
Deliberate excellence: Why Intel leads the world in semiconductor manufacturing - evo_9
http://www.extremetech.com/computing/127987-deliberate-excellence-why-intel-leads-the-world-in-semiconductor-manufacturing
======
Tmmrn
I would have expected that the article would at least mention that Intel has
been sued for partially even illegal anti competitive behaviour:

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel#Anti-
competitive_allegati...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel#Anti-
competitive_allegations)

------
excuse-me
There is a downside to this - and one which could cause Intel to fall off a
wall.

Their tick-tock method of introducing a new product and then half-way through
it's life switching it to a small design rule to get a speed and cost benefit
as you introduce the next bigger chip is really great - so long as you can
make the design rules smaller AND the world wants bigger more powerful
versions of the same chip

But it prevented them stepping back and designing a crude little 30K
transistor RISC processor from a blank sheet - which later goes onto rule the
world.

~~~
kryptiskt
> But it prevented them stepping back and designing a crude little 30K
> transistor RISC processor from a blank sheet - which later goes onto rule
> the world.

It's unfair to tick-tock to blame it for their failure to preempt ARM, it is
far more recent than that. It's not that Intel hasn't tried to wean away folks
from x86 with novel and innovative blank-sheet architectures. They tried with
ipx432, i860 and Itanic, but all were expensive and well-deserved failures. It
certainly seems like Intel engineers need the constraints of the x86 ISA to
keep their wild impulses in check.

~~~
fidotron
It's not recent at all. Ironically the ARM exists at all because Intel
wouldn't let anyone license the 286 design, and at one point Intel had a
license to make StrongARMs, which they willingly gave up.

Intel are simply an example of brute force in action.

~~~
jasonwatkinspdx
It's irrational to expect a business to get every decision about the future
correct.

