They are, in a certain sense, suffering from their own success in that their competitors have basically been nonexistant up until Zen came about (and even then only until Zen 3 have Intel truly been knocked off their single thread perch). This has led to them getting cagey, and a bit ridiculous in the sense that they are not only backporting new designs to old processes but also pumping them up to genuinely ridiculous power budgets. With Apple, AMD, and TSMC they have basically been caught with their trousers down by younger and leaner companies.
Ultimately this is where Intel need good leadership. The mba solution is to just give up and do something else (e.g. spin off the fabs), but I think they should have the confidence (as far as I can tell this is what they are doing) to rise to the technical challenge - they will probably never have a run like they did from Nehalem to shortly before now, but throwing in the towel means that the probability is zero.
Intel have been in situations like this before, e.g. When Itanium was clearly doomed and AMD were doing well (amd64), they came back with new processors and basically ran away to the bank for years - AMD's server market share is still pitiful compared to Intel (10% at most), for example.
Which one? I dont believe they missed a die shrink, it just took a long time. Intel 14nm came out in 2014 with their Broadwell Processors, and the next node, 10nm came out in 2019 (technically 2018, but very few units shipped that year).
From the 2015 10-K [0]:
"We expect to lengthen the amount of time we will utilize our 14nm and our next-generation 10nm process technologies, further optimizing our products and process technologies while meeting the yearly market cadence for product introductions."
Spoiler alert: In the five years after shelving the tick-tock model, Intel also missed the yearly market cadence for product introductions.
[0] https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/50863/00000508631600...
It's hard to see what they can do. AMD is winning on every measure I can see on x86, and M1/Ampere feel like a huge curveball thrown at them. I don't even think they could switch to using TSMC fabs to help them shrink the process size as all the capacity is booked up for years (especially by Apple).
I think also the dynamics have changed in the server market in the last 10 years or so. You now have a much more condensed market with this big cloud operators buying millions of CPUs and having much more leverage over them before.
I would be surpised if by the end of the 2020s if ARM wasn't standard in nearly all server workloads. Most software can run on it unmodified now - databases all work great on ARM, and most applications are interpreted or run on a VM, so it is pretty easy to move to.
To put it in numbers alone, look at this benchmark. Flagship vs Flagship: https://www.cpubenchmark.net/compare/Intel-i9-11900K-vs-AMD-...
So what you're seeing isn't really anti-Intel, it's probably often more like bitter disappointment that they haven't done better. Though I'm sure there's a tiny bit of fanboy-ism for & against Intel.
There's definitely some of that pro-AMD fanboy sentiment in the gaming community where people build their own rigs: AMD chips are massively cheaper than a comparable Intel chip.
its back to where everyone design its own chip for their own product but don't need a fab 'cause of foundry like TSMC and Samsung.
For instance, you can now get an i7-10700K (which is roughly equivalent in single thread and better in multi thread) for cheaper than a R5 5600X.
My cherry-pick is where the AMD chip is 30% more expensive, but multi-threaded performance is 100% better in this example: https://www.cpubenchmark.net/compare/Intel-i9-11900K-vs-AMD-...
Edit: picking individual processors to compare (especially low volume ones) is often not useful when talking about how well a company is competing in the market.
Intel is still biggest player in the game, because even though they are stuck at 14nm, AMD isn't able to manufacture enough to take bigger chunks of the market. Apple won't sell it to PC/Datacenter space, rest are still niche.
I think this isnt quite fair, their laptop 10nm chips have been shipping in volume since last year, and their server chips were released today, with 200k+ units already shipped (according to Anandtech). The only line left on 14nm is socketed Desktop processors, which is a relatively small market compared to laptops and servers.
M1 is proof that it can be done, however you can absolutely make a bad CPU for a good ISA so I wouldn't take it for granted.
Intel is already behind AMD -- they have no product segment where they are absolutely superior. The means AMD is setting the market pace.
On top of this Apple is switching to ARM designed CPUs. This also looks to be a vote of no confidence in Intel.
The consensus seems to be that Intel who have their own fabs -- never really nailed anything under 14nm and are now being outcompeted.
There are some who would argue this claim, but I think it's at least a defensible one.
Still, availability is an important factor that isn't captured by benchmarking. AMD has had CPU inventory trouble in the low-end laptop segment and high-end desktop segment alike.
> The consensus seems to be that Intel who have their own fabs -- never really nailed anything under 14nm and are now being outcompeted.
Intel has done well with 10nm laptop CPUs. They were just very late to the party. Desktop and server timelines have been quite a bit worse. I agree Intel did not nail 10nm, but they're definitely hanging in there. It's one process node at the cusp of transition to EUV, so some of the defeatism around Intel may be overzealous if we keep in mind that 7nm process development has been somewhat parallel to 10nm because of the difference in the lithographic technology.
I think that summarizes it pretty well in that one graph.
Also, the first 10nm "Ice Lake" mobile CPUs were not really an improvement over the by then many times refined 14nm chips "Comet Lake". It's been a faecal pageant.
Many people, I'd say especially enthusiasts, were quite happy when AMD was able to compete on a performance/$ basis and then outright beat Intel.
Of course, now the tables have turned and AMD is able to extract that price premium while Intel cut prices. Who knows how long this will last, but Intel is still the 800 lb gorilla in terms of capacity, engineering talent, and revenue. I don't think we've heard the last from them.