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Intel Is in an Increasingly Bad Position in Part Because It Has Been Captive To Its Integrated Model (stratechery.com)
Once one of the Valley's most important companies, Intel is increasingly finding itself in a bad position, in part because of its major bet on integration model. Ben Thompson, writing for Stratechery: When Krzanich was appointed CEO in 2013 it was already clear that arguably the most important company in Silicon Valley's history was in trouble: PCs, long Intel's chief money-maker, were in decline, leaving the company ever more reliant on the sale of high-end chips to data centers; Intel had effectively zero presence in mobile, the industry's other major growth area. [...] [Analyst] Ben Bajarin wrote last week in Intel's Moment of Truth. As Bajarin notes, 7nm for TSMC (or Samsung or Global Foundries) isn't necessarily better than Intel's 10nm; chip-labeling isn't what it used to be. The problem is that Intel's 10nm process isn't close to shipping at volume, and the competition's 7nm processes are. Intel is behind, and its insistence on integration bears a large part of the blame.
The first major miss [for Intel] was mobile: instead of simply manufacturing ARM chips for the iPhone the company presumed it could win by leveraging its manufacturing to create a more-efficient x86 chip; it was a decision that evinced too much knowledge of Intel's margins and not nearly enough reflection on the importance of the integration between DOS/Windows and x86. Intel took the same mistaken approach to non general-purpose processors, particularly graphics: the company's Larrabee architecture was a graphics chip based on -- you guessed it -- x86; it was predicated on leveraging Intel's integration, instead of actually meeting a market need. Once the project predictably failed Intel limped along with graphics that were barely passable for general purpose displays, and worthless for all of the new use cases that were emerging. The latest crisis, though, is in design: AMD is genuinely innovating with its Ryzen processors (manufactured by both GlobalFoundries and TSMC), while Intel is still selling varations on Skylake, a three year-old design.
The first major miss [for Intel] was mobile: instead of simply manufacturing ARM chips for the iPhone the company presumed it could win by leveraging its manufacturing to create a more-efficient x86 chip; it was a decision that evinced too much knowledge of Intel's margins and not nearly enough reflection on the importance of the integration between DOS/Windows and x86. Intel took the same mistaken approach to non general-purpose processors, particularly graphics: the company's Larrabee architecture was a graphics chip based on -- you guessed it -- x86; it was predicated on leveraging Intel's integration, instead of actually meeting a market need. Once the project predictably failed Intel limped along with graphics that were barely passable for general purpose displays, and worthless for all of the new use cases that were emerging. The latest crisis, though, is in design: AMD is genuinely innovating with its Ryzen processors (manufactured by both GlobalFoundries and TSMC), while Intel is still selling varations on Skylake, a three year-old design.
This just marks the end of an era. Moores Law is dead (and has been dead for quite some time). Intel will need some other way to innovate. All they have been doing is adding cores and trying to push up clock speeds. Even this is running into a dead end: because of physics. The entire industry will need to come to grips with this, because a lot of people assumed Moores Law was going to continue.
I thought Intel was in a bad position because it decided to dump $300m at diversity initiatives and fire a bunch of engineers instead of investing that money in R&D like AMD has.
Om, nomnomnom...
And the hostility towards diversity here on Slashdot is misguided and idiotic. When I see white boys from upper middle class families complain about being oppressed and how it's a meritocracy in technology, I find it hysterical that they can't see outside their little bubble and realize that they had all of their opportunities handed to them.
Yes, us half-asians(or asians), who are penalized in US(don't live in the US anyway) university admissions akin to whites and are born to poor working class families, where name brand kraft dinner was a luxury sure are 'white boys from upper middle class families.' Nothing like finding out that a university specifically penalizes you because of your race, instead of making the selection based on best candidates? Yeah, those of us who climbed up from the bottom really do like meritocracy, because we know that people got there on skill, ability, and competence. Not because they had the current trendy gender selection/sexual preference, had the right colour of skin, or some other *insert non-selective trait* that they were born with/without.
because you were smart enough to pick the right parents and genes so that you have natural aptitude in a lucrative field.
I'm not sure how you got so far in life being so stupid as to believe that a person picks their parents. Or believing that if a person truly wants to, they'll rise through ability and skill instead of moping around going "woe is me." Ever wonder why those of us who were dirt poor are the most angry at 'diversity' bullshit? Nobody has a problem if programs are open to everyone. A lot of people who worked hard for their job and skillset however are pretty pissed off when someone else coasts along because it looks trendy as fuck to the company they're working for though.
And god forbid if a company doesn't for the bullshit that girls are not as good at math and science as boys.
Uh-huh. So that's why in so many places, they also lower the aptitude and physical requirements for policing, fire fighting, military enlistment and make everyone either pick up the slack for them. Or actually endanger the lives of everyone else because they're unable to deal with the demands of the job. Funny enough the most outspoken people against this, are the ones that passed the actual requirements before all that "diversity" bullshit was being pushed. Why? Because people believe they didn't get there on ability, skill, prowess, but were handed the job because it looked good. I mean, what's it going to take? Another dead fighter pilot that would have been drummed out if they were male. Or another ship nearly sheered in half because two women had a snit, and refused to talk to each other? Or an entire fire dept., refusing to work with someone because they couldn't even carry a hose and put the people they were supposed to rescue in danger.
Om, nomnomnom...
"Can you image intel graphics on a tablet? It's already been done, hint, they suck, have poor performance, and are power hungry. Guess what, I want to be able to watch more than one video in HD before the battery dies, or the tablet becomes hotter than the surface of the sun."
Meanwhile, my Chromebook does 16 hours of 1080p video using a Celeron N3150.
Apparently your definition of high performance means "emulate the universe" when in reality the performance issue is with the people coding their applications and web pages.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
Yeah, those of us who climbed up from the bottom really do like meritocracy, because we know that people got there on skill, ability, and competence.
I am also one of those people. And I know why so many of us are so bitter about seeing handouts. We struggled, and we want to see other people struggle too. It's some kind of messed up desire for fairness, when really, we should be trying to make sure nobody else has to go through the bullshit we did to succeed. The part you missed in the above formula is actually the largest factor- luck. Get over yourself, asshole.