[HN Gopher] Intel can't grow profits in a global chip shortage
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Intel can't grow profits in a global chip shortage
Author : mellosouls
Score : 76 points
Date : 2022-05-15 07:57 UTC (2 days ago)
(HTM) web link (theconversation.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (theconversation.com)
| lacker wrote:
| The big question in semiconductors is what will happen to the
| China-Taiwan situation. China has repeatedly stated that they
| intend to reunify with Taiwan by 2049 for the 100th anniversary
| of their communist party. I think they will probably try. If
| there's fighting then there's a good chance that TSMC ends up
| destroyed. Refugees can flee, physical plants can be destroyed.
|
| So if TSMC is destroyed, what happens to everyone downstream who
| depends on semiconductors? We probably end up both delaying
| products for years and giving Intel boatloads of money thinking
| "I sure hope they can scale up their only-three-years-behind
| technology quickly."
|
| So we should subsidize Intel to keep improving their currently-
| uncompetitive technology. This isn't the same as most "we should
| make things in America" complaints, it's a contingency plan for a
| specific, reasonably likely intense disruption to the world of
| technology.
| User23 wrote:
| > This isn't the same as most "we should make things in
| America" complaints
|
| How is it any different? There is a strategic argument for
| onshoring pretty much anything that isn't utterly frivolous
| like fidget spinners and such. Look how effectively Europe's
| need for energy has undermined the Russia sanctions. The Ruble
| is stronger than it was before the invasion!
|
| It's nice not to be vulnerable to foreign embargoes of food or
| energy, just to name a couple important strategically important
| things besides semiconductors.
| bsder wrote:
| > There is a strategic argument for onshoring pretty much
| anything that isn't utterly frivolous
|
| I would probably adjust that to "onshore anything that takes
| longer than <insert number of years> to spin up".
|
| You can spin up funiture factories in a year or less. You
| probably don't need them onshored. A steel mill probably
| takes 3-5 years. You probably should have a local
| alternative. You can't spin up ASML in less than 10 years.
| There _definitely_ should be a local ASML alternative.
| mywittyname wrote:
| > anything that isn't utterly frivolous like fidget spinners
| and such.
|
| This frivolity is exactly what countries need to do if they
| want to manufacture at the level China is. Fidget spinners
| were built as a way of scaling up the manufacturing of very
| high-tolerance bearings, and selling them in the USA for $5
| helped ensure that every American involved in manufacturing
| understood just how adept China had become.
| ant6n wrote:
| > We probably end up both delaying products for years and
| giving Intel boatloads of money thinking "I sure hope they can
| scale up their only-three-years-behind technology quickly."
|
| It's weird, five years ago they were two years ahead of
| everybody.
| bagacrap wrote:
| Isn't tsmc building fabs in Arizona and Japan?
|
| I don't think China will invade Taiwan but what do I know. Is
| it really worth the risk of being cut off from international
| trade and banking the way Russia has been? If China invades and
| there's an international embargo of Chinese goods,
| semiconductors are but one small part of the havoc that would
| ensue.
| [deleted]
| hristov wrote:
| It is amazing how much incorrect analysis this global chip
| shortage has brought about. The situation with intel is complex
| but I will bring out the simplest error in this analysis.
|
| Chips are not like oil, or steel or wheat. A chip shortage is a
| very different beast than an oil or wheat or iron ore or copper
| shortage.
|
| Lets say that there are 500 different chips in a device. This is
| not an exaggeration. If you are short of chip #203 you cannot
| throw an extra couple of pieces of chip #205 instead. These chips
| are different and the exact ones are needed. Furthermore, many of
| these chips are made using different processes in different fabs,
| so you cannot slow down manufacture of chip #205 to make some
| extra ones of chip #203.
|
| So that is the first thing to keep in mind in terms of the chip
| shortage. Currently the chips that are in shortage are mostly
| things intel does not make. To the best of my knowledge chips in
| shortage are power electronics, power discrete, power management
| ics, networking ics and industrial/auto/medical grade
| microcontrollers. If someone had updates to this list, please
| comment below.
|
| The thing about the chip shortage is, that if there is a shortage
| in something you do not make, it is not necessarily a good thing.
| That may mean that your client will make fewer devices because
| they do not have that chip #203, and you will be able to sell
| them fewer of your chip #205.
|
| Of course intel has some very serious issues but this chip
| shortage argument is just wrong.
| bobajeff wrote:
| The chips used Raspberry Pi's.
| hristov wrote:
| The great rasppberry pi shortage is probably caused by
| shortages of power electronics and networking chips.
| karmicthreat wrote:
| If that was the case the compute modules would be
| unaffected. You can't get even those right now either.
| akiselev wrote:
| The compute modules only has a 5V input, which it must
| convert to the voltages used by the CPU, RAM,
| peripherals, etc. using aforementioned power ICs. A
| modern CPU like the BCM2711 usually has several different
| voltage domains that must be supplied by the PCB
| designer, ranging from 1.2v to 3.3v.
| somebodythere wrote:
| There is a fab space shortage. The cost to manufacture
| goes up and so only the highest volume, highest margin
| chips get made.
| mjevans wrote:
| An analogy that might work for most people:
|
| Cars?
|
| Intel is one of the manufacturers of engines, but they only
| make the literal engine block, maybe some pistons too. However
| cars have all those other tubes, wires, and side bits in the
| engine compartment and in the hidden parts of the body.
|
| It's not the engine, but the specially sized and specially
| rated tubes around the engine. Those parts that everyone
| thought were dirt cheep, so people stopped making enough of
| them.
| missedthecue wrote:
| This is pretty good and helped me understand.
| incomingpain wrote:
| Haven't checked Intel's stock in quite some time. I am familiar
| with their RISC-V moves and big future plays.
|
| Market Cap 180 billion sounds great.
|
| PE ratio of 7.3...
|
| WOW. People are heavily predicting major crash on intel. Very
| nice dividend as well... so they aren't attracting people?
|
| 15 billion/year into R&D is pretty comfy.
|
| Gain on Sale of Security 6,823million
|
| Good and increasing EPS, consistently beating estimates.
|
| total assets are going up very well.
|
| total debt is going up and is a bit high.
|
| Their financials look good. I dont see why their PE ratio would
| be sooooooo low.
|
| 0.06% % of Shares Held by All Insider
|
| Oh. Intel is probably just skittering by, and it's really the
| everything bubble that's the problem? Might make sense.
|
| I think the bigger reality? They label their assets as 168
| billion and their market cap is 180 billion? Can we talk about
| bankruptcy?
| mywittyname wrote:
| Intel isn't successful in the fields that "the market" thinks
| are the future.
|
| ARM is slowly chiseling away at their market share on the
| general purpose end of the spectrum. It's pretty clear that
| Apple intends to move completely away from Intel as some point
| in the near future.
|
| Nvidia has heavily outpaced them in the AI computing space.
| Data centers are filling up with racks of five-figure Nvidia
| cards. Intel was never competitive in the gaming sector, so
| there's no evidence to suggest they could ever catch up.
|
| Even in their home turf of legacy PC chips, there is strong
| competition from AMD.
|
| I can see why people aren't expecting huge growth from Intel in
| the future. There isn't an obvious growth market that they are
| primed to take.
| specialp wrote:
| It is the same reason companies predicted to have large growth
| have higher PE multiples. A PE of 6 indicates that the market
| does not believe Intel will be able to keep this level of
| earnings in the future.
|
| Here are some of the factors: * Getting beat
| in manufacturing by TSMC * Competition in X86
| infrastructure from AMD * Centralization of the
| lucrative server market into a few very large players that are
| fabricating their own ARM based chips (IE AWS gravitron)
| * X86 no longer having the same moat as ARM mobile domination
| has made many major libraries,languages and frameworks work
| just as well with ARM. * Recent track record of failing
| to respond to such challenges in a competitive way
|
| Of course they could turn this around and keep making insane
| profits, but that is what the market is thinking at the moment.
| whatshisface wrote:
| These analyses always focus on M&A, outsourcing, and that kind of
| business stuff while completely ignoring the decades of
| disgruntled engineers that left Intel to its present fate. Intel
| engineering was mismanaged for years and now they are paying the
| price.
| pjmlp wrote:
| Because that is what matters when it comes down to money, and
| Intel has plenty of it to burn, and pattents, regardless of ARM
| and AMD groupies wish for.
| CoastalCoder wrote:
| That occasionally gets mentioned here [0]
|
| [0] https://www.thelayoff.com/intel
| fakeslimshady wrote:
| duped wrote:
| > ignoring the decades of disgruntled engineers that left Intel
| to its present fate
|
| Not to mention the layoffs of thousands of the most senior and
| experienced staff. Talk about cutting off your nose to spite
| your face.
| booi wrote:
| A lot of people look at R&D and investment in things like
| fabs and process as the way forward but I feel like what you
| mentioned is the main problem.
|
| Intel has been leaking and practically ejecting their best
| and most experienced talent to "maintain profitability". The
| brain drain will be their biggest problem and courting the
| best talent takes a lot of time and isn't something you can
| necessarily throw a bunch of money at.
| duped wrote:
| Anecdotally they are deepening their bench right now, but
| it's hard to make up for the mistakes of the past decade.
|
| Recruiting however is great for a company like Intel today,
| because of the ongoing tech crash it's getting really hard
| to get good people to join riskier companies. Intel is big,
| stable, rich, and too big to fail.
| whatshisface wrote:
| Intel also has a reputation for translating its success
| in good times to layoffs for individual engineers... so
| what does that imply about your risks at Intel in bad
| times?
| brewdad wrote:
| The largest of those layoffs happened during Intel's
| years in the wilderness when Finance guys ran the
| company. Engineers are back in the executive leadership
| now, so hopefully they understand the folly of those past
| actions.
| UncleOxidant wrote:
| Isn't this because Intel under-invested in R&D over the last
| several years and Gelsinger is (rightly, it seems) saying he
| needs to invest a bunch of money to catch up?
| mfer wrote:
| It's not just R&D. They are opening their chip making
| facilities to the designs of others and increasing their
| ability to produce chips. All of that takes capital investments
| and it's a new line of business. Much of this isn't R&D but
| about building out capacity and processes for this new area.
| ldiracdelta wrote:
| I don't think they under-invested with sheer magnitude of
| money. The money is plentiful at Intel. It seems like they need
| better leadership, which hopefully they have in Gelsinger.
| Traster wrote:
| It wasn't under-investment, it was lack of focus. They spent
| their time running after new growth opportunities at the cost
| of their core business. They wanted to do IoT (low power
| they're not particularly good at and the margins are awful), 5G
| (they had some success here) and autonomous driving (some
| success but still comparatively tiny). Meanwhile their core
| business started to fail.
| sylware wrote:
| This is stategic. Making money out of it is optional (like
| defence).
| ska wrote:
| It's arguably strategic to have domestic capacity, sure. It
| doesn't have to be Intel.
|
| Giving a company even the vague belief, let alone the
| certainty, that it won't be allowed to fail is a stunningly bad
| idea.
| lacker wrote:
| Who else can it be besides Intel? I don't think it even needs
| to be "domestic", per se, it just needs to be in a country
| that isn't extremely likely to be invaded by China.
| Symmetry wrote:
| IBM had bleeding edge fabs not too long ago and is still
| involved in the research if not the mass production side.
| bee_rider wrote:
| Hmm. I think it depends on the application. Defense isn't
| HPC, right? They can probably get by on 22nm or so for most
| applications, so GlobalFoundries might be able to handle
| it.
|
| Or, heck, Texas Instruments might be able to handle some
| chips (obviously they aren't cutting edge on the digital
| logic process node side, but they so all the funky analog
| stuff and they'll keep making a design for, like, a
| bazillion years, which may be appealing to the military).
| lvl102 wrote:
| I was bullish on Intel all of last year but I think it's
| effectively dead money until 2024-25. Between AMD and Apple,
| Intel is so far behind. Their GPU launch is also an indication
| that they are very disorganized.
| Melatonic wrote:
| Profits are still decently high and they have the capital to
| basically subsidize their own chips (as they have done in the
| past) to keep their market up.
| thunderbird120 wrote:
| I swear HN's discussions on anything Intel related are always
| bottom of the barrel. They've been very clear about their
| messaging over the past few years. They are currently spending
| large amounts of money on capital expenditures to ensure future
| competitiveness and that eats into profits. The lack of increased
| profits during this current chip shortage is not a surprise to
| anyone paying attention nor is it indicative of anything
| particularly catastrophic for Intel.
|
| From Reuters
|
| >Intel Corp expects its profit margin to drop this year and then
| be steady for several years as it invests in new technologies and
| factories to meet rising chip demand, but added it forecasts
| climbs from 2025.
| mhh__ wrote:
| Hackernews and reddit discourse seems to desperately want to
| believe the Intel vs. AMD, blue versus red, style narrative.
|
| Maybe Intel deserve it, I don't know, but it's silly to think
| these companies are your team.
| mbesto wrote:
| Agreed.
|
| > They are currently spending large amounts of money on capital
| expenditures to ensure future competitiveness and that eats
| into profits.
|
| Which is precisely why understanding more than just an Income
| Statement (i.e. Earnings) is important to understanding how
| much companies "make".
|
| Hilariously this article was published in Jan. Intel just
| (April) recorded its highest quarterly earnings ($8B).
|
| https://www.intc.com/news-events/press-releases/detail/1541/...
|
| Financial media is such a trash-heap.
| jchw wrote:
| Not seeing the bottom of the barrel discussion you're referring
| to, in fact someone else already pointed this out. However, I
| really feel like this viewpoint is too charitable still. Sure,
| they are definitely investing in R&D to stay competitive, and
| that has eaten into profits. What exactly does that say about
| their corporate strategy before recently? If you really put two
| and two together, it's hard to come up with anything but the
| most cynical answer: they cut R&D too short and maximized short
| term profits like crazy.
|
| I don't feel like it's any more reasonable to take Intel's own
| rhetoric at face value any more than NVIDIA or AMDs. They're
| all trying to paint the best picture for investors.
|
| Plus, none of this really discounts the valid points from the
| article either...
| thunderbird120 wrote:
| >What exactly does that say about their corporate strategy
| before recently?
|
| I get the impression that people think that Intel's
| stagnation after 14nm was due to complacency and the desire
| to avoid taking risks. That is literally the exact opposite
| of the truth because almost all of their problems with the
| 10nm node stemmed from it being far too ambitious. It
| incorporated a large number of extremely cutting edge
| technologies which were leaps ahead of anything else being
| attempted at the time. This over-ambition lead to nearly half
| a decade being wasted because, as it turns out, they were a
| bridge too far. If Intel had been able to pull off what they
| originally intended with 10nm when they intended it they
| would have been absurdly far ahead of all of their
| competition but unfortunately that choice actually resulted
| in them falling behind.
| Symmetry wrote:
| Word on the street is also that the 14nm death march
| resulted in a lot of engineers taking early retirement
| which left them in a worse position to pursue 10nm.
| Sakos wrote:
| From what I've heard, that was Intel's doing. They
| intentionally pushed older engineers into early
| retirement to save money.
| AlexandrB wrote:
| "These geese lay nice, gold eggs but cost too much to
| feed. Let's get rid of them."
| xadhominemx wrote:
| Well the old guard were the ones who screwed up 14nm, so
| were they really the geese?
| wtallis wrote:
| The _first_ half of their post-14nm stagnation was because
| they were overly ambitious for 10nm. But the second half of
| that era was because of their hubris, denial that things
| weren 't going to plan, and inability to adjust plans. They
| eventually admitted defeat (to some extent) and back-ported
| one of their 10nm designs to 14nm as a stopgap, but they
| started that effort at least two years later than they
| should have.
| jchw wrote:
| I'm not denying most of that, but it feels extremely one-
| sided. I feel like I'm reading Intel investor relations
| right now. I am not suggesting Intel was _not_ working on
| cutting edge technology, but so were other companies, and
| some of them succeeded where Intel failed. Meanwhile, Intel
| had multiple business units with similar issues, especially
| their modem business, and I doubt the postmortem said
| "Oops, we were too ambitious!" Bullshit. They had
| organizational issues and complacency. I'm sure 10nm was
| plagued with _many_ problems that weren't complacency too.
| That's part of the table stakes when you are in the
| business of defying physics.
|
| The financials tell a different story.
| xadhominemx wrote:
| Intel's process technology lead was the core of their
| strategy and explains 95% of what's gone wrong. The 5G
| modem design was an irrelevant sideshow that had no
| impact on 10nm.
| jchw wrote:
| I'm not suggesting the same exact thing happened, but
| it's hard to believe there weren't some overarching
| management issues going on, and it seems likely they
| contributed to problems further down the line. A couple
| blunders could've been a fluke, but I think we're past
| the "it could've been a fluke" stage.
|
| Of course, this is all pure conjecture, but nobody can
| really be all that sure. I'm sure even people at Intel
| have differing opinions about what was wrong.
| bee_rider wrote:
| In this case, we'd expect them to have gotten some R&D out
| of those overambitious failures, right? So we should hope
| to see some really snappy progress in post-10nm nodes?
| Melatonic wrote:
| People forget that around the 14nm timeline Intel was
| completely DOMINATING in terms of performance. And this was
| not THAT long ago. Will be interesting to see where
| everything is in 2 years
| Sakos wrote:
| > They've been very clear about their messaging over the past
| few years
|
| They were very clear about "finally" shipping 10nm every year
| for half a decade. Their messaging doesn't mean squat. I'm not
| sure why there are still people who believe everything Intel
| says.
| wtallis wrote:
| > nor is it indicative of anything particularly catastrophic
| for Intel.
|
| Well, it's indicative of the slow-moving catastrophe that was
| their 10nm farce. Intel is spending a lot of money to recover
| from that, because they need to make drastic changes to regain
| their dominant position. If they weren't sacrificing profits in
| a big way right now, the most reasonable expectation for their
| future would be an IBM-style slow decline from relevance.
| etempleton wrote:
| Intel stumbled pretty hard, but they seem to have self-righted.
| The fact that their stumble didn't really cost them all that
| much is a testiment to the company.
| scarface74 wrote:
| There "messaging" can be anything they want. By missing mobile,
| they are stuck just competing in the PC space which is
| minuscule compared to mobile.
|
| There are about 280 million PCs sold in a year.
|
| https://www.gartner.com/en/newsroom/press-releases/2021-01-1...
|
| Apple alone will be selling that many ARM chips in a year
| between phones, tablets, computers, set top boxes, monitors
| (the latest displays have the same processors that are in the
| iPhone 11), etc.
|
| Apple is only 15% of the phone market. All of the major cloud
| providers are trying to move to ARM wherever possible.
|
| The world is moving toward more power efficient chips.
| Something Intel can't do.
| sidewndr46 wrote:
| The reason why this comes up is Intel historically as a company
| built it's market dominance on it's manufacturing processes.
| This in turn lead to profitability.
|
| I'll use Intel's advertised sizes for processes below, but keep
| in mind that a smaller number just represents a new
| manufacturing process. Not that actual size.
|
| Intel switched to a FinFET process with its "22nm node" in
| 2011, then a few years later in 2014 switched to a "14nm node"
| that is also FinFET. That was effectively the last profitable
| manufacturing innovation for Intel. A "10nm node" certainly
| exists, but is practically a black hole of money when you
| consider the time invested on it and just how far behind they
| are at this point.
|
| The only concrete thing Intel did to address this was to just
| rename all their process nodes to be smaller. That's basically
| it. A few years from now is a full decade that Intel will have
| spent without actually introducing a new profitable
| manufacturing process. You can make all the press releases you
| want about how it'll be profitable "one day", it doesn't change
| the fact that Intel can't really seem to design new
| manufacturing processes.
|
| Intel effectively watched the manufacturing technology move
| past them and shrugged. The proposed solution to this is to
| spend several more years doing basically the same thing, but
| this time they'll hope they get it right. This is magical
| thinking.
| phkahler wrote:
| And they renamed 10nm to Intel 7, but it is not EUV. Both
| TSMC and Samsung have moved to EUV, and until Intel does as
| well they are going to remain behind. All that money spent is
| nice, but until they start taking delivery of tons of
| equipment from ASML it's not going to help them at the
| leading edge.
| selectodude wrote:
| EUV is a tool, not a process. TSMC N5 isn't 100 percent EUV
| either. Intel can hit similar feature sizes with Intel 7 as
| TSMC can but it requires more steps, hitting their margins
| and lowering their yields. The chips that come out of the
| other end are equivalent though.
| avs733 wrote:
| > EUV is a tool, not a process.
|
| It's kinda both. To be clear, EUV directly refers to a
| specific type of lithography equipment, ones using
| extreme UV light sources. However, those changes come
| with a lot of changes in larger process flow that are all
| inter-related.
|
| The change in EUV means smaller lithography lines, and
| also means needing photo resist, etching, cleaning, etc.
| - many other process steps, that support that size
| change. Add in that now, with EUV lithography, you are
| operating lithography under vacuum and its a _huge
| challenge_. Suddenly you have to have vacuum ready
| materials.
|
| One of Intel's mid 2010 wins was getting immersion litho
| to work better than peers - similar thing just wet wafers
| rather than vacuum wafers.
|
| EUV is a tool/technology, one used only on critical
| layers where that precision matters (e.g., gate
| patterning). But the larger (entire) manufacturing
| process has to be designed to enable the use of that
| tool/technology.
| ENOTTY wrote:
| EUV is coming with the Intel 4 process node. Intel is also
| the lead customer for ASML's High-NA EUV, which is supposed
| to be the next generation EUV.
| bcrl wrote:
| Leading edge processes are not where the shortage exists --
| it's trailing process nodes that are used heavily for
| support chips and automotive. Support chips like voltage
| regulators sure as hell don't need a 5nm or 7nm process,
| but they are critical components to any piece of
| electronics being able to ship. Older processes are ideal
| for these needs because they are very well characterized /
| understood, making them excellent for chips with an analog
| component. And older processes were cheap until demand
| exceeded supply.
|
| Edit: and Intel doesn't and won't play into the market for
| support chips. There's no way in hell that they can support
| Intel's required profit margins.
| picture wrote:
| To add on: Older processes also have lower static current
| consumption due to less leakage from bigger features.
| They are quantitatively better in many applications for
| low power or high precision.
| Melatonic wrote:
| I don't think the average user or custom cares all that much
| about what node they are actually on. Yes, of course battery
| life and efficiency matters. But if Intel can make some
| decent incremental improvements I just don't see them
| completely going away.
|
| AMD and Intel have been trading the throne for years and
| every single time everyone says one of them is about to die.
| Yet here we are.
| guelo wrote:
| I wouldn't say they shrugged, they tried but this stuff is
| hard. It was an engineering failure. Though engineering
| failures are often caused by organizational failures.
| sidewndr46 wrote:
| Not just engineering. I listened to an earning's call once.
| The CFO or someone in that area was claiming that "14nm was
| the most profitable process ever!". My thought was "well
| yes, it's also the most long lived process. I'd hope you
| haven't been operating at a loss for all these years"
| mfer wrote:
| There is a balance a business needs to keep. Under spend on
| your future (e.g., R&D) and you'll have higher profits. Until
| you don't have something great to sell in a few years. It's
| short term. Over spend on the future and you won't have money
| for your share holders which they won't like.
|
| Intel is expanding what they do (i.e. fabing chips for others).
| This is a business opportunity that wan't overly visible a few
| years ago. Global economics have changed and that presents a
| new opportunity they are positioned for and jumping on.
|
| They also under invested in R&D. Many companies do and go
| through cycles of it. They are playing some catch up. But, they
| seem to be serious about it which is good in many respects.
|
| If you're a short term share holder you might not like it
| because there are lower short term profits. If you're a long
| term share holder you might like it because they'll have a more
| diverse portfolio and better future product (and sales)
| potential.
| scarface74 wrote:
| Fabing for others has been visible for decades. Apple tried
| to get Intel to fab its ARM processors in 2007. But Intel
| thought that the margins were too small.
| [deleted]
| colinmhayes wrote:
| Also, it's really not like Intel is doing badly profit wise.
| They made $20 billion last year. That is 125% of AMDs entire
| revenue and 75% of nvda's. All this talk of growth opportunity
| for nvda/amd seems to ignore that the pretty much best case
| scenario for them is to become what intel already is
| profitability wise.
| knotofvipers wrote:
| They also only have a P/E of 7.3 with a 3.3% dividend yield.
| whatshisface wrote:
| That's stock market language for low expected growth in a
| company that is doing OK now but doesn't look good in the
| future.
| scarface74 wrote:
| More like 11.2 billion in free cash flow
|
| https://www.intc.com/news-events/press-
| releases/detail/1522/...
| carlycue wrote:
| Intel is done. Gelsinger can do his best to rally the troops but
| it's too late to catch up with Apple Silicon. The M1 came out in
| 2020 and Intel is still unable to match it. The M2 is coming this
| year, leaving Intel ever further behind.
| mugivarra69 wrote:
| malfist wrote:
| Apparently not benchmarks
| ejb999 wrote:
| then again, not everyone runs on a mac, and won't be anytime
| soon.
| xwdv wrote:
| Doesn't matter.
| ejb999 wrote:
| right, because the millions of computers in corporate
| America running windows are all just going to be thrown out
| and converted to m1/m2 macs.
|
| I prefer mac, and use them everyday, but the prediction of
| the death of intel are premature. They don't need to be
| faster than M1s or M2s, they just need to be at least as
| fast, or faster than what people need them to be to surf
| the web, create spreadsheets and power points and run all
| that legacy enterprise software that only runs on windows.
|
| Macs are better, but they are much more expensive on
| average; were I work (mega-corp), I can order a new windows
| machine whenever I want - if I need to get or upgrade my
| mac, it needs to be justified and approved two levels up
| from me, and really only developers and some graphics folks
| ever get approval - and my company probably buys/replaces
| 30K-40K machines every year 99% of which are running
| windows on intel.
| [deleted]
| dboreham wrote:
| I'm so old I've seen many of these cycles where some new CPU
| blew everything else away and everyone said the competitors
| were done. Most of these "competitor-killer" CPUs are not even
| remembered today (HP PA-7000 anyone?)
| pram wrote:
| PA-RISC will be remembered forever in the hearts of many:
|
| https://youtu.be/VLTh4uVJduI
| scarface74 wrote:
| The difference is their competitors neither had the volume or
| the margins to stay competitive. Mobile is much larger than
| desktop/server.
| sophacles wrote:
| Intel even did it to themselves. Itanium was supposed to be
| an x86 killer iirc.
| booi wrote:
| Itanium didn't work but not only because of hardware. They
| didn't invest nearly enough in developer relations,
| compiler tech, contributions to other compilers and working
| with Microsoft to ensure a good landing spot for their
| tech.
|
| That and huge die sizes which in turn resulted in high
| prices just didn't make it competitive considering all the
| other stuff.
| madengr wrote:
| Remnant44 wrote:
| It's extremely possible for a product to be strictly dominated
| by another on technical merits and still be successful.
|
| "Intel is done" because Apple produced a great chip focuses on
| only one small (albeit very important!) part of the puzzle.
| intricatedetail wrote:
| I hate Apple, but every time I run something resource intensive
| on my laptop and it starts to sound like a plane going to take
| off I go to Apple.com and hover over Check out button. Once
| there is a reliable way to run Linux on M1/2 I'll switch.
| tails4e wrote:
| If you run msoffice apps on a mac you'll be burning cpu like
| no ones business. I've a 2019 macbook pro 16, fans rev up
| regularly as excel (or power point, or word..) is using 100%
| cpu. The mac window manager process is a hog also. Honestly I
| switched to mac for work assuming "it just works" , but
| unfortunately it does not. M1 are likely better, but not
| overly impressed on the SW side.
| scarface74 wrote:
| Why do you think that Linux would run as fast or efficiently
| on an M1 Mac as an operating system that was designed from
| the ground up to run well on it?
| didibus wrote:
| I don't think it's about running faster, clearly OP wants
| to use Linux over MacOS, same for me. For dev work Linux is
| still king, and I happen to also personally prefer the KDE
| UX over MacOS.
|
| So while Mac laptops are great hardware wise, it doesn't
| run the software I want, so that's why I'm still buying
| laptops made for Windows.
| pjmlp wrote:
| Except when dev work means anything related to graphics
| programming, than the king is naked.
| marcosdumay wrote:
| > graphics programming
|
| You mean as in Vulcan and games, or rendering? Linux is
| your best choice unless you are using some Windows first
| framework like Unity. (AFAIK there is no OS X first one.)
| pjmlp wrote:
| That answer only reveals the lack of knowledge of the
| state of the art in GUI and 3D graphics tooling in
| general.
|
| To your information all relevant middleware supports
| Metal, like Unity and Unreal.
|
| Isn't great that the "best choice" needs to rely on
| workarounds like Proton, and Electron apps, and gets zero
| ports from Android/Linux.
| sorry_outta_gas wrote:
| I'm not so sure about that I work in graphics and we're
| 99% linux
| pjmlp wrote:
| Welcome to the 1% of the desktop market in games and
| graphics, the market worthy of a king.
| marcosdumay wrote:
| Hum... You know you don't need to program on the same
| platform that your game will run, right? (I still don't
| know what you mean by "graphics", since it's not games.)
|
| Otherwise creating a mobile game would be pretty insane.
| lvl102 wrote:
| For devs, MacOS is still pia. Asahi is still far behind. I
| just don't get why Apple wouldn't embrace Linux. Who's
| stopping that from happening now that Jobs is gone?
| scarface74 wrote:
| What benefit does Apple get by "embracing Linux"?
|
| And more "devs" are using Macs than Linux so it must not
| be too bad. That's not even to mention that Android
| developers are saying Macs are fasted for development
| than x86 PCs and of course iOS developers are using Macs.
|
| What benefit is there in "embracing Linux" for Apple?
| Better software? Better hardware support? Popularity?
| namelessoracle wrote:
| Intel got MBA'ed just like most American companies. Will be
| interesting if/when it will happen to Apple.
| xadhominemx wrote:
| Intel's woes were caused by poor engineering decisions. Apple
| has been run by MBAs for 10 years and is more successful than
| ever.
| MichaelZuo wrote:
| No, Apple's top leadership are all operations people or
| engineers, plus general counsel. The fact that some spent 2
| years at an mba school doesn't make them forget their 4 years
| of industrial engineering/operations/supply chain undergrad.
|
| Way different from most people who get MBAs.
| jonplackett wrote:
| Question: why is it that Intel can't just poach a bunch of the
| best TSMC engineers and catch up that way?
|
| Is it a lack of knowledge how to do this manufacturing? Or is it
| more like a skills shortage of engineers to do the actual
| manufacturing?
|
| Where exactly is it in the process that they can't compete, and
| why is it so hard to catch up, given their virtually infinite R&D
| budget.
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