Heresy and Horror Ahead at Intel | Hacker News Reader

Heresy and Horror Ahead at Intel

eejournal.com

33 pointsMangoCoffee11 comments

TL;DR;

> Enter Pat Gelsinger. His strategy is also dual-pronged. First, to open up x86 to licensing as IP. (Heresy!) And second, to rent out Intel’s production facilities like an independent foundry. (Horror!) Other people will be able to make Intel microprocessors, and Intel will make other people’s microprocessors. He’s unbundling Intel’s architecture from Intel’s manufacturing.

I wonder if this will end up like Apple's licensing of Mac OS to other manufacturers.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macintosh_clone#Licensed_Macin...

>open up x86 to licensing as IP

another AMD would be nice.

>And second, to rent out Intel’s production facilities like an independent foundry. (Horror!)

Um, didn't Intel offer foundry services already few years ago? https://semiwiki.com/semiconductor-manufacturers/intel/7912-...

Intel Custom Foundry were using Intel's internal tools and not industry standard EDA tools. Basically Intel is adopting to Foundry design Ecosystem. That is a big deal.

Wasn't this AMD's strategy? IIRC it works, but it takes years to make the independent businesses viable. Intel's fabs are not likely to be competitive with TSMC at first, and at present intel chip designs are not competitive with ARM/AMD designs. While some of the latter can be attributed to process technology, I wouldn't be convinced that Intel on TSMC solves their tech problems.

This sounds like a management solution to what is ultimately a technology problem. Is there any reason to think that intel's business conjoined process + tech design strategy is fundamentally non-competitive in 2021? or is it just that they've failed to compete for chip talent compared to Apple, Nvidia, ARM, and TSMC.

> It’s long been possible to clone the x86 architecture with no outside help from Intel. It’s not easy, but it’s doable. AMD has built an entire business around this,

Didn't it go the other way round for the 64 bit architecture? I thought it was designed by AMD and adopted by Intel. Only the 32 bit foundation is originally from Intel.

(Software developer preferring ARM if any, not an expert in the field.)

It's the main mistake of the article (and a pretty massive one). Intel even had to license it from AMD until they entered a cross licensing agreement. [1]

Not sure though, wheter a new entrant would have to license it from Intel, AMD or both?

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X86-64#Licensing

I like the article, but it is kind of badly written.

> It’s no secret that Intel has stumbled lately...

How so? If you're going to assert something, explain what you mean. This is too ambiguous. We might know how they've stumbled, or we might have different ideas about how than the author, or we might not be in the loop. Give some background, explain your assertions.

>Intel has never licensed its x86 CPU designs (well, not for a really long time)...

So not never then. Then why say never in the first place?

Just a couple of examples. The article gives you a feel for what's changing at Intel, but it uses a lot of cruft that take away from the information itself and doesn't really give you a full picture.

>It’s no secret that Intel has stumbled lately...

The target audience should be well ware of all the problems Intel has been going through and Industry. It is the EE Journal after all.

It will be interesting to see where they go with the x86 licensing. Does it mean licensing out core designs for customers to do with as they please, a la ARM, or more like AMD putting together customized CPU/GPU configurations for game consoles. Guess we'll see

Reply on news.ycombinator.com