[Stratecherry] Intel and the Danger of Integration

[Despoiler]

https://stratechery.com/2018/intel-and-the-danger-of-integration/

It is into a climate of doom and gloom that Krzanich is taking over as CEO. And, in what will be a highly emotional yet increasingly obvious decision, he ought to commit Intel to the chip manufacturing business, i.e. manufacturing chips according to other companies’ designs.

It's and interesting read. My thought has always been that Intel never made great CPUs. What it had was the best silicon manufacturing in the world. It allowed Intel to be first to always be first to a node leaving its competitors perpetually behind.

 

[Nothingness]

It's and interesting read. My thought has always been that Intel never made great CPUs. What it had was the best silicon manufacturing in the world. It allowed Intel to be first to always be first to a node leaving its competitors perpetually behind.

Intel Core CPU's definitely have excellent micro-architectures. Their branch predictors are top class, their hardware prefetchers also are very good. And so on.

For the rest, I agree with the article. And one of the points that always stroke me as utterly stupid is Intel trying to put x86 everywhere, from deeply embedded up to server and GPU's. It was so funny to see Intel say Intel Xeon Phi was so much better than the competition due to it being x86. Stoopid

 

[Olikan]

My thought has always been that Intel never made great CPUs. What it had was the best silicon manufacturing in the world. It allowed Intel to be first to always be first to a node leaving its competitors perpetually behind.

i will partially agree.... IMO, Conroe was a turning point

 

[PeterScott]

Intel's problem isn't integration. It is years of stagnation on both process and architecture.

If they had progressed even one of these in recent years, they would still be dominant. They let both stagnate.

 

[moinmoin]

Intel Core CPU's definitely have excellent micro-architectures. Their branch predictors are top class, their hardware prefetchers also are very good. And so on.

I'm afraid that image is in progress of changing right now considering how many of the design decisions are direct cause of Meltdown and other Spectre vulnerabilities, many of which are still not publicized (nevermind fixed).