Intel Tock-Ticks Chipsets Back to 22nm
tomshardware.com
tomshardware.com
Intel certainly gave away a two year process lead that is slipping to two years behind their competitors, which will certainly put an end to their lovely fat profit margins.
Intel aren't doomed, but they gave away and will have given away all of their competitive advantage by sleeping at the wheel.
Further, AMD have abandoned production of their high end server parts at Global Foundaries, so they will no longer be constrained in process capability or supply as they were in the past.
It seems that no one in upper management have read the book, "Only the Paranoid Survive." Maybe it should have been required reading.
And anybody can now make chips in the most advanced nodes. There are startups now who are already working on TSMC7nm.
They are basically doing a AI chip with 8-16 general cores and 4000 floating point vector cores (probably with Tensor Type support on the Vectors). All in RISC-V.
https://www.technologyreview.com/s/601102/intel-puts-the-bra...
Moore's law is not a law but a target improvement rate: companies aim to resource sufficient individually risky projects enough to improve the process to achieve Moore's law. Intel was far ahead of competitors on process and decided to ramp down their spending. This and the resurgence of the AMD platform are consequences.
Was it the wrong strategy? Not clear at all - it would have been super expensive to keep going. They can choose to invest their huge cash pile and regain leadership
http://brucefwebster.com/2008/04/15/the-wetware-crisis-the-t...
Are you sure the problem couldn't be interpreted as, "We've set the die sizes too large?" Because that's how AMD is approaching it, and they're winning.
That statement is beyond hyperbolic...
If the chipsets are simpler, less critical and easier to design than CPUs, shouldn't they start new processes with the least critical stuff?
You can design around unreliable processes by increasing redundancy and these simpler chips seem excellent as technology validation.
Also, easier on the RTL isn't really easier on the process. The digital guys and the process guys have very different constraints, so there's probably not even a benefit to having "simpler" chips on a newer process first.
I assume a 10nm Quark X would be hard to see with the naked eye ;-)
Unfortunately, your response doesn’t really deal with the point I made: not only does it apply equally to both companies, but also I cannot think of any economically significant use case where Intel will beat AMD while costing more ($ or watts) per gflop.
Can you provide one example of where Intel products beat AMD's in latency in a way that prospective customers are willing to pay a premium for that performance delta?
With that kind of problem, you may want to abandon x86 altogether.
At this end of the spectrum, that means abandoning commodity hardware, with everything it implies, not just a change in binary architecture, as it might for ARM vs. x86 in end user devices.
Recently, I looked up the max memory on IBM's system z, and it was only 32TB, but it looks like their Power Systems E980 can take 64TB. It appears that, like with their mainframe line, going that route means significant vendor lock-in, including proprietary memory modules.
It's certainly interesting that the current generation of high-end x86 CPUs took a step backwards from the last generation, in that that their max is 12TB and just catching back up to 24TB isn't expected to happen until next year.
For some reason, while I was in college, I got a complimentary subscription to a magazine called Supercomputing Review. It was one of the most interesting reads of that time.
It's a bit like x86 vs SPARC vs POWER vs ARM. Each has workloads that run better on them for the same amount of upfront and operational costs.
AMD is less than 50% the price at large core count models, relative to comparable to Intel, so even with half the SIMD pipeline they can still win on $/gflops there.
It isn't really the same as considering entirely different ISAs. The switching cost Intel -> AMD is far cheaper than switching Intel -> PPC. Sparc and ARM are not competitive at all.
AMD full-year 2017 revenue: $5.3 billion
You see, Intel is gasping for breath, drowning in the $18 billion of profit they'll generate this year. How they'll survive another year at this rate is anyone's guess.
Big tech is in the kind of business where the 3rd, 4th, or 5th item in the chain of Toyota's "Five Whys" can have such far reaching effects. In a way, this is nothing new. The auto industry has been in that kind of business for a very long time now. This is why Toyota's "Five Whys" exists.
I don't think the root of the problem here is technical, however. I suspect it's ultimately cultural. Didn't Andrew Grove say, "Only the paranoid survive?" How hard would it be to maintain a culture of paranoia at an industry leading company with huge margins? That's the kind of position that fosters overconfidence, not paranoia.
AMD's Epyc Master plan: (Or how AMD let Intel paint itself into a corner)
Intel total revenue grew 14.9% in 20182Q, competition grew 18.08% in the same quarter, so Intel is slowly losing ground and there is potential for trouble. The real competitive moat is Intel's profit margin relative to the competition. Intel has been undisputed king in the profit margins and still continues to be. 60% Gross margin (20% above TSMC).
Intel has been beaten technologically before. AMD did it years ago. Intel responded by lowering prices, and removing profits from AMD's technological triumph. When AMD was financially in the ropes, Intel increased its profit margins again.
As long as Intel maintains 10-15% margin over competition it can cut into margins and compete with low price. Only after Intel loses the margins it will become just another chip maker.
And, you know, with illegal anti-competitive practices ( https://www.extremetech.com/computing/184323-intel-stuck-wit... in the EU and https://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/05/technology/05chip.html in the US)
So assuming they don't try that stunt again they're going to be in a tougher spot competitively than they were last time.
Intel is absolutely allowed to compete with low prices and cutting into profit margins.
Intel is not allowed to to pay rebates in exchange of being single supplier, or attempting to restrict access from the competitors.
The difference is between “aggressive competition” and “antitrust abuse” as the source you provide clarifies.
Intel has the margins that allow it to compete aggressively and legally.
From the first:
> Predatory pricing, also known as undercutting, is a pricing strategy in which a product or service is set at a very low price with the intention to achieve new customers (Loss leader), or driving competitors out of the market or to create barriers to entry for potential new competitors.
> ...
> However, it can be difficult to prove that prices dropped because of deliberate predatory pricing, rather than legitimate price competition.
I wonder how often predatory pricing has been prosecuted?
> Predatory pricing practices may result in antitrust claims of monopolization or attempts to monopolize. Businesses with dominant or substantial market shares are more vulnerable to antitrust claims. However, because the antitrust laws are ultimately intended to benefit consumers, and discounting results in at least short-term net benefit to consumers, the U.S. Supreme Court has set high hurdles to antitrust claims based on a predatory pricing theory.
> ...
> In addition, the Court established that for prices to be predatory, they must be below the seller's cost.
I.e., below cost pricing is necessary, but not sufficient.
The second is just a generic article and doesn't mention low prices in particular or US law in any way.
Here's a better source: https://www.ftc.gov/tips-advice/competition-guidance/guide-a...
> Can prices ever be "too low?" The short answer is yes, but not very often.
Lowering prices beyond cost, in an attempt to control part of a market, can be considered a crime... But the regulations are exceedingly complex.
Yet this time their prices continue to spiral ever higher. And while news of new production spin up hints this won't continue, for the short term future (at least 1-2 quarters) it appear it will.
The problem is that AMD's current technical attack directly undermines Intel's margins.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ucMQermB9wQ
That said, such a tactical advantage is only temporary.
So they can not simply do better the next time around as they did before. Or maybe they can but it will take longer until that happens.
Not only that. TSMC is just a similar mistake away from the same glitch at the next node size. They are not objectively smarter than Intel - they got lucky Intel got unlucky and that's it. We shouldn't read too much into it.
From what I can tell AMD’s chipsets are at 55nm, so intel is still at a smaller process node for chipsets.
If Intel wanted to fab a CPU using TSMC, what would be involved?