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Intel Addresses CPU Shortage: 'Supply Is Undoubtedly Tight' (crn.com)
Intel interim CEO Bob Swan publicly addressed the company's CPU shortage issue for the first time since July, when he acknowledged that meeting additional demand would be Intel's "biggest challenge." From a report: In a message posted to Intel's website Friday, Swan said the "surprising return" to growth in the PC market "has put pressure on [the company's] factory network." He added, "We're prioritizing the production of Intel Xeon and Intel Core processors so that collectively we can serve the high-performance segments of the market. That said, supply is undoubtedly tight, particularly at the entry-level of the PC market."
Intel partners and at least one distributor previously told CRN they were seeing a shortage of Intel's current generation, 14-nanometer CPUs, most notably in lower-end client processors.
Intel partners and at least one distributor previously told CRN they were seeing a shortage of Intel's current generation, 14-nanometer CPUs, most notably in lower-end client processors.
It is depending if the end users are willing to pay for it or not?
While typically Supply vs Demand means low supply will raise the price. However the Demand of AMD Chips may not coincide the Demand for Intel Chips. Or people are willing to wait for the Intel Chips to come out. Then we need to factor the rest of the supply chain.
Hobbyist who mash up parts to build their own PC, is a rather small market. Most of them are from the big Names, the Apple, Dell, HP, Lenovo... who have a big supply chain behind them. Having that XPS laptop switch from Intel to AMD, will need a different motherboard, which would have different shape heat considerations... So the case will need to be redesigned...
More likely other then switching to AMD, our PC's built for Intel would just be more expensive.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
AMD
Are there any hard numbers showing that this is caused by increased demand rather than constrained supply?
I expect that some of the previous-generation factories are in the process of being retooled for 10nm? Is that not how Intel does it? If it is, that would limit the supply of the 14nm chips without yet being able to make up the shortfall with 10nm chips.
Finally! A year of moderation! Ready for 2019?
"... supply is undoubtedly tight, particularly at the entry-level of the PC market".
Has anyone heard news of forthcoming Intel processors that have secure architectures and actually adhere to those architectures?
I am sure that there are many other solipsists out there.
We make a fuckton more money on $10,000 Xeons than the $50 Pentium CPU.
It seems like Intel bought into the whole "Post PC" nonsense. It would be interesting to find out if AMD was similarly hoodwinked, or whether it has a ready supply of both low end and high end processors to fill the vacuum left by Intel's mismanagement.
This is an opportunity for AMD to get much closer to Intel's magical 20% of the server market.
As many of us have said for the last several years, desktop PC's aren't going anywhere anytime soon. Mobile devices will augment, not replace, the desktop PC market. It is one of the many things that Star Trek accurately predicted back in the 1960's.
And why does AMD always perform great in benchmarks but badly in real world tests compared to Intel?
That hasn't been my experience at all. The K6 blew the doors off the P2, clock for clock, when you compiled for it. Of course, no commercial software was, but if you run Linux you can compile most things yourself and reap the rewards. And the original Athlon likewise absolutely slaughtered the P3, clock for clock. The FP performance was hilariously superior. Today, AMD only outperforms Intel abusively dollar for dollar, and yeah if you need maximum single thread performance you have to go with Intel. That only matters to gamers though, since everything else that needs much performance is multithreaded now.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Cyrix/VIA need to come back.
Why? Neither one was competent to make a high-performance processor, and the low end has moved on to ARM for the power savings.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
I wish there was but there isn't for workloads in the 1-6 thread range (for GIS) or with regards to single core performance. We have put some workstation purchases on hold for 6 months because Intel Workstation prices are 35+% right now. We tested Ryzen 2950X & 2990WX based systems and they were 15-25% slower than our previous generation Intel Xeon W 2105/W2155 series boxes
What am I missing as someone who doesnt know hardware but understands software? Why is AMD so often trumpeted here but rarely seen in the real world? And why does AMD always perform great in benchmarks but badly in real world tests compared to Intel?
i'm sure your workstations were fully patched with spectre and meltdown mitigations in software and in microcode when you compared them to the AMD offerings. from what i been told, most of that gap is non-existent in patched systems. meanin the only reason intel was faster was because they cheated, and when the holes, i mean cheats, were closed they perform very closely in real world conditions.
Today, AMD only outperforms Intel abusively dollar for dollar, and yeah if you need maximum single thread performance you have to go with Intel. That only matters to gamers though, since everything else that needs much performance is multithreaded now.
A lot of tasks are only semi-parallel though. Take building code - you can compile lots of files in parallel, but then you have to link the executable on a single thread. Even though the majority of the work is done across multiple cores, the single core performance can still make a noticeable difference.
Are you running Windows? The Ryzen you tested use NUMA (especially the 2990WX which is four-way asymmetrical!) and sometimes fair badly because Windows supports it badly.
Maybe you used slow RAM, the AMDs perform better when you just ignore the official RAM speed and run faster RAM (the frequency of the RAM controller and the interconnects between packs of four core and between dies depend on it). Not sure if you can find fast ECC RAM though like DDR4 3200 or more. The effect is very big, there's major performance left on the table that can be seen between e.g. DDR4 2400 and DDR4 2933.
Funnily though, the Xeons W you quote (being variants of Core i8 7900X, 7920X etc. series) are lemons on single thread performance at least for something like games, because their cache latencies are slow. Maybe your workload likes a large L3. Or it fits well anyhow. Intel is also strong on things particularly SIMD heavy.
You could probably finds something where the same AMD that is 15% slower than your Intel would be 10% faster than the Intel.
Why is AMD so often trumpeted here but rarely seen in the real world? And why does AMD always perform great in benchmarks but badly in real world tests compared to Intel?
They lost their entire market share on servers and dual CPU workstation - consider that just a few years ago a dual socket Intel would beat quad socket AMD.
Now there getting beaten by 15% in a benchmark may be considered good enough.
(sockets grew bigger so 2950W/2990X or Xeon W are fit to replace older dual socket workstations like the old Mac Pros)
It's quite new, begins from zero and high end customers or OEMs didn't jump on version 1.0 hardware as is natural.
Another issue is for virtual machine farms : the hypervisors had to be updated and even if everything is updated, tested and works perfectly it will remain impossible to live migrate VMs between AMD and Intel. There were hardware bugs too but I already kind of say that refering to "1.0 hardware" (and 1.0.0.1 firmware etc.), every CPU has dozens of hardware bugs even the Intel albeit most may be obscure or easy to paper over. I tried to read Intel erratas once and understood almost nothing about what it says. OS and compiler writers may like such documents better.
From what I've seen, Intel cpus take a huge hit when those fixes are compiled in. From 8%-20% according to Phoronix. AMD cpus take a hit as well although much smaller. If you take into account those hits, AMD CPUs are faster even clock for clock.