Intel's Expensive Disco Ball 324
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."
all your chips (Score:5, Funny)
Intel ZIG intiative (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Intel ZIG intiative (Score:5, Funny)
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.
All your CPU are belong to... (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Intel ZIG intiative (Score:2, Funny)
It's fine by me. I like AMD's chips anyways.
Registration Not Required (Score:5, Informative)
What's with the /. addiction to NYT?
Use NYT Generator! (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Registration Not Required (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Registration Not Required (Score:3, Interesting)
Try BugMeNot [roachfiend.com]. 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 (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Registration Not Required (Score:2, Offtopic)
Er, no, I haven't noticed that. Care to be more specific?
Re:Registration Not Required (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Registration Not Required (Score:2)
Aw damn, now I gotta go see for myself!
(This better not be a clever troll!
Re:Registration Not Required (Score:5, Insightful)
One of the attractions of conspiracy theories is the flattery of imagining you are important enough to spawn a conspiracy.
Re:Registration Not Required (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Registration Not Required (Score:3, Interesting)
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 :)
Article text (Score:5, Informative)
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 (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Article text (Score:5, Funny)
Geez...
Re:Article text (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Article text (Score:5, Funny)
Damn hippies always want something for nothing.
This guy sounds like Carly @ Hp.. oh dear god (Score:4, Interesting)
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 (Score:3, Insightful)
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 (Score:3, Insightful)
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 s
Re:This guy sounds like Carly @ Hp.. oh dear god (Score:3, Interesting)
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.
Th
come on (Score:5, Insightful)
Now if you are doing this as a showcase of bad ideas, let's link a few more interesting samples.
Re:come on (Score:5, Insightful)
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 (Score:2)
Re:come on (Score:5, Insightful)
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 [theregister.co.uk]. 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 (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:come on (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:come on (Score:3, Insightful)
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 (Score:3, Insightful)
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
Re:come on (Score:2, Interesting)
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
Re:come on (Score:5, Informative)
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 (Score:2, Interesting)
And the portion of Intel's profits stemming from this doesn't even warrant a line item in their financial breakdown. STFU troll!
Re:come on (Score:5, Insightful)
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 (Score:2)
Itanium looks like it is a complete failure.
an interesting example -- ia64 (Score:2)
take ia64 for example. over a decade of development, billions and billions sunk into the project, and they have nothing to show for it. remember that intel intended ia64 to replace ia32. go ahead and point to a couple overpriced ( terrible price/performance) top100 machines as "vindication" of ia64 -- but realize that intel expected ia64 to be on millions of desktops and servers by
Re:come on (Score:4, Insightful)
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 (Score:2)
Shedfuls. I can say no more.
Re:come on (Score:2)
Once it got spun off into Lucent Technologies, profit and pleasing the shareholders became the cheif motive, and most of the sciensist who were workign on porjects that weren't directly profitable were laid off.
Intel's fault isn't in a failed product, but that it started to market something that was
Re:come on (Score:2)
IBM developed the thinkpad laptop and then management tried to shut the project down. Rumor has it that developers had to go around management directly to the media to get the button mouse to market.
Also, did Xerox make any money at all from Parc??? If not, does that make it a failure?
Re:come on (Score:2)
Also, did Xerox make any money at all from Parc???
Hmm, ethernet (one time known as DIX Ethernet; DEC, Intel, Xerox) and laserprinters come from PARC? I'm sure they made a buck or two from laser printers, not sure how much (if any) money was made off of ethernet.
Most people think of PARC for the computers, specifically the systems that became our modern GUI a.k.a. W.I.M.P (Windows, Icons, Menus, Pointer) interface. I read someplace that Apple gave Xerox some stock for them to be able to copy the ideas
Re:come on (Score:2)
Sun scrapped the UltraSPARC V, Picojava, Javastations, and others, I'm sure. Yet, Sun is still around and looking good with Opteron, Niagara, and Solaris 10. You win some and lose some; we'll see how Intel fares their share of dead-end R&D (imagine how thankful they are for Pentium revenue in light of Itanium!).
Interesting thought for youall: (Score:5, Insightful)
Is about time! (Score:4, Insightful)
Just Desserts for Intel (Score:5, Interesting)
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 (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Just Desserts for Intel (Score:2)
Well, you're already getting your wish in the enterprise space. There are sure a lot more Power servers than Itanium ones out there.
Of course, on the desktop it's another story. Power isn't going anywhere there unless the world changes to Macintosh. Nice as they are, I just don't see that happening. Too much is invested in x86.
But hey, it's nice to dream.
Re:Just Desserts for Intel (Score:2, Interesting)
If IBM wanted to play hardball on their processors again
[OT] (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Huh? Most H-1Bs are Elites from India/China. (Score:2)
Worse yet, these people don't even stay in the country. They live as cheaply as they can, and send all their money back home. Then, when they've amassed enough wealth, they move back home too. This only harms our economy.
People who are not interested in living in
Re:Huh? Most H-1Bs are Elites from India/China. (Score:2)
Re:Just Desserts for Intel (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Just Desserts for Intel (Score:5, Interesting)
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 (Score:3, Insightful)
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 (Score:2, Insightful)
Jaysyn
American neoliberal/laisseiz faire capitalism (Score:4, Insightful)
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?
Re:Just Desserts for Intel (Score:2, Funny)
now I get it. (Score:5, Funny)
So THAT was the inspiration for those commercials with dancers in clean suits!
Re:now I get it. (Score:3, Funny)
Genetic sample NOT required. (Score:3, Informative)
Re: disco ball (Score:2, Interesting)
I would just love to have some earrings made out of broken G5s.
Re: disco ball (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
failed chips (Score:3, Informative)
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
Intel simulation model way off (Score:5, Funny)
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... (Score:2, Insightful)
Craig Barrett has been a failure as CEO (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
Re:Craig Barrett has been a failure as CEO (Score:2)
Show us the beef! (Score:2)
Why I've prefered AMD over Intel for years (Score:3, Insightful)
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 (Score:2, Interesting)
I agree th
Re:Why I've prefered AMD over Intel for years (Score:2, Interesting)
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 (Score:2)
Other then the singed fingers I find that the bigest problem with AMD is the motherboards and chipsets. I've seen too many problems with VIA for instance to make me EVER want to use any product they produce. In addition I like that I can get an Intel motherboard without the addons like RAID, audio, LAN, etc etc.... I want to chose my own expansion cards and just want BASIC IO on the motherboard.
Re:Why I've prefered AMD over Intel for years (Score:2)
"Other then the singed fingers I find that the bigest problem with AMD is the motherboards and chipsets."
If you buy NFORCE, you won't have any trouble. NVIDIA's drivers are rock-solid, easy to find (NVIDIA.com) and easy to install. Good Linux support now, too.
"In addition I like that I can get an Intel motherboard without the addons like RAID, audio, LAN, etc etc.... I want to chose my own expansion cards and just want BASIC IO on the motherboard."
The thing is that adding functionality to the motherboar
Re:Why I've prefered AMD over Intel for years (Score:2, Insightful)
I've learned my lesson on cheap hardware. It's not as cheap as it seems at Fry's.
Intel's focus areas (Score:4, Interesting)
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
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... (Score:3, Funny)
Seriously.
AMD stock broke $22 today... (Score:3, Interesting)
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
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.
Not to troll... (Score:2)
That was disappointing.
Why is it *SO* hard ... (Score:4, Insightful)
http://news.google.com/news?hl=en&ned=us&ie=UTF
How do I get into the 'get kickbacks from NYT for submitting stories to
Re:Why is it *SO* hard ... (Score:2)
Re:NYT (Score:3, Insightful)
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 defeat
Intel's Vision (or lack thereof) (Score:2)
"Our view is that an evolutionary version of the PC will win that space," he said. "Do you want a rack of single-purpose devices costing from $100 to $250 each or do you want one $400 to $500 device, the PC? The key to the home is networking, and the PC is much better suited to do that."
Somebody get these guys a clue while I go sell my stock!
In their markets, this is the most bone-headed idea I can imagine! Why not go and sell people 4-5 $150 purpose-built devices rather than one $
Intel has done a lot of stupid things (Score:5, Interesting)
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
Re:Intel has done a lot of stupid things (Score:2)
Speeding up the design, then, and adding SIMD support for processing arrays would be a very good step forward
You *can* do 128 bit operations...that's what SSE is for. It also can do SIMD operatons...2 64 bit ops in a cycle, etc. That's how a 3 Ghz Pentium achieves 6 GFlops.
Clusters of low-end processors are now starting to take on the supercomputer worl
Most likely... (Score:3, Informative)
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.
Textbook example of misleading statistics (Score:2)
Intel -- Just Short of Intelligent. (Score:2)
I'm very honestly convinced that the reason why IBM chose it for their "IBM PC(tm)" is that it was way too braindead to have any real hope of competing against their big-money IBM/370-family mainframe engines.
It took them 4 tries (8086, 80186, 80286, 80386) t
Theme Song (Score:5, Funny)
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!
Re:NYTimes :( (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:amd is not the competition (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:amd is not the competition (Score:2)
Re:amd is not the competition (Score:2)
Re:amd is not the competition (Score:3, Interesting)
Also you can get an Xbox and put XBMC on it right now.
Re:Karma Whoring! (Score:2)
*Scoff!!* Fucking Luddite! (Score:2)
Of course i'm being sarcastic and you're totally right. Just, as the parent to your comment used the word "luddite" in an oh-so-deliciously elitist way, I had to comment.
Corporate Thought (Score:2)
Re:Pentium Serial Numbers (Score:3, Informative)