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."

Comments

all your chips

[Shinaku]

are no longer belong to them!

Registration Not Required

[Anonymous Coward]

over at CNET, as I'm sure it is not required at many other sites.

What's with the /. addiction to NYT?

Re:Registration Not Required

[jd]

It's part of a secret readership drive, using subliminal suggestions in NYT-based stories to assimilate the entire Slashdot following. It is combined with a secret program to promote the NYT as immune to terrorist attacks. After all, if they can survive a Slashdotting, they can survive anything!

Re:Registration Not Required

[Suburbanpride]

I submitted this story too, and I can promise that I don't work for the Times. I do happen to spend at least 30 minutes a day reading it tough. I think it is one of the best sources of news out there

I don't normaly read the times for tech news though (that's what slashdot is for). But it certainly rather see this posted than a nother article about the guy who made a working death star out of old shampoo bottles and ber cans in his parents basement :)

Re:Registration Not Required

[Anonymous Coward]

If you notice the posting history of the article submitters, you will notice some pattern such as:

• None of the users have their emails shown publically
  
• None of the users bothered to fill out their description fields
  
• All have similar posting histories, about a message a month, and you may also notice that the message postings for each user have similar dates (i.e. if a message was posted from one account in May of last year but didn't have any other postings for the next month, then the other NYT user accounts will show the same pattern)
  
• Many of the accounts have similar creation times (and thus have a similar number of message postings)
  

Those are just a few of the things I can think off the top of my head that have looked awful suspicious.

Not all postings are made by this finicially interested individual or group. There are some exceptions, such as a professor who once posted a link to an article about his research, and maybe one or two other people who were genuinely bored, found something the liked, wrote a summary, and submitted it to Slashdot. However, I think those submitters are in a minority.

Re:Registration Not Required

[Tihstae]

Using Firefox?

Try BugMeNot. It is also available by doing Tools --> Extensions --> Get More Extensions in the browser.

I am in no way related to this extension. I just love it.

Re:Registration Not Required

[SirDaShadow]

Copying the URL into google search and clicking on the first search item usually works too.

Re:Registration Not Required

[Bill Walker]

I'm pretty certain that the New York Times, newspaper of record in the United States for over a century, does not need to seed Slashdot in order to drum up circulation.

One of the attractions of conspiracy theories is the flattery of imagining you are important enough to spawn a conspiracy.

Re:Registration Not Required

[reynaert]

Your description pretty much matches most registered slashdot users. Cut the paranoia.

Article text

[Spy der Mann]

(Courtesy of bugmenot.com ;-) )

One sign that Intel is having trouble dancing to technology's current beat may be the world's most expensive disco ball.

For a company holiday party next month, a handful of engineers assembled a disco ball - with hundreds of small reflective devices - to hang above the dance floor. The mirrors are leftover projection-television chips from Intel's planned effort to enter the digital television market - an effort the company recently abandoned only 10 months after a splashy introduction at the Consumer Electronics Show last January.

The TV effort became yet another in a series of embarrassing stumbles for Intel. The company has publicly canceled a succession of high-profile projects, has replaced managers in money-losing ventures and has fallen behind its keen competitor Advanced Micro Devices in introducing technologies, like a feature that wards off viruses and worms, in markets that Intel has long dominated.

A.M.D. has been so successful in stealing the spotlight from Intel lately that Kevin B. Rollins, the president of one of Intel's biggest customers, Dell Computer, said at a financial conference call this month that Dell was considering adding computers with A.M.D. chips to its product line.

For two decades, Intel has been the most sure-footed of Silicon Valley companies. But lately, it seems to have lost its way. "They have made many wrong decisions and now it's time for soul-searching and structural, not cosmetic, changes," said Ashok Kumar, a financial analyst at Raymond James & Associates.

This all portends an interesting inauguration for Intel's 50-year-old president, Paul S. Otellini, the longtime Intel marketing executive tapped by the board this month to become only the fourth chief executive in the company's history.

Mr. Otellini does not officially take the job until May. But next week in one of his first official acts as the designated chief executive, he plans to present his strategy to Wall Street analysts. He may have a lot to answer for, including the 25 percent decline in Intel's stock price this year.

Mr. Otellini will tell analysts that he plans to focus on four areas for growth: international markets for desktop personal computers, mobile and wireless applications, the digital home, as well as a new initiative aimed at large corporate computing markets that Intel is calling the Digital Office.

The strategy is a significant shift - a "right-hand turn," as Mr. Otellini likes to say - from Intel's long-term obsession with making ever-faster computer chips. Instead, the company is now concentrating on what he calls platforms: complete systems aimed at both computing and consumer electronics markets.

Mr. Otellini insists that the recent missteps, including the premature introduction he himself made of the digital project, are simply a result of over-optimistic marketing.

"What was wrong was that I made the decision to go public on it at the Consumer Electronics Show," he said in a recent interview in Intel's Santa Clara headquarters. "Error of judgment. Mea culpa. I learned a lesson."

The decision to preannounce an unproven technology was an uncharacteristic one for Intel, said G. Dan Hutcheson, president of VLSI Research Inc., and a longtime observer of the company. However, he said, it has been Mr. Otellini's ascendancy at the company that has changed the way it markets technology.

"As he came into power Intel tried to become a more aggressive marketing company," he said. "They never seemingly made mistakes before and that was simply because they didn't preannounce. This is the classic failure of a company where the marketing guys are pushing the manufacturing guys more than what's there."

Intel is still a technology giant, the global leader in semiconductors, with revenue last year of more than $30 billion. The company retains an unrivaled manufacturing capacity, control of a powerful desktop computing standard, and an enviable internat

Re:Article text

[PhotoGuy]

"What was wrong was that I made the decision to go public on it at the Consumer Electronics Show," he said in a recent interview in Intel's Santa Clara headquarters. "Error of judgment. Mea culpa. I learned a lesson."

I like this statement. And I think it's consistent with what I've known of Intel first hand. A corporation this large and leading-edge, needs to dabble and branch off in "researchy" ways to test out areas of new market potential.

I was involved in a company whose seed money came from a sizeable (to us) contract from Intel, to license our technology in the digital imaging space. They were a great company to work with, talented people, good executives, and they got their demonstration technology, based upon our code, up and life in a respectable time.

The site was never marketed and never took off, but I believe it served their purposes in exploring this potential area of technology. It's a good thing to see a company like Intel taking part in this type of thing.

The only story here, as in the quote above, is that they made a bit of a visible statement about where they were headed, before knowing for sure. Minor mis-step, if mis-step at all.

-d

Re:Article text

[itwerx]

So where the hell is a pic of the damn ball already?!?
Geez... :)

Re:Article text

[PapayaSF]

It's one of the laws of web publishing: If an article mentions an interesting object, chances are there won't be a picture of it in the article.

Re:Article text

[Deliveranc3]

You want a damn disco ball? Then you go spend a billion dollars on research.

Damn hippies always want something for nothing.

come on

[lashi]

oh, come on, what company doesn't burn some R & D money that ends up junked? I am sure all the "good" companies like IBM and so on have failed projects too.

Now if you are doing this as a showcase of bad ideas, let's link a few more interesting samples.

Re:come on

[Coryoth]

oh, come on, what company doesn't burn some R & D money that ends up junked? I am sure all the "good" companies like IBM and so on have failed projects too.

Yes, but I think the point is that Intel is somewhat lacking in the "recent successes" department to cover the losses on the failures - For now they're still happily on top of the market, and that is their strength, but they are losing mindshare, which really is crucial. The more that other chips are seen as perfectly viable options the faster Intel could lose market share.

There is, of course, no reason to go counting them out just yet. I'm sure Intel has plenty of fight left, and potentially a few cards still up their sleeve. Compared to their position 3 or 4 years ago however, they are not looking anywhere near so good.

Jedidiah.

Re:come on

[Total_Wimp]

"Dell Computer, said at a financial conference call this month that Dell was considering adding computers with A.M.D. chips to its product line."

The words "news of Intel's death were greatly exagerated," come to mind.

It's like Microsoft wringing their hands over Linux; they _should_ be paying attention, but they've got a long way to go before they become number 2.

TW

Re:come on

[Coryoth]

Wasn't centrino a success? It's low power and integrated wireless made AMD have to follow suit and revamp its mobile core line. Of course, the anti-intel slant (not you!) on this board tends to not see AMD failures.

Yes, Centrino was a definite win for Intel. That means they're doing well in the laptop market, but are losing share on the desktop. And yes, AMD is not without its own issues: The Opteron hasn't been doing quite as well as they would like. That's not exactly fatal, but its not exactly great press either.

So, in summary: laptop: Intel, desktop: AMD, server: still up for grabs. The question is whether the laptop market will supercede the desktop market - certainly the laptop market is growing faster... it may have a lower ceiling though, and there's always Apple and the Power chips to compete with there, and Apple is quite strong in laptops.

Only time will tell.

Jedidiah.

Re:come on

[Monkelectric]

There is a Centrino Shortage BTW which is keeping the prices of those popular laptops way too hight IMHO. Not sure If Id call that a "success". They make a product people want, then they dont have it

Re:come on

[Moofie]

Any time you're selling more than you can make, that's a "success".

Re:come on

[Grishnakh]

oh, come on, what company doesn't burn some R & D money that ends up junked? I am sure all the "good" companies like IBM and so on have failed projects too.

One big difference is that those "good" companies were also smart: they didn't go to the press and the trade shows and drum up a lot of hype over their R&D projects, saying they'd be releasing products based on them very soon. Yes, IBM did make the Linux wristwatch, but they also made it very clear this was simply a research project, and nothing more, and would not show up in stores any time soon. Intel made all kinds of noise about how they'd revolutionize the big-screen TV market with their LCOS technology, and it didn't work.

This is not a way to inspire confidence in your company. The old story of the boy who cried wolf is very applicable here.

Re:come on

[suckmysav]

haha

There is no such thing as a "Centrino". It is nothing but a marketing label, pure and simple. It applies to any laptop that has a Pentium M AND an intel wireless chip.

Neither of these devices alone are a "Centrino", but if you put them together you can slap a "Centrino inside" sticker on your laptop and sell it to suckers who think it means something.

BFD

If getting your customers to accept a marketing label as if it were a real product can be called a success, then I guess this has been a success for intel.

Re:come on

[RzUpAnmsCwrds]

"It applies to any laptop that has a Pentium M AND an intel wireless chip."

AND the Intel 855 chipset.

It's brilliant, actually. Intel has never advertised "Pentium-M", so people ask for a "Centrino" notebook. Because "Centrino" only applies when resellers use their wireless chip and chipset in addition to the Pentium-M, Intel effectively locks their resellers into selling Intel components when they might otherwise have not.

Not that the Intel PRO/Wireless 2200 and 855 chipset are bad. I'm thoroughly impressed with the trio.

Re:come on

[bani]

no it's not. it's a failure.

failure to correctly estimate market demand.
failure to ramp up production to meet demand.

the failure to meet demand means the prices are driven up, which in turn means intel is selling less product than they could have -- it is lost revenue.

it also negatively impacts their product penetration, as cheaper alternatives can more easily compete -- so they lose market share as well.

Re:come on

[Waffle Iron]

Any time you're selling more than you can make, that's a "success".

A couple of times in the past, AMD themselves had come out CPUs that compared very favorably to Intel's then-current chips. However, they ran into fab problems and never got production and market share up before the next cycle where Intel leapfrogged them. That was certainly a failure; they didn't recoup enough of their investments and AMD's very survival has been in question a couple of times. It's taken many years for them to battle back from their past mishaps into their current apparently healthy state.

Interesting thought for youall:

[Anonymous Coward]

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...

Re:NYTimes :(

[Anonymous Coward]

diy muh man

Is about time!

[elfarto]

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.!

Just Desserts for Intel

[Anonymous Coward]

Intel has 2 shocking policies: bell-curve grading system and preferential hiring of H-1B workers from China (which includes Taiwan province and Hong Kong) and India.

More than 50% of Intel's workforce in the USA (not China) is current or former H-1Bs. Intel claimed that it absolutely needs Chinese workers in order to build a competitive product: e.g. Itanium. Then, IBM proved Intel wrong by producing the Power5, which is mostly built by American engineers.

Further, Intel has a brutal job evaluation policy: strict bell curve. If an employee falls in the bottom 25% more than once, then the manager shows her the door. Exceptions are made when there is a labor shortage, but officially, the 25% rule is strictly enforced.

I, for one, am glad that Intel is losing. I hope that IBM beats the pants off of it.

Re:Just Desserts for Intel

[Anonymous Coward]

Whatever! The FOCAL process (as it is called) may seem brutal to outsiders, but you have be pretty lazy and completely incompetent to lose your job...and it is more like the bottom 10% that fall into the category that get put on corrective action plans.

Re:Just Desserts for Intel

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Just Desserts for Intel

[jabuzz]

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.

Re:Just Desserts for Intel

[Colonel Panic]

As someone who has contracted at Intel, believe me I'm not a fan of the company.

However, many companies now practice the rating and ranking system you describe. And it's not the bottom 25%, it's the bottom 10% from what I've heard.

As for H-1B workers: When I was last contracting at Intel (June 2004) the policy was that all permanent hiring was to be done outside of the US. In the US they could only hire contractors unless there was some very special skills needed. I suspect that this policy is still in place. This is of course worse than your claim that they only hire H1B workers - at least an H1B worker would be paying taxes in the US and contributing to the economy here. Many of Intel's former permanent employees in the US have now become contractors (via layoffs) which means that they can only work for the company for 12 months out of every 18 months (but look on the bright side, you get a six month vacation after contracting there for a year!) and no health benefits.-

Re:Just Desserts for Intel

[Anonymous Coward]

Everyone except management.

Re:Just Desserts for Intel

[Jaysyn]

The real queston is how many of the 10-25% ended up at AMD or IBM?

Jaysyn

Re:Just Desserts for Intel

[philipgar]

What could make for a very interesting move on IBMs part would be to make a power5 x86 processor. Of course the idea initially sounds crazy, but how much extra work would it be. Sure adding the emulation and x86 decode layer to the chip would make the chip larger and make it a bit slower (say 10%), but the core of an opteron and the core of a ppc aren't incredibly different. Its just that the opteron does extra work to decode the x86 instructions.

If IBM wanted to play hardball on their processors against Intel and AMD they could make a competing product. Sure it would take a few years to get to market, but when it did. . . However IBMs business is primarily in the high end server field where they don't want to lose the 10% efficiency (or whatever it is) and add to the already massive die area. Would be fun to see though, then maybe i could have the power of a power chip on my pc (of course seeing as I run linux on my pc desktop which also runs on ppcs).

Phil

Re:Just Desserts for Intel

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Just Desserts for Intel

[cheekyboy]

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.

now I get it.

[tloh]

...including one very expensive disco ball made from a failed attempt to produce projection televisions.

So THAT was the inspiration for those commercials with dancers in clean suits!

Re:now I get it.

[stealth.c]

with the company's decline, do you suppose that they will soon be dancing in dirty suits?

Intel ZIG intiative

[stealth.c]

Perhaps now would be a good time for Intel to launch its enigmatic ZIG program. Nobody's quite sure what it is but rumor has it that the new initiative could result in great justice.

Re:Intel ZIG intiative

[s4m7]

Perhaps now would be a good time for Intel to launch its enigmatic ZIG program.

Invariably prompting AMD to release it's CATS system ahead of schedule. Make your time.

Re:Intel ZIG intiative

[mjh49746]

Intel Chairman: Somebody set up us the bomb!!

It's fine by me. I like AMD's chips anyways.

Genetic sample NOT required.

[kinema]

If you would like to read the article but don't feel like registering you can as always use Google's NY Times referer or checkbugmenot.com for a login and password.

Re: disco ball

[Anonymous Coward]

This thing about the disco ball made out of discontinued microchips makes me think of something I've been wondering. Microchip fabrication involves a LOT of defective chips, right? Like chips that burn but then fail the tests. What happens to all those chips? Are they just melted down for metal? Are they thrown away? Can you buy them?

I would just love to have some earrings made out of broken G5s.

Intel simulation model way off

[Anonymous Coward]

The engineer described sitting in meetings where the company's simulation models showed that 95 percent of the chips from each test wafer would be usable, while the actual yields were closer to 4 percent.

Unfortunately, the simulations were running on Intel processors and were hit with rampant floating-point errors. They should have gone with AMD like the engineers wanted.

an article about a silicon disco ball...

[jbridge21]

... and they don't have pictures???!!!

Craig Barrett has been a failure as CEO

[Ars-Fartsica]

The Barrett era at Intel has been an unbroken string of failures. I fault the Intel board for not having the guts to purge him. The problem is, at any tech company, it is impossible to make painful (but necessary) cuts when the stock is going up. Everyone's attitude is "hey, we're making money, why rock the boat?"

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.

Use NYT Generator!

[antdude]

Clicky without logging in! Use NYT Generator for these NYT stories.

Re:amd is not the competition

[RzUpAnmsCwrds]

"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.

[OT]

[0racle]

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?

Why I've prefered AMD over Intel for years

[jedaustin]

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.

Re:Why I've prefered AMD over Intel for years

[Anonymous Coward]

P4s have thermal protection built in, if you remove the heatsink (not just the fan), P4s will throttle down their speed immediately in order to cope, and will speed back up again when the heatsink is replaced. Tom's Hardware did an article about this a couple years ago, and even made a video of them removing the heatsinks of various processors. The P4 throttled down, a P3 locked up (but the chip survived), and an AMD Athlon XP and an MP both burnt up (one of them even produced a small fire).

I agree that AMD's chips are a good value: I own a dual AMD box, and it's great. Spreading lies because you are a fanboy won't win AMD any new customers, though. Let the merits of a company's products speak for themselves.

Re:Why I've prefered AMD over Intel for years

[jedaustin]

Granted, I didn't go buy another one to see if my P4 failure was a fluke, I popped it in a friends board.. it was dead. The cpu fan was burned out, I made the connection.

I bought an Athlon board and CPU to replace it.
From what you say about Tom's Hardware article I hope the fan doesnt go out :)

Do you happen to have a link to that article? It sounds like an interesting read.

Re:Why I've prefered AMD over Intel for years

[Moofie]

In my experience, Intel's chipsets are much more reliable than Via. I don't have any experience with nforce, but I've been burned by more than one flaky AMD board.

I've learned my lesson on cheap hardware. It's not as cheap as it seems at Fry's.

Intel's focus areas

[chiph]

Mr. Otellini will tell analysts that he plans to focus on four areas for growth: international markets for desktop personal computers, mobile and wireless applications, the digital home, as well as a new initiative aimed at large corporate computing markets that Intel is calling the Digital Office.

International markets are more price-sensitive than the US, so they'll go with the cheapest CPU they can find, which ain't Intel.

If they think that the PC market is fast moving, wait until they see the mobile market. We're talking a 6-9 month obsolesence cycle and incredible price pressures. There's also lots of established players, so Intel had better offer something special that the others don't have (and can't easily duplicate).

So far as a "digital home" -- most people (meaning non-developers and non /. readers) are happy with a single PC to surf, get email, etc. The gamers are a viable market, but the under-24 folks don't have the money for media-center PCs, as they can barely afford to buy new GForce cards and purple case lamps every few months.

The corporate market is the one place that Intel has a chance of succeeding. Most IT departments won't buy anything unless it has "Intel Inside" because they're so conservative. The areas for Intel to focus on there are increasing power density, reducing heat, and improving system managability.

Chip H.

Help me out here...

[synth7]

Could someone post the article text, or perhaps another news source with this article, or perhaps post an alternative link that bypasses the NYT registration? I mean, I looked... I really did, but I just couldn't find a way to view that article in all these replies.

Seriously.

AMD stock broke $22 today...

[Sai Babu]

Wallmart dragged it down though.

AMD is making that spiffy flash too.

I'm a fan of whoever makes the best stuff the cheapest. Right now I'm a Athlon 64 fan and will be happy if Intel can compete with the Opteron.

re: Dell. They areall over the place on this AMD switch. I rad someplace that Dell is holding off because the design their own boards and adding the AMD will mean adding a new design team. Not familiar enough with Dell costing to knwo it this is a significant problem or if it;s just more smoke and mirrors. Any of youy /. guys know what it costs to bring a server design tem on line? After all, the ultimate goal of any business is to make $ and beating Intel up on price with AMD noise may pay better than actually bringing AMD based Dell product to market.

I can tell Intel there are only two ways to make $ in manufacturing. 1)Be the only guy who CAN make something. 2)Be the guy who can make it the cheapest.
Trying to compete in projection TV which is pretty mature is NOT gonna make you $ unless you've got a spiffy atent likr TI and mirror arrays used for DLP. Of course that patent will expire so if you can beat TI, and everyone else waiting in the wings, handily on the cost/unit front...when that day arrives, you'll clean up.

Manufacturing is all about cost/unit which is all about cycle time, yield, and amortization of the plant. Chip manufacturers would do well to study other USA industries. Excepting the guys who are the only guys who can make the stuff, most stuff that anyone can make is moving offshore. Some exceptions. My brother told me of a 5 pan&pot stamped steel cookware set selling for $4.99 at BrandSmart. Made in USA. It costs less to make here and ship domestic than to ship steel to china and the shp the pots back.

Re:amd is not the competition

[Frogbert]

My bet is that 95% of consumers will not go with the expensive Apple option while there are much cheaper options that will do almost everything the apple option will do.

Also you can get an Xbox and put XBMC on it right now.

Why is it *SO* hard ...

[The Cisco Kid]

... 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.

http://news.google.com/news?hl=en&ned=us&ie=UTF- 8& q=intel+disco+ball&btnG=Search+News

How do I get into the 'get kickbacks from NYT for submitting stories to /. that link to the NYT reg form?' plan?

Re: disco ball

[Beardo the Bearded]

They make nothing but the top of the line chips. That's all they ever try to make. They don't set out to make a Celeron or a 2.4G chip (at least, not anymore.)

They test all the chips, and the ones that pass enough tests at a certain speed are rated for that speed. The ones that fail are tested at slower speeds until they get to the threshold.

That's why some people have great luck overclocking a system and some don't. They folks who picked up a 2.0 GHz chip that barely failed the 3.0 GHz tests will be able to make a reasonably stable 3.0 GHz chip because it worked okay for most of the tests. Others get something that barely passed the 2.0 GHz tests.

You've heard that Celerons are great for overclocking, right? Well, yeah, of course they are - they're faster chips than what's stamped on them, albeit with a cache wasn't working right at the target speed.

If they fail every test, they send it to VIA to make chipsets. ;) No, seriously: very few chips made with modern techniques fail every test, and those that do are recycled if possible.

Re:NYT

[The Cisco Kid]

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.

Intel has done a lot of stupid things

[jd]

Their hiring practices leave a lot to be desired. They prefer contractors to employees, but won't hire a contractor for longer than a year, and there has to be something like a 6 month break before re-hiring. This means there is zero incentive for contractors to do anything worthwhile (they're not going to be around for long, no matter what) and there's no continuity when something does go right.

Then, there's their design strategy - lock everyone else out. By making it damn-near impossible to use a standardized processor socket, anyone who currently uses some other chip-maker is essentially locked out of buying anything Intel. In other words, about now, they're locking out nearly half their potential customers. I'm sorry, but that's just plain dumb.

Their near-violent reactions against people making support chips for the Intel processors means that competitors are going to have to be based on AMD or some other x86 clone, for the most part. A few (eg: Via) will work with Intel, but I've also seen plenty of Intel docs on what breaks when you use Via with some Intel processors. Compatibility sells more products than coercian.

True, most of Intel's competitors aren't too smart on these points, either. But that simply means that the first seriously open competitor is likely to wipe the floor with the lot of them. Transmeta could have. In fact, they could have crushed most of the 32-bit market, if they'd provided people with the means to upload different instruction sets. That capability becomes a liability (it impacts performance and reliability) if nobody can actually make any use of it.

None of the current chip manufacturers has opted to move the southbridge or northbridge into the CPU, despite the fact that this would improve performance, without having to speed the chip up.

Intel moved to copper from aluminium for chip interconnects, because it reduced power consumption. If they moved to silver, they could reduce it further, so the chips could run cooler and/or faster, with no additional work. There's no evidence they're even looking at that.

Instead, Intel are working on projects such as TV decoder boxes running on low-end hardware. This isn't their field. They can't seriously compete in that market, because it's too crowded as it is. There's no money in it.

And now we're told they're going to do MORE of this generalization into markets about which they know nothing, have no solid expertise, no history and no track-record of getting projects complete. They're killing themselves.

What would I do, if I were in their shoes? Easy. I'd shore up the core products, by putting R&D cash into better product differentiation. In other words, cloning AMD's 64/32 is not good enough. That makes them equal to their competitors. Those who need that tech will already be with AMD, so why would they switch?

Intel needs to play the one-upmanship, if they want to survive. The Itanium has been a disaster, so they would be far better off dumping it than continuing to invest in a sure-fire loser.

Right about now, I'd be pushing for a 128/64/32-bit system, that can do everything AMD's chips can do AND support some limited 128-bit operations. Solaris 10 supports a 128-bit filing system, so a 128-bit processor isn't entirely stupid. If they added 128-bit support to controllers, they'd be able to get much smoother dataflow and a much higher throughput. Nice selling points, for servers.

Multi-cores are good, if you have enough processing elements, sharable, and distributed right to maximise what you can push through. Intel are looking at 2. Why, when most multi-processor needs are alread met with 2-way through to 8-way SMP? To compete with Intel's own products, you need to start at 8-core CPUs, or there just isn't any point.

Intel's operations are sluggish, compared to AMD. In fact, they're sluggish compared to anyone. Always have been. Anyone who

American neoliberal/laisseiz faire capitalism

[Cryofan]

You wrote:
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?

This guy sounds like Carly @ Hp.. oh dear god

[xtal]

The strategy is a significant shift - a "right-hand turn," as Mr. Otellini likes to say - from Intel's long-term obsession with making ever-faster computer chips. Instead, the company is now concentrating on what he calls platforms: complete systems aimed at both computing and consumer electronics markets.


What's that sound? That's intel. Flushing itself down the toilet. Hello, you're INTEL. You make CHIPS. Long term obsession? That's what the company DOES! I haven't checked this guy's past out - but something tells me engineering is not in his blood.

If I had intel stock - I'd be twitching to get rid of it in a hurry. I do, however own AMD stock. I rather like their long-term obession with making ever faster chips, and I expecially like the single-minded focus at doing it better and better and better.

It's going to be fun to watch this one.

Re:This guy sounds like Carly @ Hp.. oh dear god

[xtal]

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.

Re:This guy sounds like Carly @ Hp.. oh dear god

[Waffle Iron]

There is a long way to go before we hit the physical limits of existing technology.

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.

Re:This guy sounds like Carly @ Hp.. oh dear god

[xtal]

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.

Based on current designs, yes. Power consumption is not a function of MIPS, it is a function of process size and clock rate, and the existing architecture. Much of the power consumption is a function of intel's shortsighted push of higher clock rates as a marketting ploy and not an engineering decision. That's when I stopped using their chips on the desktop.

There are many applications for much faster processors than we have now; just as there are many existing design models that haven't been investigated, and whole new architectures and applications to discover.

What Intel's announcement says to me is they no longer want to be part of that, and that's fine and dandy. I interpret it as a signal to move my money elsewhere because I think those things will be very important in the future. YM(and money)MV.

All your CPU are belong to...

[The Master Control P]

Zilog? WTF?

Re:All your CPU are belong to...

[Firehawke]

It's probably scary to contemplate that the Z-80 still gets a ton of use even today. The Gameboy/GBC/GBA have a slightly modified (not much; it's only one or two added instructions IIRC) Z-80 in them. That chip really did get a lot of use over the years; I can think of only one other CPU that got that kind of widespread use and that would be the 68000.

I confess to still being fond of the 6809, though. My first computer ran off one.

Re:All your CPU are belong to...

[bob beta]

Zilog makes a big chunk of the embedded controllers that go into remote controls. When I attended a Zilog seminar a number of years back, they had a lot of IR Remote features all built up and ready to roll with their Z8 processors. That's a hurtful 'niche' for the great Z-80 folks to have fallen to, though.

failed chips

[lingqi]

Mostly chips that fail are crushed and tossed. they are crushed because the chips contain your IP and you don't want, say, a compeitor finding a shiny (but bad) wafer in your trash and take a microscope to it - and face it, test is not 100% so that "defective" wafer you tossed out might actually be fully functional, more reason to fear the competitor getting your secrets*.

i don't even think the crushed silicon is recycled - after dozens of litho runs, the chips have too much junk on it and it's cheaper to get the high purity stuff directly. So, unfortunately, just tossed.

Now, if you befriend somebody in semiconductor industry, you might swing some bad wafers (or even better, blank wafers). let me tell you, ultrapure silicon polished to within atoms precision makes excellent mirrors - they have this erie purple / metallic colour. And you KNOW that your mug reflected in it is going to be the most precise image you will see of yourself. ever.

too bad that these days wafers are cut so thin that they would curl if not packaged right away after the baking, though - ruins the mirror thing.

*in packaging, the chips are embedded in resin, and it's a pain to get the resin off without ruining the circuit underneath, so it's a lot harder for someone to see your chip "naked." That does not prevent them from trying, though - it's time consuming but with enough patience and acid (to burn away the resin), you can eventually reveal the chip underneath.

Stock Fans are just crap

[Bwooce]

If I was reincarnated as an Intel Fan I would be most unimpressed. Zalman rules!

Most likely...

[jd]

Silver oxidises very easily. So, the only way you could use it would be to make the chips AND seal them in an oxygen-free environment. Clean-rooms are expensive enough, as are the suits they wear, but if they've gotta strap on tri-mix tanks to be able to do their work, you've upped the cost and the difficulty.

Copper is therefore easier to work, and the heat issues aren't quite great enough to make silver a practical alternative, given the extra complexities.

Re:Pentium Serial Numbers

[PitaBred]

Ehhh. Most people in the know just disabled the serial number in the BIOS, so it was a non-issue. AMD's offerings really didn't get much better than the Pentium line until right after the original Athlon.

Theme Song

[FrankDrebin]

You can tell by the way I fill your box
I'm an Intel man, no time for Macs
Fan so loud and chip so warm
Transistor count from Mr. Moore
But it's all right, it's ok
Just behind your CD tray
My mission, you understand
Is pusher for the Redmond man

Whether I'm a Xeon or a first-gen peon
I'm x-eighty-six, x-eighty-six
Maybe I'm a-F00Fin' or power-supply poofin'
I'm x-eighty-six, x-eighty-six
Ah ah ah ah x-eighty-six, x-eighty-six
Ah ah ah ah x-eighty-six!

Well now, cache gets low and temp gets high
And for overclockers, I really fry
Got the gold flashing on my pads
And an F_DIV bug etched in my sand
But it's all right, it's ok
I also heard AMD is gay
And that VIA, and Transmeta
Can kiss my royal FPU

Whether I'm Centrino, you can bet that we know
I'm x-eighty-six, x-eighty-six
Ain't got sixty-four-bit, but still think I'm hot shit
I'm x-eighty-six, x-eighty-six
Ah ah ah ah x-eighty-six, x-eighty-six
Ah ah ah ah x-eighty-six!