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Could it be they bought Habana for US$2B?

But this is very intel: get psyched about a technology, dump billions into it for a few years, flake out. See: cloud services ca. 1997 and IoT ca. every 3 years since 2013.

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> But this is very intel: get psyched about a technology, dump billions into it for a few years, flake out

Hit the nail on the head! I worked for Intel nearly a decade ago. I was a full time employee for a few years. They saw Android and the Apple app store capturing mobile users and decided to dump $$$ into an app store for the PC (Intel AppUp). The effort lasted a few years before it crashed and burned HARD. During this time they also tried to spin up Meego/Moblin for mobile and tablet, then a partnership with Samsung to work on Tizen, and bought up McAffee.

The amount of money Intel flushes down the toilet with fruitless endeavors is sad, especially considering the number of people that end up jobless (like many of my good friends did) because of it.

I noticed this recurring theme. Seems like that eventually all companies go down this path at some point if they become mega rich. At that point money alone doesn't matter as much as capturing new markets do so lots of money goes down the drain. It's a good thing for the companies that get acquired and get their paycheck.

I see as rich people who buy expensive things and let them rot because they forgot they bought them or so.

Public markets demand growth. So boards demand managers who do Growthy Things. When it doesn't grow, you toss the old managers lots of money for their service, find new managers who promise you new Growthy Things, and repeat.

Sometimes bets like these turn out to be huge wins, like Microsoft going into the gaming platform space with the Xbox or Amazon building out cloud services. The Intel app store idea doesn't seem like such an idea to me, but I can see how the board could have been pushing for "outside the box" big bets.

Probably an intentional attempt to self-disrupt, innovator's dilemma and all.

I'd argue that Microsoft and Amazon's branches were at least tangential to what they were doing in the back-end and that they already have most of the required talents to do it right.

I have no idea how Intel could work their way into running an app store beyond "we have tech and market dudes, good enough right?"

With their new fabric/modular system, the modules are effectively "apps". Though possibly sold by app developers, you could install the Adobe module or the Autodesk module and it would have hardware/ram/storage tuned to those applications. It will start with DL and Graphics accelerators but then morph into application specific.

No no no, sorry but it’s a completely different story. Microsoft is a Software company and with the XBox they sought to expand from their business software market into the entertainment software.

It’s still software and besides the hardware which wasn’t much different from a standardized gaming PC, they worked on building the software platform and developer accessories. Something they happen to be pretty decent at...

Interestingly Meego was really great to use. Super fluid and simple while not hiding linux too far under the covers. If Intel bought Nokia there could easily be three mobile OS in current use.

Interestingly Windows Mobile was really great to use. Super fluid and simple while integrating well into the Windows ecosystem. If Microsoft bought Nokia there could easily be three mobile OS in current use.

Oh wait.. they did. And there's not.

I used them both and there was no comparison. Being snarky because you think it's clever doesn't change that.

The design of the UI and the design of the apps was like the first time using a brand new system where everything has been thoroughly thought through. It used touch very well to be as basic and straightforward as possible.

I'm not really being snarky - it just seems like it.

Lots of people really thought Windows Mobile was great (including here on HN). Meego was great too.

It doesn't matter.

The point is that it's unclear why Intel (a company that has failed at every consumer focused business they have ever tried) would have done better with Nokia than Microsoft did, given that MS has had considerable success in consumer markets, already had carrier relationships, had developer relationships etc etc).

Anyone would have done better if they were left alone. The point is that they already had great technology. I'm not sure how this isn't sinking in, but you seem desperate to point out that Microsoft tanked Nokia, which is actually already common knowledge.

A little less sarcasm and snark will probably leave room for absorbing what people are saying.

desperate to point out that Microsoft tanked Nokia

What? Not at all!

Nokia was screwed before Microsoft bought them. If they'd shipped Meego on phones two years earlier (start of 2009) they'd have had a chance, maybe.

At the time I thought Microsoft was Nokia's best hope (and Nokia was the best hope for Microsoft's mobile strategy).

I'm pushing back on the idea that Intel would have been some magic lifeline for them.

>MS has had considerable success in consumer markets, already had carrier relationships, had developer relationships etc etc

By consumer market, you mean PC market. They were tiny in mobile market. Its the reason they try to shove Nokia into its platform

Nokia already has they the dev relationship, carrier relationship, retail relationship. They dont need all that from microsoft. The only thing they need is money and strong leadership. Nokia was mismanaged into oblivion.

> It doesn't matter

No, it does matter. They were already one foot in the grave, but jumping ship into windows mobile is just the nail in the coffin.

I often see the same sentiment here re:not just meego but also PalmOS and WP7. But the OS being 'well thought out and cool' simply didn't matter by that point.

Apple had revolutionized the category and was making over 90% of the profits, had all the apps and other ecosystem lock-in, the ipad on top of that, the highest user satisfaction, an avalanche of free publicity, almost all of the consumer mindshare, and a fleet of rapidly expanding and phenomenally popular stores for distribution. A brand new "well thought out os" with no apps simply wasn't going to make any kind of dent in Apple's market share.

Meanwhile the anti-Apple enthusiasts had been coalescing strongly around Android for several years. A bunch of big companies were fighting tooth and nail for the scraps and who won? The guys with the "most well thought out Android skin"? No. It was the guys who were by far the most ruthless and shameless competitors. That's what won between all the android handset makers, that's who won between Android makers and other "well thought out OS's" and imho that's who wins all hypothetical matchups as well if all you're bringing to the table is being cool and well thought out.

Now if Intel wanted to lose $5B a year and buy marketshare then yeah they could have done that but they would have never made back that money.

The N9 was released in 2011, only two years into the modern smartphone era. The hardware and software were fantastic and it got a lot of attention but died due to no other devices following it, not because of a lack of demand.

"Despite a limited release,[5] the N9 received widespread critical acclaim, with some describing it as Nokia's finest device to date. It was praised for both its software and hardware, including the MeeGo operating system, buttonless 'swipe' user interface, and its high-end features"

My sentiment exactly. Nokia was in a perfect position to launch a third mobile OS. even primer than windows mobile. Nokia was still on top eventhough declining. Many Nokia app dev are waiting to jump into the Meego ecosystem if Nokia commited. People are waiting for Nokia next move. Unfortunately, it was not a great move.

At launch, we know that the software are great. Hardware are great. But the management was abyssimal. Alot of internal politics, burning money, and ultimately, Meego was killed before it was borne into the world. The irony is that N9 was still a great revolutionary phone critically acclaimed, despite knowing its gonna be short lived.

I wouldnt have been so bitter about it if N9/Meego was not great.

BTW, the Nokia people who worked on MeeGo and the N9 went to create the Jolla company and continue development as Sailfish OS.

(Typed from a Sailfish OS running Xperia X. :-) )

I do get your point, just a couple of nitpicks.

Actually it was only Nokia Mobile that was bought and after how everything went Nokia Siemens Networks, got enough money to buy Siemens part back, become the current owner of Bell Labs and via the HMD agreement, one of the best Android OEMs.

In what concerns Windows, although it lost on the phones, it is winning on the tablet space via 2-1 hybrid/convertible laptops against Android and ChromeOS tablets.

And most PDA like industrial deployments are still mostly Windows based.

100% agreed. We might have been on the same team. Don't forget Omnipath and Xeon Phi. Prediction: this new discrete graphics card as well.

Omnipath went the way infiniband is going. Ethernet has caught up, and surpassed the speeds, so using proprietary technology with fewer features isn't that attractive anymore.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terabit_Ethernet is faster than the main memory bandwidth on current generation processors.

But not faster than L3 cache bandwidth. Some cards can DMA to L3 cache. Granted, eventually it's flushed to main RAM, so might not help too much in the end.

Cool. That means it both prevents nethammer and allows the cpu to check a signature/decrypt/type check as value stream over the network.

I sat through a Xeon Phi presentation at university, about how it would revolutionize the university's "supercomputer". I left shortly after; did Phi come to nothing?

It was too difficult to get decent performance from Xeon Phi for general use cases. A few apps could make it work e.g. PGS bought up all the old stock for a big geophysics system.

They started an app store? They're in entirely the wrong market position for such an endeavor, they don't own end user relationships or have any software platform to leverage, let alone software expertise. In fact would have likely suffered a strategic tax of wanting to favor their own processors. What a dead on the water idea. Definitely not the first time Intel has forgotten to stay in their lane.

They have huge contracts with all OEMs and make the drives for their chipsets. Planning to add that appstore to it as bloatware and having an installbase in the hundreds of millions quickly wasn't that crazy.

I thought they would succeed-ish enough for me to register as a developer for App-Up. Alas, they didn't.

Developers: easily neglected by hardware manufacturers.

Platform fails without them, though.

Announce a platform, intending for it to fail? Big fish like Intel are masters at this now.

Oh wow i totally forgot their investment in phones! I had a brief stint writing tech articles and was covering mobile around 2013.

Their App Store wasn’t for phones. It was for PC.

Referring to meego/moblin / tizen which were all mobile

My first internship was with Intel in the early 2000's with the group that was designing Intel's Infiniband NICs. Between when I accepted the internship and started they already knew they were going to abandon that product development, and the engineering group was all getting moved to chipset development. I got to catalog discontinued hardware.

I’m wondering, how much of that expertise eventually found its way in consumer stuff like thunderbolt and usbc?

Jobless part suck but I think it's smart of them to try. It's like they're playing the law of large number. Keep on trying until they get a unicorn.

Reminds me of how they dropped the Intel Galileo. Since then, I've never been willing to trust that they'll support their efforts.

It was web hosting in 1997 not cloud services - I remember it well, as I was working for a vendor. It seemed like such a stupid grab for incremental income and coolness even then.

Now they're doing drone shows and sports as incremental business attempts. Sometimes I think of Intel as a PR agency with a semiconductor fab in the backyard...

A former colleague worked for them in those days and had insane stories. They would fly him first class to Oregon from Virginia or Jersey every two weeks, just for a staff meeting!

Intel would fly Fellow Fred Pollock flew back and forth between Cali and his home in Florida for years in the late 80's early 90's. The guy was OG brilliant, for REAL, but it still was funny that he had Intel by the shorties.

A bit later ('98 or '99, I think) I worked at a content/community site for older folks. Intel gave us this odd speech-synth software/API bolted on to a low poly 3D face that could move its lips in vaguely realistic ways. There was a plugin needed to use it in a browser, and we were given money to figure out something useful enough to do with it that people would bother to install the plugin.

Pretty sure you can guess how well that worked. My suggestion, making the tacky 90's robot recite Cartman lines or otherwise swear in ridiculous ways, was... not exactly in alignment with the rest of our content strategy, you might say. And probably not what Intel had in mind. But I bet adoptions would have broken the two-digit barrier.

With numbers that low you could just use the money to pay people to install it.

I mean, it seems like at some point, someone inside Intel should have been capable of saying, "You built this literal talking head and you don't know why, so you're proposing we pay a media company that specializes in health, retirement investing, and old people sex to come up with a reason for us?"

20 years ago at Intel the description was Intel is a Fab company that designs microprocessors and motherboard chip sets on the side.

I think they have a tendency to ditch products prematurely. They enter markets that will take 10 years to mature and then cut their losses when the expected level of profit doesn't appear. They even do this to divisions that are actually turning a profit. Which goes over really badly with their customers.

I seem to recall Linley Gwennap or someone at the Microprocessor Report saying that this was because these other industries were too different, in terms of R&D requirements and margins, from Intel’s core business, making PC CPUs; none of these other businesses could ever produce the margins that Intel would need and none of them required the level of R&D that Intel could direct at them. This was when Intel was about to debut Larrabee.

Yes, that is 100% accurate. Their core competency is making wafers. CPUs specifically, high margin servers, low margin latop parts, ... and then chipsets (so many chipsets). Everything else is just a toe in the water. (Their investing arm also does quite well.)

Any counterexamples besides Itanium?

Itanium isn’t a good example because HP heavily subsidized its continuation after a few years. Without that cash, Intel would’ve (justifiably) killed it then.

> They enter markets that will take 10 years to mature and then cut their losses when the expected level of profit doesn't appear.

Amazon was far from the first company to do cloud. For instance, Sun Microsystems pushed it in the 90s, and Loudcloud, I mean "Opsware" did it in 2003.

I think the difference was that Amazon committed to it for a loooooong time.

You are correct. It was basically a giant "iMac": all-in-one-server-box the size of a small room with racks and roll out keyboards. They were TRYING to write what would become cloud services, but they didn't have the talent: the team was pulled from all over and had no experience in backend/devops let alone the nascent linux kernal that was starting to blossom.

> But this is very intel: get psyched about a technology, dump billions into it for a few years, flake out.

I worked on OpenStack for a few years. Take this with a grain of salt, but I heard that Intel funded a great deal of it... quietly.

Basically they wanted to promote OpenStack, but at the same time they didn't want to piss off companies competing with it.

> Could it be they bought Habana for US$2B?

That's what the article says. They had two lines that did basically the same thing, and axed one of them.

According to the article, the hardware on Nervana was better, but the software was worse.

Not the case... AFAIK (based on talking to people who have played with Habana test systems), any real performant applications still need to be hand optimized with their assembly.

Word on the street was that Nervana power consumption was much too high and a big problem (likely thermal issues). The software will be repurposed for use on Habana. So no, AFAICT it wasn't the software, it was the actual Nervana chip that was the problem.

That’s exactly what the article says, in its second paragraph.

> Could it be they bought Habana for US$2B?

Literally the first sentence of the second paragraph in the article (that you read, right?)

> The announcement itself isn’t very surprising. In mid December the company announced its acquisition Habana Labs for approximately $2 billion.

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