’s memory ordering, but implementing it in hardware is considered faster than implementing it in software.
- astrange 2y agoIt was designed to be efficient (performance/watt) for everything. Most users aren't using Rosetta. It's not the only ARM CPU with TSO support though, some server platforms also do it.
- alganet 2y ago"efficient for everything": that is a bold claim, can you elaborate more on it? Also, can you name these other platforms? Also, can you back up the information about most users not leveraging Rosetta?
- astrange 2y ago> "efficient for everything": that is a bold claim, can you elaborate more on it? https://share.transistor.fm/s/124f8bc4 https://share.transistor.fm/s/124f8bc4 > Also, can you name these other platforms? Fujitsu A64FX, and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Denver https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Denver > Also, can you back up the information about most users not leveraging Rosetta? Well I couldn't tell you that, but most people just use web browsers.
- alganet 2y agoSorry, I'm not gonna hear some podcast PR by Apple. I heard their PR already. If most people just use web browsers, why so much effort has been put on Rosetta 2? Sounds very wasteful. Also, A64FX seems to agree with my statement that an ARM with some x86 spice makes a better product than just an ARM. And, if we're talking about making ARM mainstream, Raspberry Pi did more for the platform than Apple and deserves to get the good reputation.
- astrange 2y agoDunno, who says a lot of effort was put into Rosetta 2? It's mostly something that was needed in the first few years so you could run Chrome and Photoshop, but those have been ported now. It's mostly useful for running WINE but that's not super common outside games. That said, a binary recompiler has a lot of uses once you have one: https://valgrind.org https://valgrind.org
- KeplerBoy 2y agoWhy would the US govt allow a merge with AMD? Sure they won't allow Intel to be bought by a foreign company, but surely everyone would much rather see Intel being bought by literally any other company than AMD and Nvidia.
- CuriousCosmic 2y agoMaybe they'll sell Intel to Northrop Grumman /hj
- Cumpiler69 2y agoBoeing should buy Intel the way they bought McDonald Douglass. It's gonna be a success, trust me.
- CuriousCosmic 2y agoHey I mean two negatives make a positive right? Can't possibly go any worse than it already is.
- hedora 2y agoProbably should add GMC in there. I heard they’re building a iOS / android replacement. Think of the vertical integration! I’m picturing a boot-looping cargo plane full of hummers dropping like a stone — doesn’t get much more vertically integrated than that. Think of all the layers they can eliminate.
- ahartmetz 2y ago"Vertical velocity" is the new buzzword in professional businessing
- bee_rider 2y agoNvidia makes a lot more sense than AMD; it is better for the market (preserving some competition in x86), and at least Intel does something Nvidia doesn’t.
- ckozlowski 2y agoGiven the push of ARM designs into the desktop and server space, that monopoly doesn't seem to me as much of a danger as it might have a decade ago. I imagine any anti-competitive behavior in x86 would only accelerate that trend. Not that monopolies shouldn't be a concern at all, but my thought is that it's not quite that large of a danger.
- phkahler 2y ago>> If 18a is not ready I think the best case scenario for Intel is a merger with AMD. Aside from the x86 monopoly that would create, I don't think Intel has much of value to AMD at this point other than the fabs (which aren't delivering). IMHO if Intel is failing, let them fail and others will buy the pieces in bankruptcy. This would probably benefit several other companies that could use 22nm and up fab capacity and someone could even pick up the x86 and graphics businesses. BTW I think at this point the graphics business is more valuable. Even though Intel is in 3rd place there are many players in the SoC world that can use a good GPU. You can build a SoC with Intel, ARM, or RISC-V but they all need a GPU.
- cogman10 2y agoYeah, what both companies would need to be competitive in the GPU sector is a cuda killer. That's perhaps the one benefit of merging Antel can more easily standardize something.
- physicsguy 2y agoYou don't get a CUDA killer without the software infrastructure. Intel finally seem to have got their act together a bit with OneAPI but they've languished for years in this area.
- gpapilion 2y agoThey weren’t interested in creating an open solution. Both intel and AMD have been somewhat short sighted and looked to recreate their own cuda, and the mistrust of each other has prevented them from a solution for both of them.
- pbalcer 2y agoDisclaimer: I work on this stuff for Intel At least for Intel, that is just not true. Intel's DPC++ is as open as it gets. It implements a Khronos standard (SYCL), most of the development is happening in public on GitHub, it's permissively licensed, it has a viable backend infrastructure (with implementations for both CUDA and HIP). There's also now a UXL foundation with the goal of creating an "open standard accelerator software ecosystem".
- bell-cot 2y ago> ...the best case scenario for Intel is a merger with AMD... Why would AMD want a merger? They aren't a charity, and certainly don't need the distraction.
- etempleton 2y agoWell, for at least a time they would have the entire x86 market. That is not nothing. Also AMD may want to get back into the fab business. Without competition in x86 why not use Intel's fabs?
- KeplerBoy 2y agoAnd everyone would rush to migrate away from x86. Having a sole supplier for CPUs is a bad strategy.
- KETHERCORTEX 2y agoYet everyone is okay with a de-facto single supplier of CUDA capable AI GPUs.
- esskay 2y agoThey dont need to merge with intel to get the entire x86 market, they'll be getting that anyway if Intel folds. Even if Intel gets bought out, it'll be in pieces. Nobody wants to enter the x86 market, but there may be smaller segmenrs of the business that can help an ARM based business, or someone looking to get into GPU's.
- csdreamer7 2y agoPretty much fair game for speculation. The only way this is not bad for the tech industry was if he resigned due to medical or age reasons. That would not be unexpected. Doubtful that is the issue with Intel's track record. Curious when we will know if 18A is competitive or not. > If 18a is not ready I think the best case scenario for Intel is a merger with AMD. The US Govt would probably co-sign on it for national security concerns overriding the fact that it creates an absolute monopoly on x86 processors. The moat of the two companies together would give the new combined company plenty of time to ramp up their fabs. No way other countries would allow that. If A-tel (Amd-inTEL) can not sell to the EU the merger will not happen.
- ghaff 2y agoPeople who are presumably very well-off financially can retire a tad on the early side for all sorts of reasons or a combination thereof. Certainly he has made some significant course corrections at Intel but the most charitable thing one can say is that they will take a long time to play out. As you say, a merger with AMD seems like a non-starter for a variety of reasons.
- KETHERCORTEX 2y ago> If A-tel (Amd-inTEL) can not sell to the EU the merger will not happen. What the EU gonna do then? Stop buying computers? Perform rapid continental ARM transition for mythical amount of money?
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- Wytwwww 2y agoHard to imagine it ever coming to that but presumably massive fines? > Perform rapid continental ARM transition for mythical amount of money? And what is Intel + AMD going to do? Not sell CPUs in Europe?
- mattlondon 2y agoJust stop buying new intel chips, and continue buying Arm chips. Its not like every single existing x86 CPU would need to be taken away and destroyed. Apple has made it fairly obvious, even if it was not already with smartphones and chromebooks, that Arm is a viable, realistic, and battle-tested alternative for general purpose computing. Windows 11 even runs on Arm already. It would not happen "tomorrow" - this would be years in court if nothing else. This would give Dell/HP/Lenovo/whoever plenty of time to start building Arm laptops & servers etc for the European market. And who knows what RISC-V will look like in a few more years? The EU has done a bunch of stupid anti-consumer shit in tech already (hello cookie warnings that everyone now ignores), so I would not be surprised if this happened.
- cogman10 2y ago> The moat of the two companies together would give the new combined company plenty of time to ramp up their fabs. I'm not convinced of this. Fabs are incredibly expensive businesses. Intel has failed to keep up and AMD spun off their fabs to use TSMC. There is also ARM knocking at the door for general computing. It's already gaining traction in previously x86 dominated markets. The model for US based fabbing has to include selling large portions of capacity to third party ASIC manufacturers, otherwise I see it as doomed to failure.
- etempleton 2y agoThey would have at least 5 years to figure it out before ARM becomes viable on desktop assuming there continues to be movement in that direction. There is so little incentive to move away from x86 right now. The latest Intel mobile processors address the efficiency issues and prove that x86 can be efficient enough for laptops. IT departments are not going to stop buying x86 processors until they absolutely are forced to. Gamers are not going to switch unless performance is actually better. There just isn't the incentive to switch.
- cogman10 2y ago> There is so little incentive to move away from x86 right now. > IT departments are not going to stop buying x86 processors until they absolutely are forced to. IT departments are buying arm laptops, Apple's. And there is an incentive to switch, cost. If you are in AWS, you can save a pretty penny by adopting graviton processors. Further, the only thing stopping handhelds from being arm machines is poor x86 emulation. A solvable problem with a small bit of hardware. (Only non-existent because current ARM vendors can't be bothered to add it and ARM hasn't standardized it). Really the only reason arm is lagging is because the likes of Qualcomm have tunnel vision on what markets they want to address.
- n144q 2y agoLooks like your post is talking about two things -- corporate purchased laptops and AWS instances, which are quite different. About corporate laptops, do you have evidence to show that companies are switching to Macbooks from HP/Dell/ThinkPads?
- solarkraft 2y ago> I think the best case scenario for Intel is a merger with AMD (…) it creates an absolute monopoly on x86 processors If this happens, couldn’t they force them giving out licenses as a condition? The licensing thing has been such an impediment to competition that it seems like it’s about time anyway.
- ethbr1 2y agoIt's a good point, and yes, afaik any redress can be requested as a condition for blessing a merger.
- MPSimmons 2y ago>the best case scenario for Intel is a merger with AMD Oh man, the risk in that is extreme. We are moving away from x86 in general, but wow, that's... a big jump in risk.
- chasil 2y agoAnd really, AMD spun off Global Foundries. AMD doesn't want to run a fab. Does this mean that Intel's fabs should split for Global Foundries, and the Intel design team should go to AMD?
- MPSimmons 2y agoI seem to recall that Intel was talking about the same kind of split. Maybe the Intel child company and AMDs would merge, or maybe they'll stay separate and the parents will merge?
- JonChesterfield 2y agoHell no, I don't want the Intel management structures coming over here. Qualcomm is welcome to them.
- Grazester 2y agoIs Intel really in such a dire situation that they need to merge with AMD? AMD has been in troubling situation in the past(some thanks to Intel illegal dealings) yet they managed to survive and they were nowhere near Intel's size.
- izacus 2y agoMore importantly, AMD troubles made them refocus and improve their products to the levels we're seeing today. Giving life support to dinosaurs isn't how you create a competitive economy.
- orenlindsey 2y agoA lot of people on this thread are underestimating how much of a hold Intel has on the chips industry. In my experience, Intel is synonymous with computer chip for the average person. Most people wouldn't be able to tell you what AMD does differently, they'd just say they're a knockoff Intel. Technologically, both companies are neck and neck. But for the average person, it's not even close.
- menaerus 2y agoLast report I read it was ~80% (Intel) vs ~20% (AMD) for PC market. And ~75% (Intel) vs ~25% (AMD) for data center servers.
- Wytwwww 2y ago> And ~75% (Intel) vs ~25% (AMD) for data center servers. IIRC their data center CPU revenue was about even this quarter so this is a bit deceptive (i.e. you can buy 1 large CPU instead of several cheaper ones).
- hedora 2y agoMarket share is often measured in install base.
- tsunamifury 2y agoOf a market that is dying between two growing at the edges. Mobile and server clear trump personal compute. This the markets devaluing intel.
- Wytwwww 2y agoTo be fair it's not like there is that much profits in mobile either. ARM CPUs are almost a commodity and the margins aren't that great.
- Wytwwww 2y ago
- varelse 2y ago[dead]
- inteligent 2y agoHe did not get Larrabee flying but yeah it was after him that intel did not put the effort into what was needed. Nonetheless his comment on nvidia being lucky was everything than a smart comment.
- tonyhart7 2y agoUS government wouldn't let intel down, this is matter of national security (only grown semiconductor fabs left on US soil) and edge of US tech dominance
- wing-_-nuts 2y agoThat's the bet I made after the crash last summer. I think the USG only really cares about the fabs, as we've shown the ability to design better chips than intel's here. Time will tell if I'm right.
- badsandwitch 2y agoWhen that happens typically the company starts optimizing for sucking money from the government. From the point of view of the consumer Intel would be finished.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- hn3er1q 2y ago> only grown semiconductor fabs left on US soil not sure what a "grown" semiconductor fab is but follow this link and sort by location https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_semiconductor_fabrication_plants https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_semiconductor_fabricat... The number of homegrown companies with fabs is greater than 1
- tonyhart7 2y agookay, I forgot about texas instruments but lets not kidding ourselves here Intel is literally run pretty much (consumer and bussiness) the most here it would create so much loses not just by security but also effect on economy would be so high
- formerly_proven 2y agoSince HN generally considers everything older than two nodes completely irrelevant, all of those fabs except for Intel are completely irrelevant.
- osnium123 2y agoThe mistake Pat Gelsinger made was that he put his faith in the American manufacturing workforce. Very sad.
- trhway 2y agoNope. From what i heard from VMWare he was just a bad manager. He seems to be just a person skillfully playing org game, yet when it came to deliver he just flopped. The struggling companies with totally rotten management like to bring such "stars" (pretty shrewd people who built themselves a cute public image of supposedly talented engineers who got promoted into higher management on their merits) - Yahoo/Meyers come to mind as another example - who de-facto complete the destruction of the company while the management rides the gravy train.
- vlan0 2y ago>I feel like this is a mistake. Pat's strategy is aggressive but what the company needs. He's also 63. Has plenty of money to survive the rest of his life. Has eight grandchildren. There's so much more to life than business. What's to say he doesn't want to simply enjoy life with more connection and community to loved ones around him?
- etempleton 2y agoTrue CEO retirements are announced in advance and do not lead to a strange co-interim CEO situation.
- shermantanktop 2y agoThat would be a healthy, balanced and long-term-oriented approach. But those who get to the level of CEO are subjected to intense forces that select against those traits. I don’t know much about this guy but it’s reasonable to assume that any C-level exec will hold on to the position for dear life until they are forced out.
- steelframe 2y ago> any C-level exec will hold on to the position for dear life until they are forced out I don't know. Frank Slootman's retirement from Snowflake earlier this year was certainly not celebrated by any significant stakeholders. I'd imagine at some point someone like Frank realizes that they are worth more than Tim Cook, they consider that they're in their mid-60s, and they decide the remaining time they have on earth might be better spent in other ways. Every person in the workforce, no matter how ambitious or how senior, is forced into the calculus of money and power vs. good years remaining. I expect the rational ones will select the balance point for themselves.
- patrickmoo 2y agoFriends that work at intel said gelsinger and the board have done EVERYTHING wrong in the past four years. From blowing key customer accounts to borderline malfeasance with payouts. It’s also the board that needs to go too for enabling. The merger with amd sounds like the right path.
- dv_dt 2y agoIf a breakup is in the works for Intel, merger of the foundry side with Global Foundries would make more sense than AMD. Intel's foundries, even in the state they're in would likely be a step up for GF. And given the political sensitiveness, GF already has DoD contracts for producing chips.
- 7speter 2y agoDidn't the US government just give Intel $7b on the condition they don't spin off the foundry business? https://finance.yahoo.com/news/intels-7-86-billion-subsidy-010229971.html https://finance.yahoo.com/news/intels-7-86-billion-subsidy-0...
- dv_dt 2y agoI think you would have to go through the specific conditions - they put up restrictive conditions but does not seem impossible to work with
- monooso 2y ago> ...then I don't think Pat gets retired. This implies that he was pushed out, rather than chose to retire. I can't see anything in the article to suggest this, do you have another source?
- windexh8er 2y agoNope. Look at what Pat did to VMware. He's doing the exact same thing at Intel. He came in, muddied the waters by hiring way too many people to do way too many things and none of them got done appropriately. Pat is a huge part of the problem. I had the unfortunate pleasure of watching him not understand, at all, VMware's core competency. It was a nightmare of misunderstanding and waste in that company under his leadership. Intel turned into even more of a laughing stock under Gelsinger. I say: good riddance. He burned time, capital and people at both VMware and Intel. He's a cancer as a CEO.
- jamiek88 2y agoWhen he came back to Intel I was saying that all this ‘finally an engineer’ in charge stuff was misunderstanding Pat Gelsinger and VMWare was front and center in my thinking that.
- thomasjudge 2y agoDo you have more details or a reference for the VMware activity? The wikipedia VMware article is pretty brief
- epolanski 2y ago> The moat of the two companies together would give the new combined company plenty of time to ramp up their fabs. Doubt. Neither of the companies is particularly competitive on either processor or GPU architecture nor fabrication. A merger of those entities looks like nothing but a recipe for further x86 stagnation and an even quicker death for the entities involved imho. In particular I cannot see what's good in it for AMD. The fabs have no use/clear path forward. Their processors/gpu either match our outmatch the Intel offering. A Broadcom/Apple takeover of Intel sounds much more reasonable.
- microtonal 2y agoA Broadcom/Apple takeover of Intel sounds much more reasonable. Out of curiosity, what would make Intel interesting to Apple? Apple already acquired Intel's modem business and they have their own CPU and GPU.
- mylies43 2y agoMaybe for the fabs? It might be attractive for Apple to move production state side via Intels fabs but on the other hand I don't think Intels fabs can do what Apple wants
- epolanski 2y agoI think Apple has the cash, culture and management to make the fabs work. But I'm just speculating.
- UncleOxidant 2y ago> I think the best case scenario for Intel is a merger with AMD I think a merger with Nvidia would be more likely given the antitrust issues that a merger with AMD would bring up.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- KerrAvon 2y agoThat assumes a functional antitrust mechanism. We don't know what the next admin will do yet other than attempt technically illegal revenge on people they hate.
- steveBK123 2y agoOne argument I've hard in favor of the split is this: If you are AMD/NVDA/other top player, do you want to send your IP to an Intel owned fab for production? At least in theory, a fully independent, split/spun out standalone fab removes this concern. That said - what does Intel have to offer the top players here? Their fabs are being state of the art. And what's the standalone value of post-spin fabless Intel if their chip designs are as behind as their fabs? This certainly presents a conundrum for US policy since we need fabs domestically for national security reasons, but the domestically owned ones are behind.
- KerrAvon 2y agoEh, firewalls can be made strong enough, at least for some things. A software parallel is: you are Apple / Facebook, do you use Azure and/or AWS? I wouldn't, if it were me, but they do.
- steveBK123 2y agoMaybe but I think AWS arguably is a different scale of automation. There’s no Amazon human in the loop looking at your source. Sure a human SRE could peak into your system but that’s something of an exception. I can’t imagine fabs have that level of automation. It’s not like sending a file to your printer. It’s a multi month or year project in some cases to get your design produced. There’s many humans involved surely.
- mnau 2y agoAzure/AWS is cloud/B2B, AAPL/FB are B2C consumer goods/services. Different customers, different industries. There is some overlap, but moat is in other places. AMD/NVIDIA are in same business as Intel and have same pool of customers.
- heisenbit 2y agoThe problem is that this transition is very capital intensive and all the money was spent on share buybacks the past decades. The stock market looks at CPUs and GPUs and likes the latter a lot more so no fresh money from there. At the moment the only stakeholder with a vital interest in Intel semiconductor capabilities is the US government and even that may change as a result of Trump.
- drexlspivey 2y agoMerger with AMD is very unlikely for competitive reasons but I’ve read some rumors that 1) Apple will push some production to Ιntel from TSMC and 2) Apple (and Samsung) are considering buying Intel.
- ahartmetz 2y ago>I think the best case scenario for Intel is a merger with AMD Oh no no no no. Oh hell no. For now, we need competition in the x86 market, and that would kill it dead. Imagine Intel re-releasing the Core 2 Quad, forever.
- nabla9 2y agoReuters has some inside information: https://www.reuters.com/business/intel-ceo-pat-gelsinger-retire-2024-12-02/ https://www.reuters.com/business/intel-ceo-pat-gelsinger-ret... >Gelsinger, who resigned on Dec. 1, left after a board meeting last week during which directors felt Gelsinger's costly and ambitious plan to turn Intel around was not working and the progress of change was not fast enough, according to a person familiar with the matter. The board told Gelsinger he could retire or be removed, and he chose to step down, according to the source.
- FullyFunctional 2y agoThanks, finally a signal in this thread of noise. I found it unbelievable that all media presented it as if it was his decision. Of course it wasn't. I "predicted" this three months ago (really, it was inevitable), but gave it 1-6 months. Now for the what-happens-next popcorn. In a normal world, they would go bankrupt, but this is very much not a normal world.
- baq 2y agoThere are precious few companies who can turn rocks into thinking machines, Intel is one of them for better or worse. It’s a national security issue.
- genmud 2y agoI think that Pats strategy is what the fab needs to do to be successful. However, I think the fab and design should be separate companies, with separate accountability and goals/objectives. There is just too much baggage by keeping them coupled. It doesn't let either part of the company spread their wings and reach their full potential when they are attached at the hip. From the outside perspective, that is the thing that Pat has seemingly been focused on, keeping it together, and its why people have lost faith in his leadership. I also don't think that from a investment / stock standpoint that accelerating the depreciation / losses related to restructuring on the most recent quarter was a wise decision, since what Intel really needed was a huge win right now.
- akira2501 2y ago> the best case scenario for Intel That's the best exit case for the shareholders. It's the worst case for Intel's employees, customers and partners. > would probably co-sign on it for national security concerns This is equally laughable and detestable at this point in history. My personal security is not impacted by this at all. Weapons manufacturers honestly should not have a seat at this discussion. > overriding the fact that it creates an absolute monopoly on x86 processors. Yet this isn't a problem for "national security?" This is why I find these sentiments completely ridiculous fabianesque nonsense.
- alliao 2y agoagree with most except merging usually costs more than less, it usually happens to stack up because you get to axe a lot of employees in the name of synergy I mean duplicated departments
- lobochrome 2y agoBoth of those things might be true, but to me, it looks more like the board is acting out of fear of shareholder lawsuits. Pat's strategy has significantly destroyed value because the market lacks visibility. Dropping Pat will alleviate their feeling of having to do "something." As for M&A, it wouldn't just have to be approved at the DoJ. And the Chinese will never ever approve of it (but would have to). If they do a transaction without approval from the CMA, it would be like a nuclear financial war. I think it's high time to gut intel into parts, a la GE. Sell the Fabless to QCOM or BCOM. Sell the Fabs of one by one to GF, Tower, UMC or even tsmc. Find a PE firm for the leading edge and reconstrue it with significant rnd credits as a kind of Bell labs 2.0. Or something like that.
- XenophileJKO 2y agoIt's so much worse. They put a CFO and a Marketing/Sales professional in charge.
- neaanopri 2y agoMerging AMD and Intel sounds like Penn Central all over again
- ksec 2y ago[flagged]