
Intel’s new boss wants to teach the chipmaker new tricks - js2
https://www.economist.com/business/2019/05/11/intels-new-boss-wants-to-teach-the-chipmaker-new-tricks
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Traster
> firms from Microsoft to Facebook to Tesla have begun designing custom chips
> specialised for the sorts of number-crunching their businesses need.

>That is unlikely to harm Intel directly, since such accelerator chips are
complements to its server chips, not replacements.

This is just straight down the line wrong. In the data centre there is just
'compute' it doesn't matter if it's a GPU or CPU doing the compute. What does
matter is that if you're doing all your compute on a GPU or ASIC then the CPU
you're buying can be a lightweight chip just to do a little control &
synchronization. Intel doesn't make huge money on those chips. It's the
massive 512core 100GHz monsters where it's making the most cash. So these
custom solutions absolutely present a threat to Intel's server revenue.

As well as that Tesla are going for ASIC in their car. Automotive was a key
growth area for Intel which is one of the reason s it bought Altera and
MobilEye. If they miss automotive (which they will given most big movers are
on Nvidia platforms with ASICs coming after, and Intel is failing in their fab
business).

>he hopes to continue Mr Krzanich’s strategy of expanding the firm’s reach.

Intel cannot execute on this until Intel's culture changes. The problem they
have is they're trying to cost cut in legacy businesses whilst investing for
growth in new businesses. Firstly this pisses off the legacy businesses like
you wouldn't believe. Secondly, legacy business spends it's entire time
dressing up in make-up and a new dress and screaming "Look at me! I'm a growth
area!". And finally, the actual growth areas are hamstrung by inappropriate
cost-saving, 1-size fits all management and spending 99% of their time trying
to persuade the rest of the business they really are a growth area.

Intel is just not set up to win new markets.

~~~
robomartin
This is a classic The Innovators Dilemma scenario, as described in the book
back in the ‘90’s. If the people running Intel read the book and understand
the problem they’ll know what to do. Otherwise the opening will be there for
someone (Nvidia) to take the ball, run with it and own the industry.

Being aware of history is important. Very few things in business are new once
you distill things down to their essence.

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cameldrv
Overall Intel's future looks bleak. Finance guy at the helm usually means
milking existing markets and a slow decline. The bright spot IMO is Mobileye.
I think that there is a good chance that they will end up the dark horse AV
leader.

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theparanoid
I'm bearish on Intel. The culture is conservative and unwilling to compete
with FANG on pay for employees.

~~~
CoolGuySteve
It’s funny you mention that since Intel was involved in antitrust lawsuits
along with Apple and Google for conspiring to wage fix.

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-
Tech_Employee_Antitrust...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-
Tech_Employee_Antitrust_Litigation#Civil_class_action)

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baybal2
I don't see much new tricks here: he moves Intel as a business into the safe
harbour of "enterprise" products a specialty server hardware that nobody, but
easily upsellable corporate clients will buy.

~~~
bhouston
Easily upsellable corp clients have lots of money. Intel is a sitting duck to
disruption of all types.

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js2
paywall workaround - [https://outline.com/3aH5Su](https://outline.com/3aH5Su)

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ethbro
Not a good start when you count 4 incorrect statements in the first few
paragraphs of the article.

~~~
sanxiyn
What are those statements?

~~~
ethbro
Generally lazy writing or attempting to jazz up the piece without enough
expertise to know when you've changed the meaning.

"Intel dominates the market for chips that power desktop PCs." It has a bit
over 85% market share, in a two-player market. Furthermore, because they
didn't say CPU like they should have, they're technically inaccurate. Intel
network PHYs don't "dominant" consumer boards, last I checked.

"demand for server chips is growing, propelled by the profusion of internet-
connected gizmos, from smartphones to cars." Really? IoT is the catalyst?

"missed the arrival of the smartphone" Unfair and reductive. Intel didn't
"miss" the smartphone: it saw it coming, didn't have a product that fit,
looked at the margins, and didn't think it was worth investing. That probably
wasn't a bad move in hindsight.

"GPUs, specialised chips designed for video-game graphics" That tortures the
definition of a different microarchitecture.

"And its manufacturing technology, which used to advance with such metronomic
regularity that Intel called its business plan “tick-tock”"

This was it for me. Intel _literally_ moved to the tick-tock cadency _because_
Moore's Law was slowing down. Before, it was just an unending stream of
process shrinks. Tick-tock accepted that there was now time for an entire
microarchitecture update between process shrinks.

"The firm’s latest generation of products, built on its “ten nanometre”
manufacturing process" Also, since when do we air quote measurements?

~~~
pjc50
Intel did try to get into phones, they just failed. I have one of the Asus
ZenFones with an Intel processor running x86 Android.

~~~
ethbro
They tried, but the power-optimized Atoms were still a hedged bet. They threw
some spaghetti at the wall to see if it would stick, while keeping the core
suitable for other markets if it didn't.

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toomuchequate
I don't see any experienced programmer making an investment in an Apple
language(unless they are being paid).

If you are old enough, you have been jerked around by Apple enough to know
better.

Expecting $500$+ dev packages in the next 10 years from Apple.

~~~
ksec
What has this got to do with Apple?

