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Crossroads for Intel
pillageplunder writes "Businessweek offers a pretty balanced read on what challenges Intel faces in the upcoming year. Rivals Samsung and AMD are making inroads on Intels core businesses, an expected cyclical industry downturn looms next year, and with several critical delays in new (for Intel) markets puts its strategy at risk. A neat read."
Could someone explain why the semiconductor industry is 'cyclical'? What is it which makes a downturn predictable, or is it a self-fulfilling thing (lack of investment during predicted downturns causes otherwise unnecessary lack of performance)?
And buy a new processor to upgrade my 300Mhz PII I am running here at home. Nahh....it still loads Slashdot just fine. I'll wait till the next generation come out and then buy one of the current chips. (I have been saying that for 4 years now)
because it paints a major decline in the Intel empire, or because it actually has insightful commentary and information?
And yes, I didn't RTFA.
Matt Fahrenbacher
James Tiberius Kirk: "Spock, the women on your planet are logical. No other planet in the galaxy can make that claim."
Although Intel is lacking on the 64bit side.
problems at Intel, problems at Microsoft. Could it be that some companies just get too big for their own good?
Happened to other comanies, just look at US Steel, in 1918 they represented 3% of the GDP of the US, but they got too big, and eventually competetitors, both at home and abroad ate up most of that.
Monstar L
As long as Dell is almost exclusively Intel, then they ought to be just fine. It is Intel's exclusivity agreements that will sustain them in times like these, I'd wager. (Yes, I know Intel's problems aren't just in the desktop market, but I like to over-generalize).
The i86 architecture is dying and Intel could not release decent 64 bit proc at time, so, they'll have to rely on the Xscale processors which are, after all, ARM compatible.
As the ARM has had the hugest sales in the world during the last years (not on the desktopm, but everywhere else), this'd just imply that Intel will keep its domination but outside the PC market.
Trolling using another account since 2005.
I hear the pipeline on the P5 is going to be so long that Halliburton want to license it for reconstruction work in Iraq.
Intel has made some pretty big mistakes over the recent years, in some cases going against common sense:
...
RDRAM, Itanium, 64-bit extensions for x86, frequency as sole measure of performance,
It should be no surprise that now Intel's future is clouded. They have no one to blame but themselves.
Despite Intels problems, they made a record revenue and profit report this year. They still know how to make money and some reports says that their yields are far better than others and this may be a sign of this.
If you wonder why cant semiconductor companies reduce production, the reason is that when we come out with a chip, ie design a chip there a minimum number which is required for the chip to be profitable. This number is in the range of 500000+ units. Such things are hard to predict. In case of a DSL/cable modem chips the design and conception start one and a half years before release to fab. And six months after that full blown production starts. So we have to know 2 years in advance what to do people want. Its 2 years of R&D by over 100 engineers which leads to a chip. And look at the infrastucture investment. Farms of 100s of 64bit 2GHz+ machines, Ultrasparcs etc., running for 1.5 years simulating, testing, designing.
Get the idea? Chip design is a costly business, and unless market analysts get more accurate instead of being stupidly bullish, this cyclic downturn may be much softerMy Aurora : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o91ZsGwJYyg
FB : https://www.facebook.com/TanveersPhotography
In other news, there are some benchmarks on AMD's dualcore Opteron: http://episteme.arstechnica.com/eve/ubb.x?a=dl&s=5 0009562&f=174096756&x_id=1097194717&x_subject=Opte ron+dual-core+details+emerge&x_link=http://arstech nica.com&x_ddp=Y/
It appears AMD designed the Opteron from ground up to be dualcore.
I am a viral sig. Please help me spread.
I am predicting that Intel compilers department will be trashed soon. According to latest Coyote's benchmarks, GCC is caching up with performance. Moreover, you cannot improve performance of C++ compiler beyond certain limit, and it seems both intel and gcc (also MS) are close to that point. So, nobody will buy ICC to gain 5% on one app and loose 3% on another. Times when Intel had 30-40% over gcc will never come back.
839*929
I agree. I have a harder time convincing myself to invest in those huge companies. For a company to increase shareholder value it has to grow (vastly outweighs factors such as trimming costs). I believe huge companies can get to a critical mass at some point when it becomes increasingly difficult to add market share (esp. if you already have ~90%), meaning that the company has to make gambles in new markets it may not be as well versed in while also protecting its core products.
...from customers when they are new computer shopping? Are they adding primarily new boxes to what they are already running, or are they upgrading what they have? If it's upgrading, why are they upgrading?
I'm asking the latter because it seems like computers got "good enough" for most business purposes already. But I don't *know* that, it just seems so. Is it really just because of the way business taxes are structured?
I forgot, are we supposed to hate Intel?
in high-performance processor market is, IBM. Currently its PowerPC chips power Macintosh PC and Nintendo console. In Xbox 2 console, IBM succeeded Intel's deal with Microsoft for Xbox. IBM's Power architecture is going to be embedded in massive volume for both Nintendo and Microsoft consoles. Then, another architecture developed with Sony and Toshiba, STI's Cell will power PS3 console and other servers/workstations. IBM fabs will help production of AMD processors in forthcoming generations, too.
Their new Power5 chip is a seriously good piece of engineering which will make a rather savage dent in the Intel market when people realise how good it actually is.
;-) will not even have to think twice.
Has anyone realised that it has an MTBF of well over half a century? More computing with less power: if you're running lots of blade servers this chip also solves your other big problem: heat.
The moment IBM comes out with pricing that approache Intel (and, frankly, I would be surprised if that isn't coming) anyone competent enough to work out the real TCO (get the REAL facts
IMHO, in comparison Sun or AMD don't even feature as a threat..
Insert
I work with a guy named Rivals Samsung. His father is Korean and his mother is from India.
Unknown host pong.
Actually, the x86 CPU architecture is still alive thanks to a company called AMD. :-)
AMD's groundbreaking Athlon CPU core is far superior to what Intel has, and the Athlon XP showed that you don't need ridiculous clock speeds to get superior overall CPU performance, thanks to the the combination of the very efficient Athlon CPU core and generous on-die L1/L2 CPU memory caches. AMD's decision to put the memory controller onto the CPU die with the Opteron/Athlon 64 CPU's also demonstrates how to get superior CPU performance without running high CPU clock speeds like Intel needs to do with the Pentium 4 CPU's.
I remember reading a long time ago in the "Inside Intel" book that if it weren't for an investment from Intel in the early days, AMD would never get off the ground. I wonder if Intel is still invested in AMD?
Remember when Intel followed AMD's 5 - 10 year chip naming using a number to identify the chip rather than using the raw MHZ speed? Yes, that was this year. Yes, that was Intel realizing that it ain't about how big it is, it's how you use it.
And AMD has been my choice, as well as my companies choice, since 95. For almost 10 years AMD has been the cheaper, faster alternative, duplicating everything the Pentium has done and recently defeating it in most speed tests, forcing Intel to panic by releasing "Super Extreme Hyper-Upper-Cut" editions of thier Pentium four just to MEET the already released AMD 64 bit chips running on 32 bit technology.
Thusly, it isn't that AMD (and Samsung??) is making inroads - they're in the lead, and Intel has been panicking for years.
OH and uh, here's the proof:
o r/ archives/001820.shtml
http://weblog.siliconvalley.com/column/dangillm
A good Intel CPU:
Pentium-M (the Banias derivatives). It's a socketed Pentium 3 on steroids but consuming way less power.
Don't be at all surprised when^W if Intel dumps the P4 (after a decent face-saving period) and rolls out an all P-M desktop CPU selection. Certain to appear in smallish and blade servers, too.
Remains to be seen how far Itanium floats. POWER5 gives some hope that the big iron market hasn't disappeared anywhere.
Are Intels compilers really there as a full business in and of itself, or is it some auxillary "side benefit" of their processor business. At Microsoft for example, the developer tools division primary focus is providing good development tools for Microsoft developers, as well as Microsoft itself. The fact that they make ~$20 million on the side is pretty much a tertiary benefit.
Similarly, isn't the fact that Intel vends compiler technology little more than a byproduct of the fact that they do oodles of CPU research, and that it is just a nice thing to make a penny or two on the side? Maybe if they were starting from scratch, they would do everything on GCC, but the fact that they have all of this talent already there implies to me that it is probably not worth it for them to simply throw it away.
If it's an even year, eg 2004 / 2006 / 2008, the semiconductor industry is waxing, if it's an odd year it must be waning.
Clearly since next year is an odd year, 2005, we can expect a semiconductor slump.
God these stock market types really are clever.
http://slashdot.org/~GuyFawkes/journal
Are Intels compilers really there as a full business in and of itself, or is it some auxillary "side benefit" of their processor business.
I think it's just a demo to convince companies to buy the real product: access to intel's algorithms for the compiler developed to optimize instructions historically left to the cpu.
Somewhere within Compaq is a whitepaper describing optimizations available on the alpha platform that need to be either hand-coded or written in as compiler optimizations on the Itanium.
I thought this requirement of the compiler would be met when HP decided to use Linux on the Itanium, but it didn't happen. In fact, what happened is that you may compile Linux using ICC.
(could be wrong, no links to review and too lazy to find them!)
mefus
In Open Society, GPL Software frees YOU!
>is pretty much a tertiary benefit.
.Net Pro, which also includes Basic and C#.
That probably has been true in the past but it looks like Micro$oft is now trying to make money from their compilers. I say that because programmers can no longer purchase the Pro version of Visual C++. Instead, they make you buy the more expensive Visual STUDIO
Download Mazes and Puzzles from www.puz.com
In recent years, Intel has come out with the PIII with the built-in ID number, the Itanium which ran existing 32-bit software very slowly, and the P4 which has probably boosted electricity consumption worldwide to meet its voracious appetite while increasing room temperatures and air conditioning demand. Intel has allied itself with most of the major computer makers through all sorts of sleazy schemes to the point that most of the computers for sale are 'Intel Inside' machines. The largest maker, Dell, does not offer a single machine using a non-Intel chip. Millions of users have actually had to build their own machines from components if they wanted to use non-Intel parts, such as those by AMD. If General Motors dominated the car business like Intel dominates the computer business, we would have to buy a whole box of Chrysler or Toyota parts and put them together if we wanted to drive something besides GM.
So yes, Intel is at a 'crossroads' of sorts, but it is of their own making. Actually it is more like a fork in the road and Intel took the wrong turn back about the time of the Pentium.
Are you trolling? No. Couldn't be. This post is way too bland to be a troll.
;-)
Well it looks like your slashdot account has reached a crossroads as some would say. If you are not already posting at -1 you will be soon. It's time to make a decision: do you just register for another accound and simply let this one fade into obscurity like so many others, or do you become a troll and bless all us -1 threshold readers with your pointless but entertaining antics?
A few things to consider when making your decision:
1. So far you have put forward considerable effort into becoming yet another pointless slashbot to fit in with this motley crowd. Where has it gotten you? -1 with posting history that is about as exciting as drying paint.
2. Consider what would have happened if you had trolled instead. Your karma would be more or less the same, but you would have at least had fun and pissed off some fellow slashbots.
Which is better:
"What does the hivemind think about this mildly interesting story?"
or
"Jesus tapdanceing Christ! If I read another one of these pointless stories about some fat fuck's opinion about why he is such a great fat fuck I'm going to kill Rob Malda!!1!"
Judge for yourself but if you want to be read by the +1 threshold readers then you are going to have to create a new account reguardless. Please post the password to this accound if your not going to keep using it so I won't have to troll annonymously anymore
Hmm ... there *is* one way for Intel to come back.
.... maybe even more ..... :-)
AMD has really "done the business" with their chips. If I were Intel, I'd be seriously thinking about "leapfrogging", going to 128-bits