Intel Thread - The sad, long, slow decline of an industry giant

[tehpope]

So I thought its time for a thread on Intel. 2020 has been a pretty rough year for them. They can't figure out smaller cpu die processes. AMD catching up to them while doing great business. Apple is leaving them for their own ARM designs.

And now, it looks like their GPU division might shutdown in 2023 if rumors are to be believed.
https://adoredtv.com/exclusive-arctic-sound-family-ponte-vecchio-and-the-future-of-intel-graphics/

e: Not to forget all the security leaks at the cpu level they've had over the last year or two.

 

[SIGSEGV]

Filename.

 

[Cast Iron Pan]

They were untouchable for almost a decade. What a lead to lose!

 

[The Mass Shooter Ron Soye]

https://videocardz.com/newz/intel-hybrid-technology-big-and-small-cores-coming-to-alder-lake

If done right, this could be decent. If not, they will have another bad year.

 

[LegoTugboat]

It's sad, the early Intel Core 2 Duos were goddamn fantastic, and the follow ups were also very solid. Then around 2013, it kinda fell off.

And we shouldn't forget the 7 nm saga, which was announced in Feb 2017, and is now aiming for 2022, which is about when 5 nms are aimed to become mainstream.

 

[Smaug's Smokey Hole]

They were untouchable for almost a decade. What a lead to lose!

It's happened before. Remember the Pentium 4?

All of this shows the importance of competition. Intel's current Core i3 is yesteryears Core i7.

 

[Aqua Panda]

It really is amazing just how much AMD got their shit together again with Zen 2. To the point that the vast majority of new desktop gaming builds are now Ryzen 3600 or better. Even the most Intel diehards are passing on the new 10th gen CPU's. The cost to benefit ratio is just not in Intel's favor anymore.

This has been coming to haunt Intel for awhile now. They have been cost cutting and outsourcing badly the last few years. Pressures have grown on the development teams and turnover has been insanely high. Also, tremendous H1B visa abuse has lead to massive outsourcing to India. While this has been the norm in IT for awhile, the turnover has lead to MASSIVE hiring quality issues. India outsourcing looks good on paper, but the quaitly for most is usually terrible. (I shit you not, one of the "senior" engineers literally ghosted the company when it came out his degree was fake and that he was paying someone on the side to do his work.)

If you can find the reports of why they can't shrink their die, I highly recommend tracking it down for lulz potential. The memo's coming out basically screaming at the teams asking why they haven't made progress are some serious gold.

 

[Un Platano]

Even though the past few years have just been one shitshow after another for Intel, they've still got one thing going for them that AMD doesn't have: decades worth of great marketing. They've still got much better brand recognition among people buying low-end systems (who are the majority of people buying computers) than AMD and that type of consumer doesn't care about the ways they've shat the bed with i9's or any of their other debacles, so I think it will be a while before they lose that market. If it happens it will happen because system integrators have decided to stop using Intel CPUs, not because consumers have.

 

[heyitsmike]

I wish AMD would come out with something comparable to Intel's Compute Stick though. Four tiny Atom cores ain't cutting it.

 

[Duncan Hills Coffee]

Well shit. I built a PC last year and I went with an Intel CPU because I have a laptop with an AMD processor that I didn't have a good experience with, especially when it came to gaming. I figured an Intel CPU would be a safe bet, so I went with an I5-9600k (I was going for a roughly mid-to-high range computer).

Kinda feels like I bet on the wrong horse, but at the same time I'm not well-versed with the minutiae of how the CPUs actually work. It works fine for my purposes, which is all I ask for, but I am concerned with how this will affect me in the long run.

 

[tehpope]

Well shit. I built a PC last year and I went with an Intel CPU because I have a laptop with an AMD processor that I didn't have a good experience with, especially when it came to gaming. I figured an Intel CPU would be a safe bet, so I went with an I5-9600k (I was going for a roughly mid-to-high range computer).

Kinda feels like I bet on the wrong horse, but at the same time I'm not well-versed with the minutiae of how the CPUs actually work. It works fine for my purposes, which is all I ask for, but I am concerned with how this will affect me in the long run.

Intel still rules to roost for single threaded performance and gaming. I wouldn't be regretting your purchase. Its just that AMD is closing the gap and they're cheaper.

 

[AmpleApricots]

Intel is a shitty company with tons of shady business practices reaching back decades at this point and I don't feel sorry for them. That being said, I really don't want AMD to be the only guy in the game. If ARM and affiliates had any serious interest in personal computing beyond smart-things they could easily claim the low to mid-trier market for them. Some ARM SoCs pack some serious power in a very small package with very little power consumption. Nothing for the high-end gaming enthusiast for example of course, but plenty for everyone else. I'd switch my non gaming desktop to an max. 8W consuming wallet-sized ARM-Desktop in a heartbeat if the software support for the hardware for serious desktop-usage wasn't non-existent.

 

[Smaug's Smokey Hole]

Even though the past few years have just been one shitshow after another for Intel, they've still got one thing going for them that AMD doesn't have: decades worth of great marketing. They've still got much better brand recognition among people buying low-end systems (who are the majority of people buying computers) than AMD and that type of consumer doesn't care about the ways they've shat the bed with i9's or any of their other debacles, so I think it will be a while before they lose that market. If it happens it will happen because system integrators have decided to stop using Intel CPUs, not because consumers have.

They also had competent laptops, a market segment that AMD until relatively recently couldn't compete in and that's a huge market. The A-series of CPUs were trash and it didn't matter how good Ryzen was, they couldn't just stick a desktop part in a laptop without melting the keyboard. Now it looks like they could eat Intel's lunch in that market, the Ryzen laptops looks fantastic at their different price points and the iGPU can handle a lot of games at low settings in 720p/900p and 30fps. Not spectacular but it's not like Intel where you often shouldn't even bother trying.

 

[tehpope]

From /r/datahoarder

Intel suffered a massive data breach earlier this year and as of today the first associated data has begun being released. Some users are reporting finding hardcoded backdoors in the intel code.
Some of the contents of this first release:
- Intel ME Bringup guides + (flash) tooling + samples for various platforms
- Kabylake (Purley Platform) BIOS Reference Code and Sample Code + Initialization code (some of it as exported git repos with full history)
- Intel CEFDK (Consumer Electronics Firmware Development Kit (Bootloader stuff)) SOURCES
- Silicon / FSP source code packages for various platforms
- Various Intel Development and Debugging Tools - Simics Simulation for Rocket Lake S and potentially other platforms
- Various roadmaps and other documents
- Binaries for Camera drivers Intel made for SpaceX
- Schematics, Docs, Tools + Firmware for the unreleased Tiger Lake platform - (very horrible) Kabylake FDK training videos
- Intel Trace Hub + decoder files for various Intel ME versions
- Elkhart Lake Silicon Reference and Platform Sample Code
- Some Verilog stuff for various Xeon Platforms, unsure what it is exactly.
- Debug BIOS/TXE builds for various Platforms
- Bootguard SDK (encrypted zip)
- Intel Snowridge / Snowfish Process Simulator ADK - Various schematics
- Intel Marketing Material Templates (InDesign)
- Lots of other things
https://twitter.com/deletescape/status/1291405688204402689

Jesus fucking christ intel.

 

[moocow]

Intel is a shitty company with tons of shady business practices reaching back decades at this point and I don't feel sorry for them.

Intel is the first company that ever tried to get me fired from a job. I had the last laugh though -- it turns out Itanium did indeed suck ass, and I didn't end up getting fired for saying it because my boss was awesome. Fucking assholes.

If ARM and affiliates had any serious interest in personal computing beyond smart-things they could easily claim the low to mid-trier market for them. Some ARM SoCs pack some serious power in a very small package with very little power consumption. Nothing for the high-end gaming enthusiast for example of course, but plenty for everyone else. I'd switch my non gaming desktop to an max. 8W consuming wallet-sized ARM-Desktop in a heartbeat if the software support for the hardware for serious desktop-usage wasn't non-existent.

I'm seriously annoyed that there's no ARM-based desktops available at a reasonable price that don't involve a "development board." I can't find any kind of 64-bit ARM system that supports more than 4GB of RAM. It'd make a killer Linux workstation if I could get a 64-bit 8-core ARM machine with 16-32GB of RAM and decent software support for its hardware.

 

[Temporal Refugee]

From /r/datahoarder

Jesus fucking christ intel.

Good. Maybe this will allow for reverse engineering. People have been trying to figure out how to get rid of shady "black box" tech that poses security concerns, to remove software locks on performance, and generally clean up Intel's bullshit for years now.

 

[So-and-so]

I'm seriously annoyed that there's no ARM-based desktops available at a reasonable price that don't involve a "development board." I can't find any kind of 64-bit ARM system that supports more than 4GB of RAM. It'd make a killer Linux workstation if I could get a 64-bit 8-core ARM machine with 16-32GB of RAM and decent software support for its hardware.

Insofar as I don't game nearly as much as I used to, aside from roguelikes and indie garbage, I'd really like something like this to start picking up as well. I haven't had to chase new cpu iterations since slot AM2. Most popular linux distros have ARM support, and more options for the average enthusiast would certainly be exciting. I'd also love everyone to start using alternative architectures so we can have a larger discussion about the strengths of different instruction sets, open source hardware and security.

 

[⠠⠠⠅⠑⠋⠋⠁⠇⠎ ⠠⠠⠊⠎ ⠠⠠⠁ ⠠⠠⠋⠁⠛]

Insofar as I don't game nearly as much as I used to, aside from roguelikes and indie garbage, I'd really like something like this to start picking up as well. I haven't had to chase new cpu iterations since slot AM2. Most popular linux distros have ARM support, and more options for the average enthusiast would certainly be exciting. I'd also love everyone to start using alternative architectures so we can have a larger discussion about the strengths of different instruction sets, open source hardware and security.

The funny thing is that there probably were more options for ARMv8 workstations (and a wider range of companies making servers) a year or two back than there are today. Unless you want a 128-core Huawei TaiShan.

It is going to be interesting to see what comes out of China in the light of the attacks on the business of the likes of Huawei (a worker owned cooperative that is now developing its own baseband processors and chip foundries). I see a number of Chinese commentators arguing for the need for indigenously-developed software and hardware alternatives for use in mainstream applications.

I won't try to predict with certainty what the response of the CPC will be to these attacks. Hardware wise, the best solution would be to develop their own ARM cores. Alternatively, they could make an entirely new architecture or double down on Loongson.. I think they know better.

Software wise, I suspect the rational solution for mobile would be an Android fork that directly replaces the closed source Google Play garbage. Will be interesting to see if that's the way they go, or if they roll their own. I suspect their desktop offerings are going to continue to be based upon the same lines as Ubuntu Kylin.

 

[tehpope]

Intel changed their logo. And there's new CPU sku called Evo. More to be annouced on Sept. 2nd.
https://www.kitguru.net/components/...-rebranding-ahead-of-tiger-lake-launch-event/

 

[Basil II]

Intel changed their logo. And there's new CPU sku called Evo.
https://www.kitguru.net/components/...-rebranding-ahead-of-tiger-lake-launch-event/

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lmao really caught onto the soy flat design meme like 10 years late.