This is how badly Intel screwed itself over

I

igor_kavinski

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All Intel had to do was LISTEN to the consultants it had hired (according to Jim Keller) and change its fab tooling and PDKs to mimic the industry standard so companies failing to get allocation at TSMC could place their orders with Intel with minimum investment of time and effort. BUT NO.

OH NO.

"THE ENTIRE WORLD DEPENDS ON INTEL CPUs! We don't really want business from the rest of the world. We want to keep making our own CPUs and flood the world markets with them!".

Yeah, how's that going for you, INTEL?
 
Yeah its mind blowing that there is this level of industry demand and Intel can't get folks to fab at their plants. Like customers are literally willing to lose money on unrealized sales than even bother with Intel foundry services.

And the US took a 10% ownership stake in this ****pile of a company.
 
Intel might not be the hero we want... but if they bent their excess FAB capacity to making DRAM modules...they might drive the price back down!
 
Except I think retooling the existing fabs for RAM production is no small task unfortunately. It's one reason why Samsung's chip yields are abysmal yet they are doing fine with RAM production. I've been told by people more informed than I that Andy Grove (?) famously saved Intel by getting them out of the memory business because of the price volatility and how sharp the price drops were once production exceeded demand. Pat did the same and killed Optane.

Ah, I found an article: https://anthonysmoak.com/2016/03/27/andy-grove-and-intels-move-from-memory-to-microprocessors/

And about Pat's origins: https://www.thelayoff.com/t/1vPygjc5

By the way, one guy at overclock.net was cussing Pat so bad because of how bad Arrow Lake is. So powerful yet gimped so pathetically that it can never achieve its full potential without major respin. He made me chuckle.
 
I jumped the gun.

PTL has 6MB less cache yet performing well. So with more cache, it could do pretty well in games.

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Panther Lake vs. Arrow Lake frequencies in GB6.5

If the performance holds at higher frequencies, then 5.1 GHz Panther Lake is almost as good as 5.8 GHz Arrow Lake!
 
igor_kavinski said:
Kind of a miracle that Intel managed to stay barely competitive with work conditions as bad as that ex-employee is claiming.
Click to expand...
Really just companies with two different histories and wildly different market positions for most of their existence.

Imagine if, when the Athlon came out, Intel came out with Netburst / P4, and instead of going 'oh crap, that's not what the market needs!', they stuck with it. And then AMD, now with more business, is actually able to remain performance competitive and avoids the absolute footgun that was the 'Dozer series (mirroring Intel's Netburst years earlier, the irony).

Now AMD gets to the point that they're (along with Apple) working with TSMC to push the latest nodes, and they have volume shipping to enterprises - and Intel has shrunk to 10% of the market.

How might the (average) employees feel differently?


I think Intel getting their junk stomped in by AMD being able to build literally two dies (their current Zen5 eight-core CCD and now 12-core Zen5c CCD), and just swap I/O dies around between desktop, HEDT, and server, is starting to sink in. Intel has to build so many different unique dies, or in the case of Arrow Lake, resorted to an expensive stacking solution that still falls short in many usecases.

And AMDs work with TSMC to stack 64MB of cache on the die and have it be cohesive with the 32MB already there is just :chef's kiss:. They can provide products with oodles of L3 cache using the same exact dies that they use for everything (except APUs)!
 

Why Gelsinger was wrong for Intel | The Observation Deck

By all accounts, Pat Gelsinger is affable, technically sharp, hard-working, and decent. Those who have worked for him praise him as a singularly good manager. In January 2021, when Gelsinger was abruptly named the CEO of Intel, this is more or less all I knew of him — and I found myself urgently...
bcantrill.dtrace.org bcantrill.dtrace.org

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Oh look, pride hath a fall still rings true!
 
www.fudzilla.com

Intel's foundry problem is trust

Customers do not fancy handing a rival their crown jewels. Troubled Chipzilla’s foundry push is tripping over the awkward detail that it still competes with the customers it is courting. Former Chipzilla board member David Yoffie says the firm’s momentum with external clients is hindered because...
www.fudzilla.com www.fudzilla.com

Wonder how long LBT will cling to the fabs.
 
igor_kavinski said:
www.fudzilla.com

Intel's foundry problem is trust

Customers do not fancy handing a rival their crown jewels. Troubled Chipzilla’s foundry push is tripping over the awkward detail that it still competes with the customers it is courting. Former Chipzilla board member David Yoffie says the firm’s momentum with external clients is hindered because...
www.fudzilla.com www.fudzilla.com

Wonder how long LBT will cling to the fabs.
Click to expand...
The fabs are now a national security issue - maybe Intel spins them off, but they're part of why the US invested in Intel earlier this year
 

From a governance point of view, we cannot fathom how the boards who presided over
Intel’s decline could have permitted management to fritter away the Company’s leading
market position while simultaneously rewarding them handsomely with extravagant
compensation packages; stakeholders will no longer tolerate such apparent abdications of
duty. Of special concern is Intel’s human capital management problem and the absence of
an articulated plan to address it. The Company has lost many of its most inspiring and
talented chip designers and leaders, and our sources indicate that those who remain (several
of whom are highly regarded in the industry) are becoming increasingly demoralized by the
status quo. Intel was built on the vision of engineering genius and, without the best talent,
the current trajectory will not be reversed. Solving Intel’s human capital management issue
should be the Board’s most urgent task.
Click to expand...

Wow. What a scathing rebuke of Intel's board.
 
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