Intels in trouble..

[pyjujiop]

Wait, Intel is the only one doing proper tablets running Windows last I looked, and they do have a smartphone chip that is actually pretty good

Indeed, an elephant in the room that a lot of people overlook. Even a low-power Atom CPU beats the ever-living crap out of anything ARM makes in CPU performance, and any mobile OS can easily be ported to run on such a processor. Heck, it can even run Android apps in emulation easily.

Don't be surprised if you see Intel eating ARM's lunch within a couple of years. ARM only got where it is because it was "good enough" and had very low power consumption. If a company with Intel's reputation offers something significantly better with very low power consumption, and a vast existing body of software already in place...

 

[Unoid]

Every Laptop/Desktop/Server powering in my company(probably worth lots of money as we have 23K employees WW) is using Intel. i guess that is true for majority of business WW. I dont see ARM being even considered in 90% of them. So Intel is not going to be impacted by anything to do with gaming market.

If anything gaming market is in a flux as lots of casual gamers have moved on to iPad/iPhone/ and Android tablets/phones. We can see that by subpar sales of Wii U. While FPS focused gamers will buy 720/PS4 there is a ceiling. 150 million consoles over 7-8 years is a small number compared to number of mainstream PC/laptops/servers.

That said I believe Qualcomm to be a credible threat. Snapdragon 600/800 looks good and they are dominating the high end phone market now minus iPhone(even Galaxy S4 is expected to have Snapdragon 600). This clearly means Tegra 4 is in trouble. I am looking forward to HTC One.

It will be good to see Intel release merrifield cpu. I wish they pulled a conroe and pulled in the release date. But its release keeps pushing back.

No way tegra 4 is in trouble. It will blow away qualcoms chips.

Only way qualcom has a benefit is that tegra 4i will be slightly slower CPU perf but have integrated LTE.

Put it this way. Phones will use T4, and phones for att and verizon = 4i

Tegra is mostly a tablet chip, teg 4 will bring them into phones even more so. = bad for qualcom.

 

[Enigmoid]

Optimizing for AMD cpu's isn't going to hurt Intel as much as you think. Targeting cpu optimizations yields little difference between AMD and intel. There is much less complex programming and processes in a cpu than in a GPU which has so much specialized functionality and a large driver program that it is running to. Nvidia will be hurt more because gpu optimizations has a much bigger effect than cpu optimizations. Also, when it comes down to it, the computer gaming market just isn't very important in the grand scheme of the market.

Also, the new gen consoles could help intel in one way. With 8 cores in the next gen consoles, developers will finally focus more effort on making more heavily multithreaded code. With software that can finally use more cores, consumers may actually want to buy an 8 core processor which would be a boon for intel (and amd for that matter).

Agree. x86 is x86 and optimizations are not going to have a major effect for AMD.

I doubt that 8 cores will be a major push on developers. Probably a number of those cores (2+ ) will handle background tasks (1 dedicated to the OS, one to the kinect/move/etc). The xbox 360 had a tri core cpu; how many games are optimized for even three cores today (such as skyrim, three cores on xbox, only two on pc)?. Most console ports are only running on two cores.

Furthermore, 8 weak cores (1.6 GHz with jaguar IPC) are far worse than 4 strong cores (at 3.2 GHz) for several reasons, first multithreading costs efficiency, second optimizing for more cores takes time and time is money. When AAA games take millions to develop money and time are everything and this can make it harder on the devs to produce a game.

Intel is playing it smart. Their lead on single thread performance is such that it will take several generations for AMD to catch up. Their power usage and die sizes are such that when AMD does manage to catch up they can simply release an 8 core cpu and AMD is back to where it was before.

Its true that intel hasn't made many improvements on the desktop side. However, their mobile division has undergone tremendous gains. A quad core ivy i7 (say the i7 3630qm) is slightly better than the i7 920 at 45 watts compared to a tdp of 130 watts. While desktop hasn't changed significantly the difference between i7 2630 qm (2.0 ghz) and i7 3630qm (2.4 ghz) is around 25% from sandy to ivy (about 16 months time difference). Compare than to the first generation i7 quads 1.6 Ghz (i7 720 qm) and the difference is phenominal.

ULV i7s (ivy) have about as much power as the quad core i7 720qm at about 40% the power usage!

http://www.notebookcheck.net/Mobile-Processors-Benchmarklist.2436.0.html

i7 3517U vs i7 720qm. cinebench r10 multi ~8700 for i7 720 vs 8500 for 3517U (32 bit). the 3630qm gets about ~18000. So mobile cpu performance has more than doubled in three years.

 

[Unoid]

Regarding Intel:

Intel's stock price is fairly low for the past 6 months. It's severely undervalued. Wait until Haswell rips out this June/July. Qualcom may be close in Market Cap but Qual is overpriced, Intel underpriced... Plus intel has BILLIONS of capital invested. How many fabs x 4-6billion each?


If intel wanted to or was forced to abondon their 50-60% margins they could start running all fabs at 100% doing chip orders that will put TMSC and others at a disadvantage. Intels revenue would go up 20% a year aka stock price up as much

By 2014 at 14nm I believe intel will finally start dominating mobile, Something about having the best chip processes on the planet mixed with the largest R and D spending of any chip company.

 

[IndyColtsFan]

Still losing money > Not losing even more money.

Both are bad.

With regard to this round of consoles vs the last round and bottom line importance;

GPU, GPU vs GPU, CPU/GPU, CPU/GPU...

I'll take the latter please.

And none of this shows that Intel is "in trouble."

 

[Gikaseixas]

Lazy to read the entire thread but in short, Intel is not in trouble. I don't understand why one would think they're after the proven track report they have, even if the overall picture is changing. They already have a foot in the mobile world and IPC wise they're ahead of the competition.

 

[Centauri]

Both are bad.

On snap!

 

[Xpage]

Indeed, an elephant in the room that a lot of people overlook. Even a low-power Atom CPU beats the ever-living crap out of anything ARM makes in CPU performance, and any mobile OS can easily be ported to run on such a processor. Heck, it can even run Android apps in emulation easily.

Don't be surprised if you see Intel eating ARM's lunch within a couple of years. ARM only got where it is because it was "good enough" and had very low power consumption. If a company with Intel's reputation offers something significantly better with very low power consumption, and a vast existing body of software already in place...

yeah but who wants a phone with a battery that lasts 2 hours. Intel needs to get to sub 1W usage before it is even viable in smart phones. I doubt that will happen till they make their chips on 14nm or lower. Intel won't have anything competitive in the smart phone market for awhile, being just equal to ARM's offerings has no advantage they need to be superior to entice people away from their ARM strucutre

 

[ShintaiDK]

yeah but who wants a phone with a battery that lasts 2 hours. Intel needs to get to sub 1W usage before it is even viable in smart phones. I doubt that will happen till they make their chips on 14nm or lower. Intel won't have anything competitive in the smart phone market for awhile, being just equal to ARM's offerings has no advantage they need to be superior to entice people away from their ARM strucutre

Maybe you missed the phones that already contain Intel.

 

[rich_]

Add to this, that some extremely influential computing architects from intel were hired by AMD to help develop the 8000 series gpu's late 2012.

 

[FridayThe13th]

Why do you keep talking about the PS4?

Consoles and PCs are different markets. There is some overlap and cannibalization, sure, but not a great deal.

You severely overestimate the size of the gaming market segment, and the degree to which people used to serious gaming on serious machines will want to dump them for the latest Sony toy.

You really think Intel is scared of a console with a bunch of Jaguar cores in it?

because when you prove him wrong he jumps ship to try to save his pathetic opinionated arguments lol

just like AMD + Intel turned into QUALCOMM rofl

 

[piasabird]

I dont see Intel failing any time soon. I work at a college and still do all my work on a desktop. Access to a keyboard and the database on a server is still going strong. I do see lots of tablets, but even tablet owners will eventually switch to faster processors. Intelligent users will demand access to real computers. The computer industry has always been going through changes. Many things could happen in the future. Maybe the phone will disappear and be replaced by small tablets. Some people may switch to tablets simply because they want something more mobile than a laptop. However, the desktop is still useful. I am using a desktop computer with a TV for a monitor as I type this. What I wish would happen is to see all this big boxes disappear to be replaced by smaller boxes. This standard ATX cases are just filling up landfills.

Even phones need processors.

 

[jpiniero]

Why would PC sales get decimated?

Windows 8.

Every Laptop/Desktop/Server powering in my company(probably worth lots of money as we have 23K employees WW) is using Intel.

That's true. But there's no need to upgrade anymore. They can just slash their PC buying budget to the point where they are buying nothing until the machine breaks or they hire new employees. And they are likely not hiring new employees given the economy.

 

[Ferzerp]

But there's no need to upgrade anymore.

Enterprises *rarely* buy to upgrade. They refresh based on age, not performance.

 

[jpiniero]

Enterprises *rarely* buy to upgrade. They refresh based on age, not performance.

That's another way of putting it. Say they had a 3 year cycle. They could move it to 6 or 7.

 

[ShintaiDK]

Windows 8.

Windows 8 aint enough to decimate sales, people simply install WIndows 7 instead. Also WIndows 8 is gone by summertime and replaced with "Windows Blue". Same with Windows Server 2012.

ARM companies combined shrinked at the same rate as Intel in 2012.

 

[ShintaiDK]

That's another way of putting it. Say they had a 3 year cycle. They could move it to 6 or 7.

You never worked in corporate IT I assume. After 3 years any warranty is also gone. Not to mention HDs and such is in pretty bad shape at the time. Plus not upgrading means lost productivity.

 

[Ferzerp]

That's another way of putting it. Say they had a 3 year cycle. They could move it to 6 or 7.

This is done based on budget and quality of the overall system (how long they last). It has nothing to do with speed.

The refresh cycles are an interplay between failure rates, budget (wrapping depreciation in to this one), and cost of downtime in lost productivity. CPU performance doesn't enter the equation at all other than it being a factor in what is purchased when replacement time comes.

edit: so while your Dells, HPs, and Lenovos of the world keep using bargain basement components to save $5 on a PC, the CPU is never really going to factor in to refresh cycle length because that's the one part that they have to source from a high quality supplier. I've not seen many CPU failures.... ever.

 

[jpiniero]

After 3 years any warranty is also gone. Not to mention HDs and such is in pretty bad shape at the time.

Hence the "until it breaks" part. Thing breaks, give them a new machine then. HD dies, put in a new one. Obviously, it can't be forever as Windows 7 will eventually go out of support.

This is done based on budget and quality of the overall system (how long they last). It has nothing to do with speed.

It has everything to do with speed. You could count on the productivity gains from going to faster hardware. Those days are over for the kinds of tasks that the average corporate user does.

 

[Ferzerp]

It has everything to do with speed.

No, it really doesn't. Large organizations haven't refreshed based on speed in a very, very long time (unless a new project demands it). There may be outliers, but that's far from the norm. I know most of our stuff has been on 5ish year refresh for the last 6 or 7 years. This is not a new occurance.

Hence the "until it breaks" part. Thing breaks, give them a new machine then. HD dies, put in a new one.

Unexpected outages as an impetus for hardware replacement is not prefered. It is generally cheaper to replace them once they are *likely* to die in a controlled, less disruptive fashion. Your staff doing the replacements has a steady source of work, and the end users don't have to reactively open a ticket to get a dead PC serviced (unless it breaks inside the normal expected life). Reactive replacement leaves the chance that a cluster of failures can cause a major disruption as your staff gets backed up on requests.

This model will work in a thin client type scenario where spares can be kept and non-it staff can plug them in. However, this has a much larger backend cost, and so is not an easy place to get to.

 

[Cerb]

Hence the "until it breaks" part. Thing breaks, give them a new machine then. HD dies, put in a new one. Obviously, it can't be forever as Windows 7 will eventually go out of support.

While you wait, however, you are paying for them, way more than their take-home pay, to twiddle their thumbs.

If you have machines at the ready, then you are taking a cost on your IT side will, in the best case, be about even with just doing a refresh.

It has everything to do with speed. You could count on the productivity gains from going to faster hardware. Those days are over for the kinds of tasks that the average corporate user does.

They have also been gone. That's something that was gone for big businesses quite a long time ago. That HDDs, ODDs, mobos, and PSUs have a greater chance of unexpectedly dying as they get older is a really big deal.

People that need performance will get it, but are you really going to be suffering from lack of productivity today with a 1st-gen i7 (or Xeon equivalent), and 8-16GB RAM? Probably not. You're going to get a new computer not because the new one kicks ass, but because you not being productive could cost multiple times your pay, which likely gets fairly expensive, compared to amortized hardware and IT support costs.

 

[FalseChristian]

Don't get me wrong as I love Intel and my i5 2500K that overclocks to 4.5GHz with hardly any extra voltage but AMD is doing better with their competitive FX line.

Intel is way ahead of AMD because they have the money for R'nD whereas AMD does not so Intel will be just fine, IMHO.

 

[trivik12]

Laptops are refreshed every 3 years. Servers are beefed up around the same time and at times even quicker if capacity needs go up. I think that is Intel's biggest strength. If you look at all the big companies WW, majority of the hardware IT budget is spent on intel products. That might slow down a bit but that will continue to be the major driver of their revenue.

On windows 8, I doubt any major company has migrated to it. We are still using Windows 7 and will probably continue to do it for a long time. Plus even Macbook pros are on Intel.

haswell/broadwell/silvermont/airmont will tell us how intel will do in tablet/phone space. I think they will make some dent even though I doubt they will dominate like desktop/laptop space as ARM will be cheaper and fast enough for that space.

 

[badb0y]

Troll thread?

This is like one of those stupid threads that say Apple is in trouble while it posts billions of profit.

 

[grkM3]

OP is insane thinking intel is any kid of trouble,he is pretending that they don't have the best state of the art fabs in the world and are 3-4 years ahead of everyone else.

If intel wanted to they could open up there fabs to everyone and they could make chips that would blow away any other chip maker.

and what is stoping intel going to arm and asking for a license agreement to make true A15 arm cores on there 22nm fabs?

arm would love it as intel would build millions of chips and I can already see all the phone makers going to intel for arms latest arch because the intel node gets 40% better power saving over the comp.

yeah intel is in trouble when AMD cant even make its own chips