
Samsung ends Intel's 2-decade-plus reign in microchips - rgbrenner
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/A/AS_SAMSUNG_INTEL?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2017-07-27-21-04-50
======
gogopuppygogo
Let's be fair. Intel did more to end Intel's reign than any other company.

~~~
ksec
Intel acquisitions:

McAfee - Why?

Havok - Why?

Infineon Technologies - .............

Altera - Make Sense but not proving anything ( yet )

Mobileye - Make Sense but they needed to prove they can complete under Intel (
They were doing fine before being acquired )

SSD Contoller - For a specific range of uses ( QD1 )in DC, otherwise no longer
competitive.

Baseband Modem, 7 years since acquiring Infineon, their modem is still fabbed
on TSMC!

They could have worked with Apple on Fabbing their SoC, they had the past 3 -
4 years to decide and make the move. Now Apple is pretty much all the way with
TSMC till 2019.

Where is Knight Corner / Landing / Hill? May be they are on the market
somewhere, but is Nvidia out numbering them 20:1? Or even more?

May be they will milk the x86 for Desktop and Server for as long as they
could. But Zen is coming, they have no growth area, what's next?

~~~
eonwe
McAfee at least seemed to me like Intel executives didn't know what to do with
the money they had, but didn't want to return it to the shareholders.

Instead it was burnt on a company in dying industry selling bad products.

~~~
ksec
Well, they could have turned it into a half decent product. Instead it lets it
limp along while Symantec continues to improve.

P.S - Sorry lots of spelling mistake in the original post.

------
dis-sys
Intel worked very hard to earn this. For the last decade, they basically did
nothing, it was so bad to the extent that you can dig out a 10-years old Q6600
then get yourself a decent nvidia video card and still hit 60fps on average on
latest triple-A game titles.

[https://www.techspot.com/article/1313-intel-q6600-ten-
years-...](https://www.techspot.com/article/1313-intel-q6600-ten-years-later/)

~~~
mkesper
Hmm, the article states the ten years old Q6600 won't cut it, but

"Soldiering on with its undying attitude, the 2500K consistently out-edged the
i3-6100 and in titles such as Overwatch and Total War: Warhammer, the Sandy
Bridge quad-core stayed several steps ahead. Considering how heavily the 2500K
can be overclocked, those who invested in this processor six years [ago] are
probably still grinning today."

~~~
seabrookmx
i7-920 in my home machine here. Maxed out at 24GB of RAM for when I run a
handful of VMs. But I'm not planning on upgrading anytime soon! Handles
Overwatch and pubg just fine too.

~~~
0x4a42
I have the same i7-920 (overclocked at 3GHz) with 12Gb RAM. I have it since
2008 and I'm not planning to replace it anytime soon.

~~~
stephengillie
i7-860 (2.8ghz) and it's been "put to stud" as my web/SQL server, gaming
server (Minecraft/ARK/whatever), and hosts my bot, from a closet in my
apartment. The only reason I upgraded was to get something stock 3+ GHz, with
a newer motherboard for a 1080.

~~~
seabrookmx
Mine's OC'd to 3.66ghz, but I also added a SATA3 and USB 3.1 expansion card
which has helped to keep it current.

I think this is as far as I can take it though. It'll never be able to boot
off an NVMe drive, which I'll definitely grab for my next machine. My XPS 15
has one and there's a subtle but noticeable difference in snappy-ness.

------
sevensor
This is a nonsensical comparison. It lumps together three different kinds of
ICs: DRAM, NAND flash, and CPUs. Samsung is in no danger of beating Intel in
the CPU market any time soon, and Intel long since yielded the DRAM and NAND
flash markets. The semiconductor is brutally cyclical. Right now memory is up.
Samsung and Intel are both well aware that the wheel will continue to turn,
and that the reward for complacency is annihilation. That's why they're both
ruthlessly unsentimental about exiting markets in which they can't profit.

------
sanxiyn
In Q1 2017, Samsung had 44.8% market share in DRAM, and 35.4% market share in
NAND Flash. Two adds up to more than 10 billion dollars in a quarter.

[http://www.dramexchange.com/WeeklyResearch/Post/2/4675.html](http://www.dramexchange.com/WeeklyResearch/Post/2/4675.html)
[http://www.dramexchange.com/WeeklyResearch/Post/2/4686.html](http://www.dramexchange.com/WeeklyResearch/Post/2/4686.html)

------
robertelder
I watched this video yesterday, and it seems to explain a lot about how Intel
has been less focused on building better technology in the last 10-15 years:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=osSMJRyxG0k](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=osSMJRyxG0k)

I'm not sure how balanced the viewpoint in the video is, but the author comes
up with a lot of references.

------
purpleidea
If Intel wants to get us excited about their chips these days, they're going
to have to start releasing more firmware and microcode so that we can start
trusting their products again.

I'd rather run South Korean tech than anything the United States produces
these days. It's sad that politics, and the threat of government spying is
hurting their tech industry.

~~~
mrkrabo
Do you think most people care about this? If it did we would have a completely
open architecture by now with lots of products already on shelves. But we
don't, because nobody cares.

~~~
aianus
I'm surprised the big clouds (which have to be some of the biggest, most
profitable customers of x86 chips) don't push for this.

~~~
jgowdy
Do you honestly think that Google and Amazon don't have full control of the
firmware that runs on their boards and chips, including microcode? Both Google
and Amazon are literally buying customized CPUs from Intel for their clouds.

------
gigatexal
What are Samsung’s gross margins if their operating margins are about 50%?!

~~~
vonmoltke
That's just semiconductors, which are about half their profit but only about a
quarter of their revenue. Their overall gross margin is 46.9% and their op
margin is about 25%.

------
deepnotderp
In all honesty, Samsung owes its success to Intel here.

