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The Atom model was the breaking point for Intel. No one forgives them for wasting their money on Atom-based laptops, which are slower than a tortoise. Never pla

The Atom model was the breaking point for Intel. No one forgives them for wasting their money on Atom-based laptops, which are slower than a tortoise. Never play with the customer's intelligence.

iwontberude 1y ago
I could tell they were cooked when they bought McAfee.
- jbverschoor 1y ago
  They what??
  - 01HNNWZ0MV43FF 1y ago
    Oh I forgot that one. That's hilarious. > McAfee Corp. ... Intel Security Group from 2014 to 2017 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McAfee https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McAfee
- acroyear 1y ago
  yes, this was a direct consequence of the Craig Barrett mentality. Intel wanted a finger in many pies, since it could not predict what would be the next 'thing'. So they went on multiple acquisition sprees hoping to hit gold on something. I can't think of a single post-2000 acquisition that succeeded.
Demiurge 1y ago
I've always wondered, how do some smart companies, or smart film directors, or smart musicians can fail so hard? I understand that, sometimes, it's a matter of someone abusing a project for personal gain. Some CEOs, workers just want to pitch, pocket the money, and move on, but the level of absurdity of some of the decisions made are counter-productive the 'get rich quick' scheme too. I think there are self perpetuating echo chamber self dellusions. Perhaps this is why an outside perspective can see the painfully obvious. This is probably why having some churn with the outside world, and also understanding what is the periphery of the outside, unbiased opinion is, is very important.
- KerrAvon 1y ago
  It doesn’t even have to be that negative. With the best intentions in the world, it’s rare to have a CEO who is fundamentally capable of understanding both the technology and the viable market applications of that technology. Steve Jobs didn’t manage to do it at NeXT.
  - acroyear 1y ago
    NeXT was a failed rocket launch (analogous to early rocket failures within SpaceX). A great step forward and a necessary step in the evolution of the PC. I thought NeXT workstations were pretty bad-ass for their time and place. Recall that only 3 years prior to NeXT, was computers like the Atari ST .. what a vast difference!!
    - buescher 1y ago
      The original NeXT computer was a gorgeously sexy machine but slow compared to competitive workstations and considered very expensive for what it was at the time. It also didn't have the software ecosystem of a less expensive loaded PC or loaded Mac II. It's easy to look back with hindsight and rose-tinted glasses, squint a little, and see a macOS machine but it wouldn't be that for many years.
      - zozbot234 1y ago
        I mean, the NeXT, Atari ST and Mac computers around that time were all m68k-based... And the Atari ST was the cheapest by far, since it was competing in the home computer market.
        buescher 1y ago
        The Atari ST and similar machines like the Amiga and compact Macintoshes other than the SE/30 were not its competition, any more than the Sega Genesis was. Its immediate competition included Sun and SGI workstations (as well as other workstations) and the Mac II series - and for specific tasks, loaded 386DX and 486DX PCs. Sun was pivoting at that time to the SPARC platform and SGI to the MIPS platform, both away from Motorola 68K.
AlotOfReading 1y ago
I was working as a contractor in this period and remember meeting a thermometer company. They had made the extremely questionable decision to build it with Intel Edison, which used an even lower performance product line called Quark. The Edison chips baffled me. Worse performance than many ARM SoCs at the time, far worse efficiency, and they cost so much. That thermometer had a BOM cost of over $40 and barely enough battery life for its intended purpose.
- duskwuff 1y ago
  Quark/Edison was a truly inexplicable product offering. I have to wonder if Intel believed there was a market opportunity for "we want to build an embedded system, but all our existing code is on x86 and we don't want to port to ARM". (There wasn't - especially not as late as 2014.)
acroyear 1y ago
Atom was shit. A desperation move. I was so embarrassed to recommend a Poulsbo laptop to friend, it was the worst machine I have every seen.
- zozbot234 1y ago
  The early Atoms had pretty good performance per watt compared to Intel's other offerings. The whole 'netbook' and 'nettop' market segment was pretty much enabled by the Atom chips, and similar machines are still around nowadays. The E-cores found in recent Intel generations are also very Atom-like.
  - acroyear 1y ago
    about a year after 'netbook's came out, the iPad was in the wild and it destroyed any chance of these ever catching on.. sure, they were cheaper, but the user experience on a tablet was just so much better. (and tablets got cheaper fast)
    - ewoodrich 1y ago
      I basically only see them referenced mockingly these days but man I loved the netbook era. A 200 dollar computer dual booting Ubuntu and Windows XP (just to play Counter Strike 1.6 and Age of Expires) was a dream come true for high school me. I got the original iPad as a graduation present and as futuristic as it was ended quickly lost its lustre for me thanks to Apple's walled garden. Took a few more years until I was rocking Debian via Crostini on the first Samsung ARM Chromebook to scratch that low cost Linux ultraportable itch again (with about triple the battery life and a third as thick as a bonus).
  - adgjlsfhk1 1y ago
    I feel like the 2012 atoms made some sense. What baffles me is that atom was complete shit until 2020. Intel sold laptop chips in 2022 that didn't support FMA or AVX2 because they used an atom designed e-core that didn't support them.
  - deleted 1y ago
icedchai 1y ago
I had an early Atom "server" board. Boy was that thing slow.

The Atom model was the breaking point for Intel. No one forgives them for wasting their money on Atom-based laptops, which are slower than a tortoise. Never play with the customer's intelligence.

iwontberude 1y ago

I could tell they were cooked when they bought McAfee.

jbverschoor 1y ago
They what??
- 01HNNWZ0MV43FF 1y ago
  Oh I forgot that one. That's hilarious. > McAfee Corp. ... Intel Security Group from 2014 to 2017 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McAfee https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McAfee
acroyear 1y ago
yes, this was a direct consequence of the Craig Barrett mentality. Intel wanted a finger in many pies, since it could not predict what would be the next 'thing'. So they went on multiple acquisition sprees hoping to hit gold on something. I can't think of a single post-2000 acquisition that succeeded.

Demiurge 1y ago

I've always wondered, how do some smart companies, or smart film directors, or smart musicians can fail so hard? I understand that, sometimes, it's a matter of someone abusing a project for personal gain. Some CEOs, workers just want to pitch, pocket the money, and move on, but the level of absurdity of some of the decisions made are counter-productive the 'get rich quick' scheme too. I think there are self perpetuating echo chamber self dellusions. Perhaps this is why an outside perspective can see the painfully obvious. This is probably why having some churn with the outside world, and also understanding what is the periphery of the outside, unbiased opinion is, is very important.

KerrAvon 1y ago
It doesn’t even have to be that negative. With the best intentions in the world, it’s rare to have a CEO who is fundamentally capable of understanding both the technology and the viable market applications of that technology. Steve Jobs didn’t manage to do it at NeXT.
- acroyear 1y ago
  NeXT was a failed rocket launch (analogous to early rocket failures within SpaceX). A great step forward and a necessary step in the evolution of the PC. I thought NeXT workstations were pretty bad-ass for their time and place. Recall that only 3 years prior to NeXT, was computers like the Atari ST .. what a vast difference!!
  - buescher 1y ago
    The original NeXT computer was a gorgeously sexy machine but slow compared to competitive workstations and considered very expensive for what it was at the time. It also didn't have the software ecosystem of a less expensive loaded PC or loaded Mac II. It's easy to look back with hindsight and rose-tinted glasses, squint a little, and see a macOS machine but it wouldn't be that for many years.
    - zozbot234 1y ago
      I mean, the NeXT, Atari ST and Mac computers around that time were all m68k-based... And the Atari ST was the cheapest by far, since it was competing in the home computer market.
      - buescher 1y ago
        The Atari ST and similar machines like the Amiga and compact Macintoshes other than the SE/30 were not its competition, any more than the Sega Genesis was. Its immediate competition included Sun and SGI workstations (as well as other workstations) and the Mac II series - and for specific tasks, loaded 386DX and 486DX PCs. Sun was pivoting at that time to the SPARC platform and SGI to the MIPS platform, both away from Motorola 68K.

AlotOfReading 1y ago

I was working as a contractor in this period and remember meeting a thermometer company. They had made the extremely questionable decision to build it with Intel Edison, which used an even lower performance product line called Quark. The Edison chips baffled me. Worse performance than many ARM SoCs at the time, far worse efficiency, and they cost so much. That thermometer had a BOM cost of over $40 and barely enough battery life for its intended purpose.

duskwuff 1y ago
Quark/Edison was a truly inexplicable product offering. I have to wonder if Intel believed there was a market opportunity for "we want to build an embedded system, but all our existing code is on x86 and we don't want to port to ARM". (There wasn't - especially not as late as 2014.)

acroyear 1y ago

Atom was shit. A desperation move. I was so embarrassed to recommend a Poulsbo laptop to friend, it was the worst machine I have every seen.

zozbot234 1y ago
The early Atoms had pretty good performance per watt compared to Intel's other offerings. The whole 'netbook' and 'nettop' market segment was pretty much enabled by the Atom chips, and similar machines are still around nowadays. The E-cores found in recent Intel generations are also very Atom-like.
- acroyear 1y ago
  about a year after 'netbook's came out, the iPad was in the wild and it destroyed any chance of these ever catching on.. sure, they were cheaper, but the user experience on a tablet was just so much better. (and tablets got cheaper fast)
  - ewoodrich 1y ago
    I basically only see them referenced mockingly these days but man I loved the netbook era. A 200 dollar computer dual booting Ubuntu and Windows XP (just to play Counter Strike 1.6 and Age of Expires) was a dream come true for high school me. I got the original iPad as a graduation present and as futuristic as it was ended quickly lost its lustre for me thanks to Apple's walled garden. Took a few more years until I was rocking Debian via Crostini on the first Samsung ARM Chromebook to scratch that low cost Linux ultraportable itch again (with about triple the battery life and a third as thick as a bonus).
- adgjlsfhk1 1y ago
  I feel like the 2012 atoms made some sense. What baffles me is that atom was complete shit until 2020. Intel sold laptop chips in 2022 that didn't support FMA or AVX2 because they used an atom designed e-core that didn't support them.
- deleted 1y ago

icedchai 1y ago

I had an early Atom "server" board. Boy was that thing slow.