Intel CES 2014...what the?

[WaitingForNehalem]

I just could not believe what I was watching and was at a loss of words. Intel, the world's greatest chip maker, spent both of their CES presentations showing off gimmicky gadgets that had absolutely nothing to do with their core business. I've never seen a company actively try to kill their main source of revenue. It is as if some Intel execs walked through a street in Hong Kong and said, "these gadgets are cool!". Are "smart" headphones and an augmented reality app really the answer? What is happening to Intel? The difference between the Intel and Nvidia presentations, both mobile focused, is night and day.

This is what an analyst said about the presentation:

“I think it shows a direction more than finished product,” said Nathan Brookwood, an analyst at Insight 64, a market analyst firm. “I was a little disappointed because a lot of things Intel showed are things Qualcomm has been showing for years.”
He added, “It was unusual as a presentation for intel because they talked so little about technology. I’m not sure this is the future of the PC.”

http://venturebeat.com/2014/01/06/intel-shows-off-gesture-control-games-on-the-pc/


Watch for yourselves:

"Computing is Everywhere" http://intelstudios.edgesuite.net/ces/2014/press/index.html

Keynote
http://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/events/intel-ces-keynote.html


I still don't understand how Intel expects to be more profitable by selling tons of dirt cheap Quarks. The volume they would have to ship would be enormous. What is stopping a company like Mediatek from undercutting them?

 

[Maximilian]

So basically Intel are saying we got nothing in the bag... but check out this cool stuff?

 

[BallaTheFeared]

The end is near. We had a good run, the time to find new hobby is quickly approching.

Intel doesn't care about desktop users.

 

[meloz]

Are "smart" headphones and an augmented reality app really the answer? What is happening to Intel?

Intel are rich enough that they can afford to be silly. They can throw money at all sort of things and see what sticks. Look at their acquisition of McAfee.

Their mobile solution (Atom) is already stronger than what nvidia has to offer, and is only going to get stronger with time. The iGPU could use improvement but it is not bad enough to turn away consumers. If Intel do not beat nvidia -and more importantly Qualcomm- in mobile segment it will be because of their short-sighted profit margin obsession, and not because they spent some billions on useless PR fluff like apps and such.

Technically Intel have nothing to fear from likes of nvidia. nvidia is the one getting squeezed out of existence: the upper end is taken by Qualcomm and soon Intel. Low end is being conquered by the likes of Mediatek. nvidia's traditional GPU stronghold faces fresh erosion every 12-18 months as Intel releases new generation of CPUs and iGPU continues to get stronger.

And nvidia's linux kernel support is non-existent unlike Intel which has well documented and supported drivers. nvidia are still sucking upto Microsoft to see if they can get some form of 'Windows on ARM' thing going. And thus they are doomed. Intel could still do much better, though, if only they would quit focusing on profit margins.

 

[DaZeeMan]

So I skimmed over the blog notes for the Intel presentation. While the implantable chips, wearable computers, and such were nice ideas, I didn't see much 'meat' in the notes, just a lot of ideas.

I did watch the AMD Press Conference. AMD presented a lot of 'hard' stuff during their conference. And although the Monster demo thingie was apparently in a side gallery, it was cool to see LeVar Burton and Lisa discussing the evolution towards a holodeck. There was a lot of stuff in the AMD presentation (although us techie types here already knew about a lot of it beforehand). Overall, I found the AMD presentation very enjoyable and with some useful information.

The NVidia coverage seemed a little dry as well, although the K1 looks like a definite winner for them.

So AMD was more 'flashy' I guess is the takeaway. No question that Intel and NVidia have strong lineups, especially with NVidia's next video card refresh not being all that far away, but Intel in particular I expected more from presentation wise...

They dominate the market though, so it isn't like their presentation is going to matter much in the grand scheme of things...

 

[NTMBK]

It's the Consumer Electronics Show, so they brought along some silly consumer-oriented fluff. Which sells better to the average Joe- "14nm transistors", or "this laptop has a Kinect built in!" ?

 

[mrmt]

I just could not believe what I was watching and was at a loss of words. Intel, the world's greatest chip maker, spent both of their CES presentations showing off gimmicky gadgets that had absolutely nothing to do with their core business.

If there is something Otelini can be blamed in his term as CEO is to have neglected the mobile market. He didn't give the chip Apple wanted for the iPhone, he kept Atom in the back burner for too long and he started with modems too late. Krzanich is trying to show Intel new direction, and that this new direction is mobile and wearable.Intel has to court partners for these ventures, this is why you are seeing CES devoted to them.

The reason for that is Moore's law. Every single Intel node in the past was used to make more chips than the previous node. Intel has more CAPEX, but more units to spread this CAPEX so in the end costs for the consumer is smaller and profits to Intel are bigger.

But how do you think Intel is going to foot 10nm and 7nm bills with a stagnant PC market? That's right, they can't, and with Microsoft, Apple, Google, Samsung all pushing the consumer market to exclusively mobile, there isn't much Intel can do except to bring a significant share of the mobile pie to their fabs otherwise their business model is done for.

 

[ancientarcher]

Intel are rich enough that they can afford to be silly. They can throw money at all sort of things and see what sticks. Look at their acquisition of McAfee.

Their mobile solution (Atom) is already stronger than what nvidia has to offer, and is only going to get stronger with time. The iGPU could use improvement but it is not bad enough to turn away consumers. If Intel do not beat nvidia -and more importantly Qualcomm- in mobile segment it will be because of their short-sighted profit margin obsession, and not because they spent some billions on useless PR fluff like apps and such.

Technically Intel have nothing to fear from likes of nvidia. nvidia is the one getting squeezed out of existence: the upper end is taken by Qualcomm and soon Intel. Low end is being conquered by the likes of Mediatek. nvidia's traditional GPU stronghold faces fresh erosion every 12-18 months as Intel releases new generation of CPUs and iGPU continues to get stronger.

And nvidia's linux kernel support is non-existent unlike Intel which has well documented and supported drivers. nvidia are still sucking upto Microsoft to see if they can get some form of 'Windows on ARM' thing going. And thus they are doomed. Intel could still do much better, though, if only they would quit focusing on profit margins.

sorry, are you on crack mate?

Their iGPU in Atom is stronger than Nvidia's? Which parallel reality are you surviving in mate? And Intel hasn't been able to beat Nvidia and Qcom because of their obsessiveness with profit, seriously?? not for the lack of trying, they have been churning out one after another sh*t product, the glowing reports in anandtech notwithstanding. and now, the only partners they can find for the atom range are their PC partners (presumably after bribing those partners with discounts in the PC line of chips)- Asus, Acer, is there anyone else???

for the record, obsessiveness with profit has killed a lot of companies. Kodak was very profitable in the 90s too. ever heard of something called disruption from the bottom? the thing that Intel did to RISC processors back in the 90s? yep? the same thing is happening to Intel now...

More importantly what the CES presentation shows - the diversion with shiny things rather than focusing on what is truly important, is that it wastes management time. They may afford to waste a billion here and a billion there (but then pretty soon that amounts to real money), but the time of top class engineers/top management is not unlimited. If BK decides to talk about quark and camera and all that stuff, where is his focus?? where's he and his top management team spending their time? on shiny new cameras and watches or on chips?

 

[mikk]

Looks like we have to wait the the next IDF to get some meaningful answers to their next gen products.

 

[NTMBK]

sorry, are you on crack mate?

Their iGPU in Atom is stronger than Nvidia's? Which parallel reality are you surviving in mate? And Intel hasn't been able to beat Nvidia and Qcom because of their obsessiveness with profit, seriously?? not for the lack of trying, they have been churning out one after another sh*t product, the glowing reports in anandtech notwithstanding. and now, the only partners they can find for the atom range are their PC partners (presumably after bribing those partners with discounts in the PC line of chips)- Asus, Acer, is there anyone else???

for the record, obsessiveness with profit has killed a lot of companies. Kodak was very profitable in the 90s too. ever heard of something called disruption from the bottom? the thing that Intel did to RISC processors back in the 90s? yep? the same thing is happening to Intel now...

More importantly what the CES presentation shows - the diversion with shiny things rather than focusing on what is truly important, is that it wastes management time. They may afford to waste a billion here and a billion there (but then pretty soon that amounts to real money), but the time of top class engineers/top management is not unlimited. If BK decides to talk about quark and camera and all that stuff, where is his focus?? where's he and his top management team spending their time? on shiny new cameras and watches or on chips?

They don't want to miss the boat again, the way that they did with smartphones. The new CEO doesn't want to make the same mistake that the last CEO did: http://appleinsider.com/articles/13...ld-have-powered-first-iphone-ceo-otelini-says And so he's jumping on every potential new trend.

 

[Gonad the Barbarian]

Ones and zeroes are so passe.

 

[Homeles]

I just could not believe what I was watching and was at a loss of words. Intel, the world's greatest chip maker, spent both of their CES presentations showing off gimmicky gadgets that had absolutely nothing to do with their core business. I've never seen a company actively try to kill their main source of revenue. It is as if some Intel execs walked through a street in Hong Kong and said, "these gadgets are cool!". Are "smart" headphones and an augmented reality app really the answer? What is happening to Intel? The difference between the Intel and Nvidia presentations, both mobile focused, is night and day.

Well they're not going to go public on Broadwell and Cherry Trail, so what else were they going to do?

 

[Pheesh]

It's the consumer electronics show- Not surprising it was largely focused on wearables, mobile, 3d printing etc. i.e. things the majority of consumers are interested in. Intel's CEO even had gabe come on stage and talk a little bit about the steambox- what were you guys expecting?

 

[sm625]

Intel is just... duh. The state of interface technology for 2014 is equally ...duh. Where is my subvocal command processor? Where is my eye driven mouse pointer? Where is my 3D desktop... with shelves?

We've all been watching too many fail videos, and thus we have failed.

 

[Spawne32]

Well they're not going to go public on Broadwell and Cherry Trail, so what else were they going to do?

CES is usually the time to leak little tidbits about things exactly like broadwell and cherry trail, to show that the company has some sort of direction. The presentation was alot like....we are intel, and we own everything.

 

[Homeles]

Intel saves those "tidbits" for IDF.

 

[Fjodor2001]

I hope we're talking about the spring IDF in April in China then? I can't imagine them waiting until the September IDF until presenting Broadwell.

 

[Techhog]

The end is near. We had a good run, the time to find new hobby is quickly approching.

Intel doesn't care about desktop users.

Did you even bother reading the OP?

 

[Enigmoid]

Completely surprised and disappointed.

 

[WaitingForNehalem]

Everyone and their grandma knows that Intel makes chips. Intel arguably has the highest brand recognition of any PC hardware company. They don't need show a bunch of stupid things that have already been shown before. The stuff they showed wasn't even that impressive or polished. Besides, what average joe is going to even watch or attend the Intel CES show anyways?

It would have made much more sense to present where chip design is headed in the future, how they will deal with competitors, what differentiates Intel from other companies, and a preview of the upcoming chips that will change the landscape. Again, take a look at Nvidia's presentation. They talked about their technology at a high level and had impressive demonstrations to back it up.

Nvidia's Presentation http://blogs.nvidia.com/blog/2014/01/05/live-las-vegas/

 

[techtechie]

This comes as no suprise to me. I read a while ago that a new intel chip is not really in the near(describing near as 5-10months) future.

 

[bullzz]

well they talked about the next 2 gens of desktop/mobile/tablet/phone chips at IDF. showed working silicon of broadwell. whats the use of talking abt them again

 

[Homeles]

I hope we're talking about the spring IDF in April in China then? I can't imagine them waiting until the September IDF until presenting Broadwell.

I can't say I'm so certain. Intel's change in management has led them to not be the great communicator they once were. Apple and Intel have switched places in this regard.

 

[jdubs03]

well they talked about the next 2 gens of desktop/mobile/tablet/phone chips at IDF. showed working silicon of broadwell. whats the use of talking abt them again

The presentation was kind of cool in some respects, for instance Edison allowing so many different possibilities, the smartwatch (just needs to be thinner with that Edison chip), the smart connect technology understanding human speech well, etc.

However, the whole time I was expecting/waiting for some information on Broadwell and perhaps a Bay Trail+ or Cherry Trail information. There are multitudes of things that Intel could have mentioned on Broadwell, for instance TDP figures and segments, new feature sets, and so on. Cherry Trail could've been teased a bit, maybe with a working tablet.

CES should be and has traditionally been the venue in which these companies brief the world on their upcoming products, Intel went against the grain in this respect, and as others have said was highly disappointing.

Additionally, if there is no IDF in April to update the world on their upcoming "core" product lines, where does that leave us? Computex is the only other option and that is when they would be paper launching Broadwell. And September IDF for Cherry Trail. The only thing in the meantime is relying on leaked information which we can never 100% count on to be accurate (though as I have seen, usually is).

 

[hawtdawg]

Intel can stop making processors altogether and could probably be just as profitable being worlds premier fab