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Intel Declares Independence From PC, Prioritizes Cloud, IoT and 5G Efforts
A week after announcing 12,000 job cuts, Intel CEO Brian Krzanich has shared vision for the company, hinting a shift in its prime focus away from PC business. In a blog post, Krzanich said that the company will be actively growing its data center business. The chip maker also plans to focus on chips and technologies for IoT devices. "The biggest opportunity in the Internet of Things is that it encompasses just about everything in our lives today-- it's ubiquitous," Krzanich said. The company also plans to boost its memory chips business and make a push towards utilizing them in data centers and various cloud services. Intel said that it has made several investments in this field, noting the $16 billion acquisition of Altera last year. The company says it will be playing a big role in the move to 5G connectivity. "Connectivity is fundamental to every one of the cloud-to-thing segments we will drive," he writes.
Over the years, Intel has failed to keep up with Moore's Law, an axiom that semiconductor density will double about every two years. The company previously extended the timeframe to 2.5 years, but Krzanich assures customers that the they are working to make further advances in order to meet the goal. "Moore's Law is fundamentally a law of economics, and Intel will confidently continue to harness its value," Krzanich said. PCWorld has extensively reported on this.
Over the years, Intel has failed to keep up with Moore's Law, an axiom that semiconductor density will double about every two years. The company previously extended the timeframe to 2.5 years, but Krzanich assures customers that the they are working to make further advances in order to meet the goal. "Moore's Law is fundamentally a law of economics, and Intel will confidently continue to harness its value," Krzanich said. PCWorld has extensively reported on this.
The microcomputer first replaced the low end mini-computer and word processing systems.
Next they replaced larger mini-computers like the PDP-11.
Later they replaced the Super-minicomputers like the VAX.
The cell phone will probably replace the PC.
Imagine a Windows Phone that you put on your desk and hook up a USB 3 connector to your monitor that provided power and a network connection to your phone and video to the display. Mouse and keyboard can be USB connected to the monitor or bluetooth. You could even use the phone's screen as a touch pad.
If Intel can get a good x86 mobile cpu and microsoft may just win the mobile phone market.
If not then it maybe Android or Apple but I doubt that Apple wants to do that since it is not all that interested in the enterprise market.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
That used not to be the case, then it was the case, now it much isn't the case again, particularly for Intel.
Intel's desktop only goes to 4 cores, a small number of PCIe lanes, no ECC memory support, 2 memory channels, single socket, and won't go to very high TDP.
Servers go to much higher core counts, pcie lanes, ecc memory, 4 memory channels, and more sockets, and will drive TDP through the roof to get more powerful if needed.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
Not much of a difference between a so-called PC processor and a server CPU. Mostly marketing speak.
You clearly don't work on server or desktop CPUs.
Increased IO bandwidth, hardware automatic fail over, more cores, support for data-center relevant interfaces, engineered full load, full temperature, 100% duty cycle operation over the lifetime of the device, parity and error correction everywhere inside and out. These are the things that make the server CPUs worthwhile.
There's some difference in caching and virtualization support, the latter of which I really think needs to become a client PC product anyway. Running a HW virtualized OS under linux is very useful for gaming, but right now both nvidia and Intel like to think of HW virtualization as a server feature and charge a bunch of money. But given that Windows is no longer the obvious operating system for either every day use or developer use, HW virtualization is a lot more important.
Nor is there a big gap between a typical laptop chip and the higher-end "mobile" stuff. Or rather, the gap is quickly diminishing. As for desktops, I'm not sure there is much of a low-end market anymore and the high-end can probably use Xeons or their derivatives just fine.
Gamers might have some issues with this, as their needs are not so much reliability but raw performance.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
So Intel, who has focused on the performance enthusiast crowd, now sees dollar signs by trying to put their chips on all your home devices. They're sticking with the one existing market they have a chance at making money from. What a shock.
Seems strange to go from having one main competitor to having many in the embedded world.
Heh, that kinda is marketspeak for "Intel is moving out of the low margin, already saturated consumer market into something with indefinite growth potential"
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
"Don't worry, we'll be happy to take over."
SJW's don't eliminate discrimination. They just expropriate it for themselves.
"Moore's Law is fundamentally a law of economics, and Intel will confidently continue to harness its value," Krzanich said.
Sorry, but Laws of physics inevitably trump "laws" of economics.
The internet of things is mostly hype, as people with nests at home have learned . Sure you can talk to your thermostat at home via the internet, but why would you want to?
Obviously the market is slowing down and that's reflected in my own PC builds as I've gone longer and longer between refreshes as the technology held up longer. But if they're going to shift development to appliances it sounds like they're giving up on the enthusiast market altogether. I can be happy with AMD too but that's gonna affect the whole market of motherboard manufacturers as well.
Also I think the IoT market has reached saturation. I don't want or need internet access to my refrigerator and how much innovation do you need for thermostat chips?
Likewise cloud tech - You can switch to targetting cloud based machines but they were all pretty much on Intel already and the market for that is far more limited than the consumer market.
Basically... Intel just surrendered.
There's some difference in caching and virtualization support, the latter of which I really think needs to become a client PC product anyway. Running a HW virtualized OS under linux is very useful for gaming, but right now both nvidia and Intel like to think of HW virtualization as a server feature and charge a bunch of money. But given that Windows is no longer the obvious operating system for either every day use or developer use, HW virtualization is a lot more important.
My Broadwell NUC has virtualization support. Hardly a server CPU. Yes server SKUs all do the virtualization whereas not all the desktop and low power CPUs do, but if that's what you want, you can get it in a desktop CPU. For me it's great for SW development.
I should use this sig to advertise my book ISBN-13 : 978-1501515132.
Yet you are the first one to not ignore him. ;)
Most of what Intel is pushing (Edison, Galileo, etc) in terms of IoT hardware is more expensive than existing solutions (Raspberry Pi, Arduino) which is pretty antithetical to many IoT applications where what you want is low cost. So I'm a bit skeptical that they are really serious about moving into that space, or at least if they are, they need to up their game. The Pi Zero, or the recently Kickstarted C.H.I.P. ($9 all-in-one computer with wifi and li-poly charging circuit) are much more aligned with IoT applications.
To get most business cases to close, you have big problems to address with respect to cost, power, and connectivity, and from what I'm seeing Intel isn't really fielding anything competitive.
Yeah yeah, the PC is dead we know. I have heard this same thing repeated countless times over the last couple decades. In order to make such a claim you have to also claim that our thin client ability has magically evolved so that we can all work on a 4" screen. Oh wait, that has not happened. So people are once again claiming "MAGIC IS REAL" and "REALITY IS FOR PEOPLE WHO CAN'T FANTASIZE LIKE WE DO!".
Could you claim "hey, lots of people work with smaller screens?" Sure. Many people can only afford to browse the internet on a phone too, but given the option would they want to have a nice big screen? Immediate response? Local processing power? Yup, they sure would. Your dichotomy is false, time to go back to the liar's drawing board.
Also, give it a rest already! IoT is not a "thing", so stop making it out to be one. We don't want your chips implanted in our hands, and the ability to have everything we do controlled and tracked with biometrics. We like having cash so that people can't track all of our purchases and use that data as a weapon against us. Sorry, but your psychologically targeted ad is not a benefit to me or society, it's a benefit to you and a weapon against myself and society.
Strangely, this whole subject ignores the fact that our datacenters are packed to the brim with PCs. Not high end graphics PCs, but the same processor and chipsets runs the majority of businesses today AND personal computers. But the PC is dead? OMG! RIP SATA and SAS, we really miss you USB and PCI, we'll never be the same without you DDR 1+. Lot the sobbing ensue! No really, they said it was DEAD!
You people that can't handle reality really get on my nerves sometimes.
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
What good does it do you? What problem does it solve and does it solve the problem in an economically advantageous manner?
As far as I can see, it doesn't. Would it be nice to have my fridge tell me everything in it? Certainly. Would it be nice if it printed out a list of everything it is now missing? Again, yes. But so what? That saves me all of five minutes. Because I am certainly not going to leave the next part, the shopping, to some third party like Amazon or Google or WalMart. This isn't me being a luddite. This is me just being practical.
The fridge isn't going to know my bank account status and I'm sure as hell not letting anyone else in there to check that I can afford groceries this week. Not while computer security is where it is. All of that is just begging to be attacked and broken and fixed and attacked and broken and fixed and so forth. I've had my debit card replaced five times in the last three years thanks to various hacks. It's a goddam headache is what it is. And now these geniuses want me to network _everything_ in my house? To what purpose?
Yes it should refocus on servers. But rather it should be the "home server" market. Maybe even home cluster.
The market for desktops has mostly gone away, replaced by laptops and tablets. These people only needed a PC for spread sheets, simple word processing, and running a web browser.
The gaming machines market is the same if not bigger.
Professional content creation workstations are bigger than ever.
Same money is being spent; just in different form factors.
There is one area that isn't being exploited and marketed enough. The private cloud; i.e. home servers.
Particular when mixed with virtual machines it's something that needs to happen more. Store all your media at home in one place. Use the online cloud only for immediate stuff and for backups. There is huge potential for streaming. A home server can do transcoding on the fly and a dozen other things all at the same time.
It's more about the demise of the low end desktop which in the least has been replaces by cigar box systems.
Basically, the "PC" is going away. The classical Desktop in typical office (tower and monitor) will be the "workstation" outfitted with the Xeon lineup. Everything else will either be embedded chipsets in monitors; think AIO units (All-In-One) running off ARM, or typical BYOD phones and tablets. This is where the industry is headed in the next few years. This is precisely why Windows 8 overshot the paradigm with a GUI geared to content consumption and not multitasking. They screwed up, and Windows 10 is the compromise between Windows 8 and Windows 7. So yeah, there you go.
Life is not for the lazy.
Intel has already lost the embedded game in every way. Intel's chips suck too much power, cost too much and are too closed off when you compare them to the competition. Their obsession with x86 has made their failure a forgone conclusion.
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
Probably due to lack of competition from AMD. Why waste money on R&D when your only competitor is still a few laps behind you?
Whomever smelt it dealt it...
If I put a PC in a 4x24x22 frame, or a 8x12x12 frame, or a 2x2x2 frame, it's still a PC. Why? The easy but hard to fathom might be that the instruction set the chip uses, etc.. is all called PC. Probably more importantly, it's not a usable PC because of the form factor. It's usable because of the peripheral devices we use to access it. I'm still connecting an external FULL sized keyboard, some type of tracking device (mouse), and at least one reasonable sized (24") Monitor to be able to use the PC.
The PC being dead, as TFA claimed and you tried to back, is absolutely not the same thing as "We have a new form factor for a chassis".
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
Moving from de-facto monopoly position on expensive cpus to competing with dozens of companies producing cheapest possible crap for IoT devices. Yeah, that's a good plan.
"The chip maker also plans to focus on chips and technologies for IoT devices"
Before connecting 'things' to the Internet, how about fixing the defective MMU that comes in most WinTEL personal computers.
Ignore lists are found on just about every SJW site. Revently, Twitter and Reddit both added/extended tools for SJWs to ignore users who don't agree with them.
Intel exists, almost solely on a completely different business model of high wafer yields due to maniacal focus on a single process good for a couple of years that creates very high margins on each part. How they manage to wade this transition will be interesting.
Haswell i5s should be under $200 by now. What's the hold-up?
They havent actually gotten good yields from either of their last 2 shrinks and the next shrink isnt scheduled until the end of 2017. Meanwhile TSMC opens up a 10nm fab this year.
Intel is now as fragile as Motorola was.
"His name was James Damore."
Big words are hard, aren't they?
As we've seen time & time again, Intel is a one-trick pony. Granted, they do that one trick very well. But, in order to have any hope for success in any venture other than x86, they really need to spin off a separate company and allow it to run independently.
These large multi-billion $ corps are simply unable to innovate due to their corporate cultures and stifling hierarchies. All innovation happens with the small, nimble guys who, once they have a viable product, get gobbled up by the big guys.
Are you sure you aren't just using marketing speak?
Intel defines a Pentium as desktop-not-server (despite whatever server applications that a user might come up with) and defines a E5 Xeon as server-not-desktop (despite whatever desktop applications that a user might come up with).
The entire product array is whatever-you-want-to-use-it-for and it's Intel who fancifully claims that some are desktop and some are server.
Actually, it is a lot more likely that your smartphone, when docked, will be transformed into PC.
I don't think he heard you.
"I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)
And AMD's stock price just doubled.
That is very true. The majority of business applications, spreadsheets, word processing, etc, can all run pretty well on an average smartphone. All you need is a desktop size screen, a USB and network port and the "CPU" can be embedded in the screen.
What I would like to see someday is a smartphone dock, where you can plug the smartphone into a monitor/mouse/keyboard and use the smartphone like a desktop PC.
http://github.com/gbook/nidb
You can. If you get the Skylake gen i.e. Pentium G4400, upcoming Celeron G3900, i3 6100 etc. then your memory ceiling is 64GB up from the older 32 GB. You can even get ECC on Celeron/Pentium but at the cost of an expensive motherboard wirh C2xx chipset. (there is IOMMU too)
That was definitely off topic, -1
This one too
You've neglected to include the effects of a 3.8 GHz clock on the i7-920, and newer chips tend to be more resistant to overclocking. Your point stands, but the advantages of the newer chips are smaller.
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