Intel accused by workers of prioritizing chip output over safety

Intel really has got to be in an internal panic. The last time AMD pushed Intel this hard, Intel went to extraordinary tactics to push AMD out of the market. I wouldn't be surprised if pushing their workers well beyond safety limits was in the current playbook.

The last big microarch jump for intel was Skylake (6th gen) and then 7, 8, 9 and some of 10th gen (but not all, but they needed "10th gen" for marketing reasons) are just incremental improvemnts over it. So Skylake was about a 15-20% increase in performance (real) but took a few shortcuts (Meltdown and Spectre). From then on, you had a 5-10% performance improvement per generation (let's round it at 7%). That's not bad per se, but it was done out of comfort. The "cursed" 10nm node which never came is also part of the reason why Intel stalled, they insisted on "tick-tock" and were unwilling (or unable?) to deliver a new microarch over 14nm+++, the super refined node (and the extra refinement allowed them to pull the clock higher on each new gen, now alowing those sweet close-to and with this new weird turbo [that seems more marketing than substance] surpass the 5Ghz barrier).

And that's how you come to Intel's situation on 2020: no 10nm node, no real new microarch in the last 5 years.

Edit:

As for why we never saw something like this... I think we never had a situation before where one of the competitors had such an advantage (the microarchs before Zen on AMDs part were bad, and that hit them hard for a long time) that they could pull this duckish moves for so long. For a long time, Intel chose not to improve their offering, because they were so far ahead of competition and they could keep milking the Whatever-Lake microarch family. They'd blame on the difficulty of extracting more IPC, Moores Law coming to an end (or not coming to an end, depending on what marketing was trying to sell).

In the end it came to AMD+TSMC offering superb processors for Intel to slash the prices in half, and then still being crushed performance wise, in desktop, server and now mobile too. And all Intel has to show is AVX512, which after having it gatekeeped for years in the server market, they've released on consumer processors - but hey, nobody's using it because there was no support!

Last month, I started getting some kernel_trap BSODs so I reduced voltage a bit and also the clock speed down to 4.7ghz.

I don't see a reason for me to upgrade my CPU for another few years unless it burns out or something. The only component I've upgraded is my GPU, from a GTX 670 to a 980 TI.

The newer chips may be great for specific needs, but for gaming and light development work I don't see any reason why I need to upgrade. Sure, a quad core from 2012 isn't the hottest thing anymore, but along with my 980TI it runs all my games at 2k without any issues.

Probably explained by: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P4VBqTViEx4

On another point. I'm not sure how much this is true, but I've read that most of AMD's chips are made from the same basic building blocks, and their different CPUs are mostly just a matter of how many these blocks are stitched together along with whatever tuning/other hardware. Such a design is probably very scalable, which simplifies manufacturing and reduces costs. Whereas I heard intel chips have more separate customizations requiring more separate tooling for each of their chipsets, which complicates manufacturing...

I would argue that fab capacity at TSMC is very much a limiting factor [0], putting AMD in the same spot as Intel by selling practically every working chip produced. This puts a cap on the amount of units sold, and with that a soft cap on the revenue. Doubling revenue at this point would mean doubling prices, which would be very unhealthy for their turnover.

The fab production capacity problem is even worse if you consider that basically all current and coming products by AMD (CPUs and GPUs for any of PS5, laptop, PC, server, the new Xbox) are produced on 7nm or 7P, and therefore compete for the limited fab-capacity available.

[0] https://wccftech.com/amd-7nm-wafer-production-set-to-double-...

No, they delayed time and time again because the 10nm process utterly failed to deliver the necessary yields and performance to be viable. It's not some ingenious display of sandbagging - only now in the past year or so has the 10nm process yields risen high enough to make low-power chips viable, and it is still not viable for high-power desktop chips, and probably will never be viable.

>Intel performance will always be one step ahead of AMD

A completely ridiculous assertion, and one that is already largely false at the present moment.

>intel have faster tech in their pocket waiting to be released.

Likely true, but only because of their failure to execute on 10nm. CPU designs are closely tied to the process they are designed to be manufactured on -- especially for Intel, who have never been concerned about being too tied to a single manufacturer (since it is themselves). This tight coupling can be good when the process is good, but the failure of 10nm meant that for years and years those architectural improvements you speak of are unshippable and useless.

Intel is not completely screwed by any measure, but the idea that they have the situation entirely under control and are intentionally not competing with now-superior AMD chips is entirely ridiculous.

This just isn't true. When Ryzen first came out Intel was still ahead in many use cases, especially if $$ was no object to you. But after several years AMD is now taking the crown from intel in all areas they compete in. If they really had some magical faster tech Intel would have released it years ago, much less this year, but they haven't.

Instead they announce the same old chips then hook them up to industrial strength cooling units to make it look like they can compete with AMD. This isn't the behavior of a company that is just biding its time.

Citation very much needed.

Show me an Intel CPU with PCIe 4.0 or with the performance per watt of the latest AMD Ryzen mobile chips. You can't, because to date they don't exist.

I think if they had anything in reserve it would have been released by now, because AMD is trouncing them in reviews.

Hmm. I think if Intel had a significant architecture enhancement waiting in the wings we would have seen it by now. They need it badly.

I just updated a 2013 quad core laptop with a late 2019 8 core laptop. Tasks that really use the cores are of course faster. Other than that, no substantial performance increase. 7 years and it is just incremental. Their process issues of late are horrific but there is not much happening architecturally either. Sad to see. They just seem a bit lost.

That being said, serious accidents have happened when employees violated procedures/protocols, failed to lock-out/tag-out, or defeated interlocks inappropriately. You can read about them in the press. For example: https://www.oregonlive.com/silicon-forest/2018/10/intel_sued...

Employees who fail to follow safety protocols rarely keep their jobs, even if there happened to be no injuries.

High voltages, high-power optics, vacuum systems, etc, all exist, too, but the risks associated with chemistry/process-gas accidents are perhaps the greatest.

As a teaser, HF is used throughout the industry -- it is spooky stuff (and awesome at getting things done).

I would say that it is an extremely safe occupation, having worked previously at a major semiconductor manufacturing facility for a few years. A lot of the staff virtually never enter the cleanroom. I personally only ever went in there 3-4 times. The automation is nearly absolute, so most of the effort is spent making sure the computers are doing the right thing. Sending humans into the cleanroom is directly in conflict with the objective of realizing low defect rates, because people are walking particulate factories.

https://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2008/02/26/sa...

It looks like the employer interpreted the message as a type of ultimatum. In the face of such an ultimatum, they basically have no choice but to treat it as a resignation.

The ultimatum is a very dangerous negotiating tactic, and generally harmful to long-term relationships. As an example, I recommend against posing an ultimatum to a spouse or partner.

No.

The issue here is that Samsung notified an employee of a coronavirus case on their floor by an email they could only read at work.

The HR willingly and knowingly subjected the employee to the risk of contracting coronavirus, taking away their ability to make an informed decision of whether or not to come to work that day given the risk.

This is criminal behavior. Don't make excuses for them.

I'm not even sure if you pushed this hard enough as a wrongful termination that it wouldn't stick.

They may have contracts that require them to ship units or lose large contracts (and thus have to engage in mass layoffs).

The problem with even arriving there is that there are three ways of letting go of someone:

1) just letting them go for any reason, but it requires giving them minimum notice(usually at least a month, but in many places it's 3 months or even more). Companies get around this by just paying the employee their salary for the duration of the notice period and just telling them not to come in any more.

2) both sides can agree to terminate the contract immediately - this usually happens if the employee wants to go somewhere else, but they also have say a 3 month notice period - in that case sometimes you can agree with the company that you will leave immediately but also not receive your 3 month pay.

3) You can let someone go immediately without pay, but only due to gross misconduct - and ooh boy, you better have it very very well documented that it was gross misconduct(like, a recording of someone stealing is usually good enough).

So the entire "letting someone go inappropriately" thing is lessened because it's really hard to argue for in cases 1 and 2, and employers really try to avoid case no. 3 specifically because of the risk of being sued. Most companies would rather just pay you for the remaining time on your contract to let you go immediately than risk being sued.

In other countries, you can't "just let someone go". In Belgium there are CAO's [0], which loosely translates to: Collective Employment Agreements. Basically all employment agreements for a whole industry are more or less standardised. On one side there are the employers (of different companies) and the other side are the workers, which are represented by union leaders (perhaps also political representatives).

These agreements includes a lot of rules on how employment can be terminated. One example could be that an employer is only allowed to fire an employee for underperformance after given the employee 3 written reports over a period of 3 months and working on a plan to improve their performance. Only after that fails to produce results are you allowed to fire the employee. And you need to keep the documentation as it could be reviewed in court if the employee decides to fight it. (That doesn't happen often).

For this reason, often the employer will try to get the employee to quit. Or at least come to a mutual agreement to terminate the employment.

In Belgium, it's very hard to fire employees, and I think this is the same for several other European countries.

As a result, I haven't heard of many EU companies firing employees during these rough times. At least, not as often as US companies with "at-will employment".

The flip-side is that large companies will often have a glut of employees that aren't productive, but can't be fired.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collective_agreement

If you need to get legal, it says “It can take a few weeks or a few months for an application to be processed, heard, and determined by a member. The length of the process will depend on things such as urgency of the application, whether parties have tried to resolve their problem at mediation, the availability of parties, representatives and the complexity of the case.”

You cannot be directly denied your salary or get demoted/fired for this. The company can of course appeal by opening a court case saying you abused this right, in which case any sanction may be applied if the ruling is in their favor.

The law also mandates that the company is responsible for the health of its employees on company time and premises, so you can also open a court case if you do not feel adequately protected (what happened to amazon).