
Why did Intel kill off their modem program? - Symmetry
https://semiaccurate.com/2019/04/18/why-did-intel-kill-of-their-modem-program/
======
rathel
Apparently Intel's cable modem SoCs (Puma 6) are garbage as well,
demonstrating ridiculous jitter level.

[https://www.badmodems.com/](https://www.badmodems.com/)

I'm also an unfortunate owner of an Arris box. If only the person who showed
me this website could have done it a few years ago...

~~~
rootusrootus
Some Arris boxes are affected, not all. I have a SB8200 which uses the
Broadcom chip. Also the SB6183 is fine. The one you want to avoid is the
SB6190.

~~~
X-Istence
I've been using the SB6190, and I haven't had any issues with latency or
jitters. Even all of the testing didn't show any issues.

Mine is a hardware version 3 though.

~~~
manderley
The issue will absolutely show up. Just download pingplotter and set the
interval to 0.3 seconds. The latest firmware simply mitigates the problem a
bit, all Puma 6 chips are affected.

It's most noticeable in online games, for regular usage, you probably won't
see much of a problem.

------
fspeech
The analysis that Intel’s lower peak throughput makes the iPhone 30% less
efficient with spectrum stands on very shaky grounds. The effect needs to be
coupled with the probability that 1gb rate is actually allocatable to a phone:
which requires exceedingly favorable conditions and is therefore rare in
common usage. Secondly even when peak rate is available but not utilized the
impact to spectrum efficiency tends to be minimal as the unused capacity can
be allocated to other users (a complete analysis is complicated as it depends
on the figure of merit that carriers use). There’s no way carriers would even
accept a 10% reduction in bandwidth efficiency, even from Apple.

------
et2o
Can anyone explain or point to a resource for why is was so difficult for
Intel to make a competitive modem?

Is it technical, IP-related, or both?

~~~
umvi
My guess is that it's mostly IP-related. You can't use any of Qualcomm's
patents when designing a modem, and they have a _ton_ of modem-related
patents, including lots of the "common sense" solutions anyone would discover
while developing a modem. Hence, you have to develop a modem with two arms
tied behind your back which is quite difficult.

~~~
csours
Could Intel talk publicly about this if they wanted to? Is the fear of
lawsuits so great that they just don't want to talk about it?

Living in the information age is great! I just wish I had more information.

~~~
nix0n
Saying publicly "our modems are bad because..." is probably not a great way to
sell more modems.

Once they're out of the business, they have no incentive to say why, they just
focus on other things.

Since Intel has not always played fair against AMD, they don't really want to
talk about anticompetitive business practices in a market they're exiting
anyhow.

------
orev
When Intel announced they were closing the division immediately after Apple’s
settlement, I just assumed the whole point of Intel being in the market was to
give Apple some leverage over Qualcomm. Possibly in return for delaying the
Mac switchover to ARM a few years.

------
ggm
I know, like, and respect Qualcomm engineers so it pains me to say I have
qualms about ownership of IPR so fundamental to RF comms like this.

I'm seriously unconvinced it's serving a wider public interest. LTE is a
standard. It should be RAND to implement good FPGA for it.

------
frandroid
> so each phone shipped with about $100K of slush funds wrapped around it. I
> have the phone, I would have preferred a house.

> Update April 18, 2019 @ 8:18am: My math is off, it is closer to $10K/phone,
> $8750 to be exact. I will still take the cash option.

yikes!!

------
davidmr
“On top of this the Intel modems consumed vastly more energy to do their
slower work than Qualcomm, a trend that SemiAccurate has personally measured
in the labs across multiple generations of Intel modems but is not at liberty
to disclose exact figures on, sorry.”

Why not? Presumably they would be opening themselves up to some liability?

~~~
x0x0
A guess -- they do market intelligence on contract, and the customer that paid
for the work (competitors, large investors trying to figure out bets on
qualcomm, etc) didn't agree to have the data shared.

~~~
fragmede
Phrased differently: paid through the nose for the exclusive rights to the
results of the investigation.

------
HocusLocus
As soon as I loaded the page and glanced that "lookie here it's real!" tone of
the photos I resolved to Photoshop some goofy something onto an Intel chip as
a joke. IMAGINE MY SURPRISE when the article turned out to feature photo
fakery!

------
leandrod
Echoes of Risc & VLIW: i432AX, i80860, i80960, Itanic… Intel killed its good
non-x86 products, coincidentally all grown out of itself: DEC Alpha, the
StrongARM. SSD quality is a joke. The Register must be having a field day too.

------
mrweasel
Besides Qualcomm who else is left producing 4G/5G modems?

~~~
ksec
Huawei, Samsung, Mediatek, Unisoc ( Spreadtrum ), Intel and Apple in the
future.

If you exclude Unisoc and Intel, the other could represent a total of up to
70% Smartphone Market. That is assuming Mediatek continues to dominate the
lower end, and the top 3 vendor, Samsung, Huawei, Apple's market share are
stable.

There are quite a few other players focusing on M2M LTE solution.

------
gsich
Hiding shit behind AT-commands not disclosed to the public is one thing that
sucked with Intel modems.

------
gsich
Having NDAs (you still find the information) on AT-commands is one reason why
they sucked. But Qualcomm is not any better.

------
systemBuilder
Intel laid off most of their CPU designers 5 years ago. That's when their CPUs
became frozen in time and it's when the marketing morons took over the
executive boardroom. It is well known that they are mostly a semiconductor
physics shop and don't have a clue about how to design circuits or software.
The challenge of making a good modem is mostly in the handoff software (most
calls are in some sort of handoff most of the time) and software is the Intel
Achilles Heel.

~~~
acdha
That’s a lot of big claims with nary a citation in sight. Their software might
not be consistently amazing (you might want to demonstrate that you understand
how many different things they work on) but it’s not clueless and I’d
especially want to see support for the idea that they don’t know how to design
circuits. I mean, AMD is competitive now but they sure seem to be working hard
at it – are they clueless too?

