Slashdot Mirror
Intel's Expensive Disco Ball
Re-Pawn writes "From the NY Times: The
Disco Ball of Failed Hopes and Other Tales From Inside Intel (Registration
Required.)
Seems like Intel is losing market share to other chip makers - this
article highlights a few problems that Intel has had including one very expensive
disco ball made from a failed attempt to produce projection televisions."
Now if you are doing this as a showcase of bad ideas, let's link a few more interesting samples.
Though the x86 now pretty much owns the consumer pc chip market unchallenged-- it's just that Intel isn't always the person shipping that x86 chip-- Intel's platforms are not doing so well in other areas. IBM's POWER chip, the chip the PowerPC is based on, is very very quickly becoming the new MIPS. All three of the next-generation video game systems-- the PS3, the XBox Next, and the Nintendo Revolution-- are known to use CPUs based off of a POWER core...
diy muh man
Well, never been a Intel Fan before, i don't like the bullying tactics applied to OEM distributors ala Micro$oft style, for me lower Intel share translates into higher quality and lower prices for the end user, and most important "freedom of choicee", so the next time joe user goes shopping for a new Worm/Spyware host because the old one is too slow, he will see more AMD and less Intel Inside. By the way, the disco ball may be useful for the next wave of laidoff intella employees who will dance to the rythm of "the pink slip blues", sorry for all of them, really sorry. $hitty corporate america has to keep the skyhigh CEO salaries somehow.!
... and they don't have pictures???!!!
Even marketshare and technology takes a back seat to obsession over the closing price of the stock...this is what you get for obsessing over the very short term.
"AMD is struggling hard, as they always have, to hold a modicum of the market. They are still nothing more than a small Intel. Intel has proven again and again that all they can do is make CPUs. The dismisal of the p4 line is a sign they acknowledge the trend in low power computing.
They are both about to get blown out of the water by Apple.
Apple is about to introduce an entertainment server. Everyone knows the future is networked consoles, but Sony et al are still focusing on games only. Apple will introduce a device that will displace the PC in a very short time. Fortunately their suppliers have horrible fab capacity. It wouldn't surprise me if Apple built in x86 if their volumes get high enough.
My bet is on the apple device."
You are so full of shit that you don't understand up from down.
1: Apple does not, and will not manufacture or design CPUs.
2: AMD *does* design and manufacture CPUs.
Intel and Apple *don't* compete because they don't manufacture the same products. Intel competes with AMD, Transmeta, IBM, VIA, Samsung, and other companies in a variety of fields.
Apple competes with software companies - like Microsoft, PC companies - like Dell, and, more recently, with
"Apple is about to introduce an entertainment server. Everyone knows the future is networked consoles, but Sony et al are still focusing on games only. Apple will introduce a device that will displace the PC in a very short time."
A media server is going to "displace" the PC? What a load of crap. Analysts have been spelling doom for the PC for *years*. Cellphones were going to kill the PC. Or PDAs. Or "smart" TVs.
Guess what? It's never happened. Because the PC is the best tool for communication. You can't displace the PC with a media center because, for most people, the PC isn't a media center. Most people use their PCs to get on the Internet. They surf the web and read email. A media server isn't going to displace that.
"It wouldn't surprise me if Apple built in x86 if their volumes get high enough."
Assuming your crackpot theory is correct, who do you think is going to manufacture those x86 chips?
AMD or Intel. That's who. They are the only companies producing high-performance x86 CPUs. Heck, they are the only companies *capable* of producing a high-performance x86 cpu in the short term.
"Everyone knows the future is networked consoles"
If by "everyone", you mean crackpot analysts, then, yes, "everyone" knows that.
Remember the PS2 hype? With it's FireWire and USB ports, the PS2 was supposed to be the "future networked console". It wasn't. It's just another game system, just like the XBOX. The PS2 hasn't killed the PC.
"Fortunately their suppliers have horrible fab capacity."
IBM can fab a lot more than you think. Not as much as AMD or Intel, but they have the resources to bring Apple as many PPC970 CPUs as they will need.
Gotta love the xenophobia on Slashdot. Your aware that the 'American Dream' was people leaving the low living conditions they grew up in and go to America and live at a much higher standard right?
"I use a Mac because I'm just better than you are."
One word... VALUE!
AMD makes good products. I've NEVER been burned when buying AMD processors. I've been buying them since the K6 chips.
I once had a machine that would periodically crash (K6/2). I thought it was just windows, since windows crashed a fair amount anyway. One day on a whim I opened up the case and discovered the CPU fan was burned out. I'd been running it that way for over a year. I put a new fan in it and all was well.
I had a P4 cpu fan go bad.. it was toast by the time I knew about it.
I haven't tried that trick with newer AMD chips, but that experience was enough for me to stick with them since. Plus they're still usually cheaper.
"We don't talk about the chip, but the collection of attributes that Intel brings," he said. "That's the footprint in the snow for Intel's future."
In other words, it will take me more time to sort through the marketing bullshit to see what's really there.
Unlike the typical luddite (forced to learn the technology), I prefer to know how the parts in my system work.
I could buy a "portable centrino solution" (basically a pentium-m with integrated 802.11b/g) but I could just as easily buy a laptop with an external, better network card for cheaper.
I don't like it when companies generalize for me. I don't like the term "gaming computer" or "workstation computer". What I do like is the performance I see in Athlon 64 4000+ benchmarks. Sorry but for my "gaming computer" a pentium 4 2.8 Ghz with 512 MB RAM doesn't cut it. I so often see this is the case.
What some companies call "gaming computers" I call a mid level workstation.
i.e. A Pentium 4 2.8Ghz with 512 MB of RAM and a Geforce FX 5600 is NOT a "gaming machine". I would call that a satisfactory computer for any use.
Point being, I hate when companies generalize.
The bit about the "Bell Curve" and the bottom 25% at Intel is a myth - at least based on my personal experience. I worked for Intel for 4 years and was given my cards 2 years ago when the project that my group worked on was cancelled and we were ALL let go. Before that, we had heard stories that if you were in the bottom x% (we heard 10%) you were toast, however our group grew (as we were needed for the project) and no-one was axed. As a company, they may have an overall aim each year to get rid of the bottom x%, however I feel that this is a good aim looking at many of the useless workers that some companies accumalate over the years. Also, when we were all axed, Intel were much more generous with their severance package than local laws dictated. Whilst I realise that didn't do this just to be nice (they want to avoid negative PR), it's still the case that we were well treated and not just fired.
25% of what? You could have a room full of certified genius, but there would still be a bottom 25%.
Imagine a 100m race with four people, the first comes in at say 9.8 seconds and each following one comming in 0.01 seconds later. By Intel's alledged reasoning you dump the fourth guy because he is not up to the grade. Yet 9.83 seconds would probably put you in the top ten 100m times of all time.
... for either the person submitting a story, or the editors, from hitting news.google.com and finding the same story somewhere OTHER than the goddamn NYT that turns story links into login forms.
- 8& q=intel+disco+ball&btnG=Search+News
/. that link to the NYT reg form?' plan?
http://news.google.com/news?hl=en&ned=us&ie=UTF
How do I get into the 'get kickbacks from NYT for submitting stories to
I dont want to maintain an account there, and their reg form is like 3 pages long, so I dont want to create one on demand either.
Its just a royal pain in the ass. Who is it that keeps submitting NYT stories, and how hard would it be for them (or the ed) to quick hit googles newspage, and a link to the same story that actually *links to* the story.
It should be part of the basic checks - the links given as part of a story submission should actually go to the story and not redirect to a login form. It defeats the entire point of the link.
The real queston is how many of the 10-25% ended up at AMD or IBM?
Jaysyn
There is a war going on for your mind.
25% of what? You could have a room full of certified genius, but there would still be a bottom 25%
THat is the core of the American-style neoliberal, laissez faire capitalism. It is darwinism. What's old is new again. THis is the way America was run for centuries, even before it was a country. Law of the jungle. We turned out backs on this earlier this century (New Deal, labor unions, etc), but now we are regressing to hypercompetitiveness. Europe is way way ahead of us in keeping hypercompetitiveness at bay.
And it is not just the tech companies that do this. Many other high profile industries do this. Most law firms do this, at least the larger ones, and many smaller ones. The weakest performers of the bunch are told to leave every year. And the weakest performers are not bad, but they are just relatively weakest.
The officer corps of the American armed services do the same: up, or out.
Insanity, as far as I am concerned. And we swim in currents of death, all around us. Our lives are so short, and yet we subject ourselves to this nonsense. I can understand it in young people. They are too green, too inexperienced to see the forest for the trees. But why don't more older people call Bullshit on this? We have the ability to make our lives better. Why not do so?
eat shiat and bark at the moon
Chip speed is going to hit a brick wall soon.
I think people said that in 1978.. and 1985.. 1989.. and 1994.. and blah blah blah.
There is a long way to go before we hit the physical limits of existing technology. Then there is the technology that hasn't been invented yet. I'd like to own stock in the company that is most likely to come up with the latter, thanks.
..don't panic
One of the attractions of conspiracy theories is the flattery of imagining you are important enough to spawn a conspiracy.
Please, for the love of God, no more car analogies.
Your description pretty much matches most registered slashdot users. Cut the paranoia.
That may be true, but we may currently be very close to the economic limits. You simply can't crank the average power consumption of a PC beyond 200W before people start rejecting them because of power bills and excess heat. In the past, all problems with chip performance were made better by shrinking the die. However, the chip companies have recently gotten to the point where power consumption getting worse with geometry shrinks.
In the 1960s, everybody assumed that supersonic planes would become common. After all, the technical problems had been solved and military planes were routinely hitting mach 3. However, real-world economic factors arose and 40 years later all commercial air traffic is still subsonic.
We may hit a similar situation with CPUs: Shure, you could go faster, but for 99.9% of the applications, it just costs too much.
Depends how it works. Honeywell, nee Allied Signal, and GE, run the plan more or less like this: Take a new job and you are exempt from the ranking system for two years. After that, you get ranked just like everybody else. Now, if the new guy who screws up can't get blamed, who does? This clever scheme tends to promote two things: Job hopping, and more experienced employees disappearing. The disappearance of more experienced employees also just happens to cut labor and pension costs for these two very bottom line oriented companies. Cute, eh? Pre-merger Honeywell (Honeywell + Allied Signal = "Honeywell") had an average employee retention of ~ 16 years. Allied Sigal ~ 6 years. You do the math. The practically guaranteed terminations also, no doubt, work wonders for the culture and work environment.
No, but if every employee is rated between 97.0 and 99.0, then there ALWAYS will be a bottom 25% no matter what except if everyone is 100% top notch, but humans arent robots.
So that bottom 25% might still be damn good, but they might have other issues.
Liberty freedom are no1, not dicks in suits.