Question Intel's future after Pat Gelsinger

[igor_kavinski]

Cause he is tbh office task are the best case scenario for Intel chips

I would rather he ask the person doing the job about his computing needs and then provide the hardware accordingly. The COO and him have the same nationality so there is definitely some collusion going on (who knows if they have some agreement on paying 2025 hardware prices for old hardware with the vendor and getting some commission in return that they are splitting between themselves?). He refuses to listen about anything AMD and insists on providing only 8GB RAM and his usual crap retort is, "You are not working in NASA".

 

[511]

I would rather he ask the person doing the job about his computing needs and then provide the hardware accordingly. The COO and him have the same nationality so there is definitely some collusion going on (who knows if they have some agreement on paying 2025 hardware prices for old hardware with the vendor and getting some commission in return that they are splitting between themselves?). He refuses to listen about anything AMD and insists on providing only 8GB RAM and his usual crap retort is, "You are not working in NASA".

8GB is not good in 2025 minimum should be 16GB as for processor for basic office task you should buy the cheapest available

 

[DZero]

8GB is not good in 2025 minimum should be 16GB as for processor for basic office task you should buy the cheapest available

In my workplace, 8 GB is forbidden now, they ask for 16 GB at min. And we are in Peru, an underveloped country.

I would rather he ask the person doing the job about his computing needs and then provide the hardware accordingly. The COO and him have the same nationality so there is definitely some collusion going on (who knows if they have some agreement on paying 2025 hardware prices for old hardware with the vendor and getting some commission in return that they are splitting between themselves?). He refuses to listen about anything AMD and insists on providing only 8GB RAM and his usual crap retort is, "You are not working in NASA".

Don't tell me that they uses HDD and Windows 10... which would be beyond stupid. In my workplace, HDD are no longer useful and with Windows 10 ending, is over for it.

 

[igor_kavinski]

In my workplace, 8 GB is forbidden now, they ask for 16 GB at min. And we are in Peru, an underveloped country.

Never could've imagined that the situation in my office is worse than Peru!

Nah, he would use HDD to save a few cents even but Win10/11 are unusable with that so it's at least a 256GB NVMe SSD that Dell ships.

 

[igor_kavinski]

for basic office task you should buy the cheapest available

You clearly have never had to use Excel sheets where formulas can take 20+ minutes to complete on a Core i5-12500.

 

[511]

You clearly have never had to use Excel sheets where formulas can take 20+ minutes to complete on a Core i5-12500.

Nope but what is the size of that excel sheet? Few Gigabytes?

 

[511]

Never could've imagined that the situation in my office is worse than Peru!

Nah, he would use HDD to save a few cents even but Win10/11 are unusable with that so it's at least a 256GB NVMe SSD that Dell ships.

Man that is horrifying to say the least

 

[igor_kavinski]

Nope but what is the size of that excel sheet? Few Gigabytes?

Doesn't depend on the Excel sheet size. Depends on the formula and number of rows. I often have to do countifs(), countif() and vlookup() and that can take a long time with +800K rows.

Larger Excel sheets are a bigger problem because Excel sucks at loading data so if the Excel workbook reaches an unwieldy size, time to find some other solution.

 

[KompuKare]

This dwarfs the incompetence on losing their foundry lead of 2 years vs everyone.

Perhaps.
But consider this: what is one of the most important things in foundry?

Volume. Volume. Volume.

And missing all those booms meant less volume. So ignoring all the other problems with foundry, if they had executed better they really would have needed the volume as the capital expenditure is (and was even back then) so huge - there are countries which have less need for financing than a foundry.

Biggest problem with Intel seems to be internal hubris: instead of acknowledging that x86 was very poor design which got every lucky that IBM picked them and eventually drove all others out of the market by, well, VOLUME, VOLUME, and VOLUME*. In the Intel mindset they were always "the best" whereas 8068 was such a poor design that teams with far far less money were able to compete until the mid-90s.

* and yes that volume and money enabled them to finally deliver their first half-way decent design in the 486 - although note how much extra work they had to do because of having to remain backward compatible with the 16-bit segmented mess etc. which the 8086 was.

 

[yottabit]

Doesn't depend on the Excel sheet size. Depends on the formula and number of rows. I often have to do countifs(), countif() and vlookup() and that can take a long time with +800K rows.

Larger Excel sheets are a bigger problem because Excel sucks at loading data so if the Excel workbook reaches an unwieldy size, time to find some other solution.

I still remember the first time editing an Excel sheet where I had to upgrade to the 64 bit version of Office to complete it successfully. It really put the extra memory addressing into perspective and I got to feel the power of Windows Vista on my Core 2 Duo.

Nowadays I would never use Excel for what we were using it for then, it was really a job for a Python script or some MATLAB code

 

[yottabit]

Perhaps.
But consider this: what is one of the most important things in foundry?

Volume. Volume. Volume.

And missing all those booms meant less volume. So ignoring all the other problems with foundry, if they had executed better they really would have needed the volume as the capital expenditure is (and was even back then) so huge - there are countries which have less need for financing than a foundry.

Biggest problem with Intel seems to be internal hubris: instead of acknowledging that x86 was very poor design which got every lucky that IBM picked them and eventually drove all others out of the market by, well, VOLUME, VOLUME, and VOLUME*. In the Intel mindset they were always "the best" whereas 8068 was such a poor design that teams with far far less money were able to compete until the mid-90s.

* and yes that volume and money enabled them to finally deliver their first half-way decent design in the 486 - although note how much extra work they had to do because of having to remain backward compatible with the 16-bit segmented mess etc. which the 8086 was.

Even Intel themselves knew it wasn’t great, they tried to get away from the x86 architecture with the iAPX 432 and the 286 was just supposed to be a stopgap https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_iAPX_432

And then they tried again obviously with IA-64

But instead of reading the tea leaves and going from CISC to RISC I can only imagine they thought the problem with x86 was that the instruction sets weren’t complicated enough

 

[Doug S]

You clearly have never had to use Excel sheets where formulas can take 20+ minutes to complete on a Core i5-12500.

That's far from a typical office worker's experience. No matter what the specs are of a "default" PC purchase there are always going to be some segment of employees who need something better, either because they have a different job (i.e. doing CAD or video editing) or because they are doing stuff like you mention. The fact there are higher end needs should not influence the configuration of the "default" PC - they merely need to cover what the majority of employees do now and for the expected service life of those PCs.

Microsoft only requires 4 GB for Windows 11, and rumor has it they'll be bumping that to 8 GB for Windows 12.

 

[DZero]

That's far from a typical office worker's experience. No matter what the specs are of a "default" PC purchase there are always going to be some segment of employees who need something better, either because they have a different job (i.e. doing CAD or video editing) or because they are doing stuff like you mention. The fact there are higher end needs should not influence the configuration of the "default" PC - they merely need to cover what the majority of employees do now and for the expected service life of those PCs.

Microsoft only requires 4 GB for Windows 11, and rumor has it they'll be bumping that to 8 GB for Windows 12.

If Windows 12 uses 8 GB at min, it means that 16GB is the bare base for a computer and that leads that to have decent experience must have 24 GB. And of course at minimun an octa thread is needed.

 

[adamge]

Doesn't depend on the Excel sheet size. Depends on the formula and number of rows. I often have to do countifs(), countif() and vlookup() and that can take a long time with +800K rows.

Larger Excel sheets are a bigger problem because Excel sucks at loading data so if the Excel workbook reaches an unwieldy size, time to find some other solution.

Aren't you supposed to use a database if you need to store and perform analysis on that much data?
"Excel is not a database" - the internet

 

[igor_kavinski]

Aren't you supposed to use a database if you need to store and perform analysis on that much data?

Not even going to try to run a database on i7-4770.

I once installed MySQL on my work PC for monitoring firewall traffic. SSD life decreased by 3% in a matter of days whereas it had decreased by about 2% in two years before! Needless to say, kicked the DB out of that PC ASAP!

 

[marees]

Intel's new CEO explores big shift in chip manufacturing business​

Since taking the company's helm in March, CEO Lip-Bu Tan has moved fast to cut costs and find a new path to revive the ailing U.S. chipmaker. By June, he started voicing that a manufacturing process that prior CEO Pat Gelsinger bet heavily on, known as 18A, was losing its appeal to new customers, said the sources, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

To put aside external sales of 18A and its variant 18A-P, manufacturing processes that have cost Intel billions of dollars to develop, the company would have to take a write-off, one of the people familiar with the matter said. Industry analysts contacted by Reuters said such a charge could amount to a loss of hundreds of millions, if not billions, of dollars.


Tan has tasked the company with teeing up options for discussion with Intel's board when it meets as early as this month, including whether to stop marketing 18A to new clients, one of the two sources said. The board might not reach a decision on 18A until a subsequent autumn meeting in light of the matter's complexity and the enormous money at stake, the person said.


Intel declined to comment on such "hypothetical scenarios or market speculation." It said the lead customer for 18A has long been Intel itself, and it aims to ramp production of its "Panther Lake" laptop chips later in 2025, which it called the most advanced processors ever designed and manufactured in the United States.


https://finance.yahoo.com/news/exclusive-intels-ceo-explores-big-012932387.html

https://www.reuters.com/business/retail-consumer/intels-new-ceo-explores-big-shift-chip-manufacturing-business-2025-07-02/

Moving the goalposts again.

 

[marees]

Intel's new CEO explores big shift in chip manufacturing business​

Since taking the company's helm in March, CEO Lip-Bu Tan has moved fast to cut costs and find a new path to revive the ailing U.S. chipmaker. By June, he started voicing that a manufacturing process that prior CEO Pat Gelsinger bet heavily on, known as 18A, was losing its appeal to new customers, said the sources, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

To put aside external sales of 18A and its variant 18A-P, manufacturing processes that have cost Intel billions of dollars to develop, the company would have to take a write-off, one of the people familiar with the matter said. Industry analysts contacted by Reuters said such a charge could amount to a loss of hundreds of millions, if not billions, of dollars.


Tan has tasked the company with teeing up options for discussion with Intel's board when it meets as early as this month, including whether to stop marketing 18A to new clients, one of the two sources said. The board might not reach a decision on 18A until a subsequent autumn meeting in light of the matter's complexity and the enormous money at stake, the person said.


Intel declined to comment on such "hypothetical scenarios or market speculation." It said the lead customer for 18A has long been Intel itself, and it aims to ramp production of its "Panther Lake" laptop chips later in 2025, which it called the most advanced processors ever designed and manufactured in the United States.


https://finance.yahoo.com/news/exclusive-intels-ceo-explores-big-012932387.html

Useful comments

👇👇

My "thesis" about Intel's problem has been that under Gelsinger's plan, Intel would simply run out of cash, and that's the reason Gelsinger was fired.

By reducing and deferring this major cash expenditure + mass layoffs, LBT has a better shot at saving Intel from running out of cash.

I think LBT is thinking of putting the fabs in hibernation mode for a while until they can get their act together. He's probably going to try to run Intel like AMD with outsourced manufacturing. That seems logical because Intel's 2024 losses are mainly fab related.

 

[Io Magnesso]

Outsourcing is a means...
I think it's counterproductive to say that you'll see how Foundry gets on track.
I think it will be an experience to have IFS manufacture it, For example, even if it's your own product

 

[Io Magnesso]

Outsourcing is a means...
I think it's counterproductive to say that you'll see how Foundry gets on track.
I think it will be an experience to have IFS manufacture it, For example, even if it's your own product

Nothing happens without gaining experience

 

[Timorous]

Doesn't depend on the Excel sheet size. Depends on the formula and number of rows. I often have to do countifs(), countif() and vlookup() and that can take a long time with +800K rows.

Larger Excel sheets are a bigger problem because Excel sucks at loading data so if the Excel workbook reaches an unwieldy size, time to find some other solution.

Excel has python support so you can use pandas in Excel now.

That's far from a typical office worker's experience. No matter what the specs are of a "default" PC purchase there are always going to be some segment of employees who need something better, either because they have a different job (i.e. doing CAD or video editing) or because they are doing stuff like you mention. The fact there are higher end needs should not influence the configuration of the "default" PC - they merely need to cover what the majority of employees do now and for the expected service life of those PCs.

Microsoft only requires 4 GB for Windows 11, and rumor has it they'll be bumping that to 8 GB for Windows 12.

A big bulk of office workers are finance and they are probably the worst culprits for using Excel inappropriately.

They have a need and you get some moderately tech savvy person in who does not have access to better tools because IT decide their job role does not need it so they build some Excel based VBA monstrosity to automate or speed up an important process and then it gets added to over time and the original creator leaves but the new process is reliant on that workbook because they have forgotten how to do it the old way and they probably no longer have the headcount to do it the old way if they even knew how.

Aren't you supposed to use a database if you need to store and perform analysis on that much data?
"Excel is not a database" - the internet

Tell that to finance people who want to 'download the data' all the time. It is like they don't trust the data from SAP or the cloud copy and want to go through it with a fine tooth comb so they can make adjustments for things they know about on the horizon that have not been entered yet.

 

[DavidC1]

Nothing happens without gaining experience

There's a huge problem with this.

Node gains are slowing down, and in a drastic manner. So let's say they improve in a few years and gain the lead. They'll do it at a time where there's less reasons to go with a top performer.

When the technical gap is reduced, you'll go with a vendor that has everything else such as how they treat you, what price they are selling at, how easy it is to work with them. Heck, even if they were all good, some people stick to a vendor just because they don't want to migrate!

If they don't want to go to Intel now, why do you think they'll go with Intel when the node gains are even lower?

 

[Io Magnesso]

There's a huge problem with this.

Node gains are slowing down, and in a drastic manner. So let's say they improve in a few years and gain the lead. They'll do it at a time where there's less reasons to go with a top performer.

When the technical gap is reduced, you'll go with a vendor that has everything else such as how they treat you, what price they are selling at, how easy it is to work with them. Heck, even if they were all good, some people stick to a vendor just because they don't want to migrate!

If they don't want to go to Intel now, why do you think they'll go with Intel when the node gains are even lower?

That's right

 

[jpiniero]

The external customers thing is just to appease "Investors"

 

[Io Magnesso]

The external customers thing is just to appease "Investors"

Well, it's better than an incompetent director

 

[lamedude]

Nationalize the fabs NOW! #MIGA