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Intel Moves Up 32nm Production, Cuts 45nm
Vigile writes "Intel recently announced that it was moving up the production of 32nm processors in place of many 45nm CPUs that have been on the company's roadmap for some time. Though spun as good news (and sure to be tough on AMD), the fact is that the current economy is forcing Intel's hand as they are unwilling to invest much more in 45nm technologies that will surely be outdated by the time the market cycles back up and consumers and businesses start buying PCs again. By focusing on 32nm products, like Westmere, the first CPU with integrated graphics, Intel is basically putting a $7 billion bet on a turnaround in the economy for 2010."
I used to work for a processor company. I learned one thing: it's impossible to beat Intel, they just invest so much in technology that even if you come up with a smarter cache algorithm, a better pipeline, or (god forbid) a better instruction set, they'll still crush you.
That used to be true for the last 20 years. The only problem today is that no one really cares anymore about CPU speed. 32nm technology will allow Intel to put more cores on a die. They'll get marginal, if any, frequency improvements. We just need to wait for the applications to follow and learn to use 16 cores and more. I know my workload could use 16 cores, but the average consumer PC? Not so sure. That's why I'd like to see prices starting to fall, instead of having same prices, more power PCs.
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Intel is basically putting a $7 billion bet on a turnaround in the economy for 2010."
And if they lose the bet then they can just ask for a bailout like the financial firms and auto industry did. Because Intel is too big to fail.
a 7 billion dollar bet? thats peanuts! wake me up when someone makes a 1.5 trillion dollar bet on the economy.
NEWSFLASH: Intel has been dumping 10 BILLION dollars a year into R&D since at least 1995. Did not RTFA, but if the blurb is to be taken at face value, the reporter obviously did no real research on the topic.
moox. for a new generation.
most people already have computers
Really? Have an eyeopening look here:
http://www.economist.com/research/articlesBySubject/displayStory.cfm?story_id=12758865&subjectID=348909&fsrc=nwl
Computer ownership is really very low worldwide. Even the US has only 76 computers per 100 people. Keep in mind that includes people like myself who, between work and home use, have 4 computers alone.
Some other socking figures:
Italy 36 computers per 100 people
Mexico 13 computers per 100 people
Spain 26 computers per 100 people
Japan 67 computers per 100 people
Russia 12 computers per 100 people
And the billions of people in China and India don't even make the list.
Seems to me that there are a lot more computers Intel could be selling in the future. The market is far from saturated.
The prices were over valued four years ago. The only thing is that people who bought four years ago are still in the hole. They still need to pay down as fast as they can before they sell or they still owe after selling.
What about those of us who made good decisions and didn't buy a house which was tremendously overpriced? Why is it our responsibility to bail out the greedy and the stupid? Enough is enough. Without consequences, this crap will continue forever, in all industries. You'll have to excuse those of us who live within our means and don't buy overpriced crap if we're more than a little pissed at having to carry all the dead weight.
The home owners just mail the bank their keys.
In most states the bank has no recourse beyond the value of the house. It the states that they do have recourse the left over debt can be discharged in bankruptcy.
Why should be GIVE real estate speculators back their losses? ALL real estate buyers in 2004 were speculators. Anybody who is buying into a market that is 'evaporating up' (jargon for maintaining no inventory with raising prices) is speculating.
Would they have given us a share of their profit if things had turned out differently (not even taxes, CG are sheltered if you live there).
They made a bet, they lost. They can already dump most of the loss onto the bank. Screw them. They bid real estate up to insane prices. They are not without fault.
Any fix like you suggest will only make things worse in the long run. Foolish investors should lose money or there is no incentive to invest wisely.
Should we make the Enron investors whole too? Madoff? Netscape? Tulip Bulbs?
This is the real estate buying opportunity of a lifetime.
We shouldn't have bailed out the banks ether.
We shouldn't call a Trillion dollars of pork a stimulus. If Obama is correct and Stimulus == spending then we could just print money, buy the cellars of France dry, have a party and viola the problem is solved. Not gonna happen, spending has both stimulative and depressive affects. The money has to come from somewhere. Newly printed moneys value is extracted from the rest of the money in circulation. In my simplistic example France's wine industry would see the stimulation while the rest of the US economy would see the depressive affect.
Too bad the vast majority of the leaches stuck on the government tit don't produce anything like the good wine.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
That's the problem with being intelligent: you'll always be in the minority and thus always at the mercy of the tyranny of the masses.
POKE 36879,8