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  • dabotsonline - Wednesday, April 4, 2018 - link

    Good interview, Ian, but didn't you fancy asking a cheeky last question about Apple's rumoured abandonment of Intel SoCs from 2020?!
  • III-V - Wednesday, April 4, 2018 - link

    It's highly unlikely that he would have gotten a straight answer.
  • HStewart - Wednesday, April 4, 2018 - link

    Important thing to remember this is a rumor - also we have no idea how far it will go - it be only for specific system as a test run.
  • zodiacfml - Friday, April 6, 2018 - link

    I feel it is a rumor spread by Apple to threaten Intel for better pricing and/or performance. The threat is credible due to AMD's 7nm chips and integrated graphics that Apple wants.

    I guess Intel knows it for a long time, taking Raja Koduri recently.

    Media thinks it is about using Apple's SoCs which is just not possible unless on an IOS based Macbook Air.
  • jjj - Wednesday, April 4, 2018 - link

    It's not gonna be about perf, it's about efficiency as devices get smaller- think glasses and beyond.
    Data is so 5 years ago, looking forward it's about intelligence, not the old one ofc.

    The first question I would have asked is how is Intel gonna be in consumer in 10 years from now, PC sales will be 0 and Intel does not know how to compete, in a free market. If they want to be in consumer, it's far from certain.
    Second question, how does it make sense to keep the fabs if all they do is to follow the same path as everybody else, this race to nowhere. The ROI is not there anymore, it's silly to go 5nm and 3nm and w/e, disruption become inevitable as the industry keeps pushing on the wrong path. Either innovate or spin them off.
    3rd- How do you shift Intel form prioritizing its own interest, to serving the customer. The claims that they are serving the customers are nonsense, they focus on maximizing profits at the customer's expense by abusing the x86 monopoly. They can't survive if they don't learn to do more.
    4th- Her process seems to be reactive, how do others do it. Maybe Intel should ask, what is nobody else doing. Doing something better than others is ok but it's much better to do what others aren't, that's innovation.

    We need glasses, enable that. We need 100mW SoCs, not 300W pancake sized silicon so maybe manufacturing needs 3D. We need compute and storage to merge, no FET, no von Neumann, no MOS, so find the right switch. We need datacenter? Better without it so why not go there. Solve a freaking problem that's relevant tomorrow.
  • mkaibear - Wednesday, April 4, 2018 - link

    I assume that if you are capable of picking a problem that's relevant tomorrow you'd be out solving it rather than posting on AT complaining that no-one else is doing so?

    In order;

    >We need glasses, enable that

    No, we don't. There's limited market space and it's well covered by other manufacturers, and there's not a compelling use case for glasses at the moment. "we need glasses" is focussing (heh) on a solution without a problem.

    >We need 100mW SoCs, not 300W pancake sized silicon so maybe manufacturing needs 3D

    We have all of those things already. Loads of SoCs available at 100mW but they aren't really useful for GP computing at the moment, even the RPi Zero consumes half a Watt. Funnily enough what's going to be useful is more efficient fabbing to produce more efficient chips - but of course you think it's silly to go "5nm and 3nm and whatever"

    There's also a market for 300W "pancake sized" silicon - if nothing else because the "pancake size" allows them to dissipate the 300W more efficiently. The ideal is to do more with your 300W "pancake sized" silicon - as efficiently and effectively as possible.

    >We need compute and storage to merge

    What? Why? That just means if you need gobs of CPU you need to buy huge amounts of storage and if you need loads of storage you need to buy vast quantities of CPU. That's a ridiculous suggestion, it's the worst of all worlds!

    >No FET (and No MOS)

    So you *do* want them iterating on fabbing technologies and trying new ways of doing things?

    >no von Neumann

    Oh good grief are you saying Intel should focus their R&D on dataflow architecture? The thing which like commercial fusion has been purported for years but strangely no-one has made it work even remotely well enough to substitute for conventional computing?

    >find the right switch

    Spoken like a true layman. Why waste all that money on looking at iterating existing processes when you can just switch to a new one - never mind all the work needed to figure out what the best way of doing it will be.

    >Better without it (datacentre) so why not go there

    Says the man posting on a website hosted in, ooh what is it? Could it be a datacentre? I think it might be!

    In what way would we be better off without datacentres?
  • III-V - Wednesday, April 4, 2018 - link

    "'we need glasses' is focussing (heh) on a solution without a problem."

    The best inventions tend to solve problems people didn't even know they had.
  • mkaibear - Wednesday, April 4, 2018 - link

    I broadly agree with you. In this case though, smart glasses or whatever is a known solution which doesn't have a corresponding problem. They exist, they've been put out there, they didn't take off. There needs to be something which people want to use it for which overcomes the inertia of a new paradigm - either a problem which is to be fixed or something else.
  • p1esk - Thursday, April 5, 2018 - link

    Billions of people today already wear (sun)glasses every day. We just need efficient enough chips which can make those glasses smart.
  • mkaibear - Thursday, April 5, 2018 - link

    We already have efficient enough chips which can make those glasses "smart". What we don't have is a sufficiently sized problem which having smart glasses will fix.
  • Ratman6161 - Wednesday, April 4, 2018 - link

    "Data is so 5 years ago, looking forward it's about intelligence,..." Hmmm...so how exactly do you expect intelligence to work without data? Take the smartest human who ever lived and wipe all her memories and what do you have? You have an infant in an adult body that isn't capable of anything. Computing power + Programming+data => intelligence.

    "they focus on maximizing profits at the customer's expense " Every company seeks to maximize profits. When they stop doing that they go into decline and eventually die.

    "We need glasses, enable that. " maybe you do....I don't think I do. But if I did then what use would they be without a data center containing many chunks of "pancake sized silicon" which you say we don't need fed by large quantities of data which you say we don't need. Without those things, what is it you expect to be doing with the glasses?
  • zodiacfml - Friday, April 6, 2018 - link

    1. It is everything. Performance still matters especially at the data center. They are already considering making and using ARM based products for efficiency.

    2. Intel still owns the PC market. The only thing they don't own is mobile computing which they are aware of. What is not clear now if they are going the gaming GPU business, which for now, they don't seem want. They clearly want the datacenter through integrated x86 and GPUs.

    3. I agree on their greed on maximizing profits. They've delayed 10nm products and staying with mainstream dual core chips for a long time as they know they are well ahead of the competition and earn the same tweaking 14nm chips.

    4. Agreed. Intel is on a wait and see game plan. This only satisfies investors and not the long term benefit of the company. Intel is on par with the large semicon companies in terms of manufacutring node where it wasn't the case just a few years ago. ARM simply owns mobile computing.

    I just can't wait to see Intel trashing everyone again with vastly superior products, just because they can.
  • HStewart - Wednesday, April 4, 2018 - link

    I think Intel's addition of Raju is going to make big changes in the future - especially with his close connection with Apple - even with the rumor about Apple abandonment of Intel by 2020. Who knows it could even be joint adventure.

    I believe because Intel primary business is mobile now - that there will be huge push in mobile market - especially with new technology like EMIB in 980xG. Think about Intel has technology of EMIB and CPU and Raju has discrete graphics and associated graphics memory.
  • HStewart - Wednesday, April 4, 2018 - link

    Also think about it, Apple rumors could be Apples way of trying to get better pricing from Intel.

    Rumors of Apple going Mac with ARM have been going on for years - yes they have ARM on machines for controllers in display and such.
  • ಬುಲ್ವಿಂಕಲ್ ಜೆ ಮೂಸ್ - Wednesday, April 4, 2018 - link

    "I've probably looked at 30 companies that have succeeded in kind of getting bigger and big companies that didn't succeed. There are a lot many more of those by the way! From that, you start extracting some behaviors."
    -------------------------------------------------------------------
    That is the problem, not the solution

    Watching Microsoft lock everything down to prevent the end users from doing what they want on their own hardware should have made INTEL recoil in horror

    Instead, they followed suit, locking users into UEFI and secure boot, further limiting user choice on their own hardware

    Did UEFI and secure boot solve the malware problem, or did it piss off so many millions of people that you have now compounded the problem

    Windows 10 success is not due to helping the end user succeed!

    It locks us into a Spyware Platform that limits what the end user can do

    It only helps Microsoft succeed by taking away our options

    Microsoft is directly liable for all the damage they have caused regardless of what their bogus license may claim

    For INTEL to follow suit because they only look at what successful Companies do is the very height of stupidity

    Thats why I no longer buy INTEL
    If I want to run a Spyware Platform, my Sandy Bridge will run it just fine
    If I want to run DOS 5 or Windows XP on bare metal, I can do that as well

    XP era software is great but......
    Compatability mode in Win 7-10 does not work for them
    Virtual machines do not work either
    Making the applications portable does not work
    I have software that only works on bare metal installs

    Their are no scam of the week buzzwords that will make them work in Spyware Platform 10

    Stop forcing everyone into "Modern" garbage that does not do what we can still do on an 8 year old INTEL X86 computer

    If I want garbage, then Windows 10 garbage works fine on an 8 year old machine
    If I want useful applications from the XP era, they WILL NOT work on a new machine

    Herding us into a smaller and smaller pen is not an improvement

    All you have really done is turn the X86 computer into a locked down gaming console with a web browser attached
  • ಬುಲ್ವಿಂಕಲ್ ಜೆ ಮೂಸ್ - Wednesday, April 4, 2018 - link

    EDIT MODE:

    There are....
  • Hurr Durr - Thursday, April 5, 2018 - link

    Nobody is bying your XP bullshit, psycho.
  • ಬುಲ್ವಿಂಕಲ್ ಜೆ ಮೂಸ್ - Thursday, April 5, 2018 - link

    What is it with all your hateful trolling Hurr Durr?

    If you see any bullshit in my post, please indicate what the error is and link us to evidence why it is incorrect

    Locking down Windows and the INTEL X86 platform is not XP specific anyway, so WTF?
  • serendip - Wednesday, April 4, 2018 - link

    Atom! Please, please bring back Atom tablet chips. Apollo Lake with >4 W TDP doesn't cut it.
  • Hurr Durr - Thursday, April 5, 2018 - link

    "It takes a village". Oh boy, it`s one of those.
    But then you read "I don't do anything" and all is right with the world again.
  • akula2 - Thursday, April 5, 2018 - link

    The opening Q was funny and weird:

    So tell me about your new role - during our press event live blog, you were on stage and some of the comments were "I thought she had left Intel?"

    Tell you, Ian? :)
  • peevee - Thursday, April 5, 2018 - link

    "Leading Intel’s strategy is Aicha Evans"

    So, that is who is responsible for all the Intel's strategic failures in the recent years!

    Affirmative Action?
  • Kvaern1 - Thursday, April 5, 2018 - link

    No she isn't. They created that position a year ago, because of those failures one would think.
    Personally I think the future looks bleak for Intel. X86 is shrinking and for all we know their praised process advantage has all but evaporated.
  • peevee - Friday, April 6, 2018 - link

    You'd think the overall strategy is CEO's and CTO's job. Looks like management just cannot be bothered and have created this position without any real power for other reasons than fixing their mess.

    The only hope for Intel is to switch from Si to something else first. Si is done, any density improvements come at exponential costs making the improvements useless as overall cost per transistor stays flat or rises.

    And of course x64 is a hopeless mess, decoders alone must be bigger than whole A55 cores I suspect. Not to mention than speculative execution in thermal or energy-limited environments (which are all of them nowadays, even PCs) is a bad idea, and that is where Intel's architectural advantages lie (and efforts went) since Pentium Pro.
  • wow&wow - Thursday, April 5, 2018 - link

    Why not asking her two simple questions:

    How has Intel been able to keep launching and selling the faulty chips with the intended flaw (not a bug, according to the CEO) of not following the privilege levels defined by itself?

    How was Intel able to have OS companies agree to messing with relocating OS kernel, the first and only in the computing history, and got into the messy situation like below?

    "Mad March Meltdown! Microsoft's patch for a patch for a patch may need another patch"

    "Microsoft patches patch for Meltdown bug patch"

    "Microsoft's Windows 7 Meltdown fixes from January, February made PCs MORE INSECURE"
  • zodiacfml - Friday, April 6, 2018 - link

    Intel is so big and old. They can't make something cool for a long time already.

    The interview gives an impression that their dragging their feet on the GPU business. She said that it is clear that Intel is going serious into GPU business but I haven't seen articles or statements for clear proof of that except hiring Raja. If its clear enough, we will see headlines of Intel going after Nvidia and AMD, including gaming GPUs. They got to be in the gaming GPU business, I'm certain of that.
  • Beaver M. - Friday, April 6, 2018 - link

    Honestly, she sounds much more like a PR-manager than a chief strategy officer.
    I cant hear much real competence from her, just a lot of pretty talk, which could mean Intel employed the wrong person and thus only makes it worse now.
  • serendip - Sunday, April 8, 2018 - link

    I think Intel top management saw how she managed to salvage their mobile division from utter ruin, so that's why she got a C-level post. Intel will go the way of BlackBerry if it keeps coasting along on x86 PCs and servers only. ARM server systems using Centriq and ThunderX are real, shipping items now with comparable perf/watt and lower prices than Xeon. Microsoft and Qualcomm are making ARM PCs now and Apple could possibly use ARM on their PC lineup in the near future.

    Microsoft and PC OEMs don't need Intel, it's Intel that needs them. Doubling down on x86 when year-on-year performance gains are miniscule doesn't make much sense.
  • Jiang - Saturday, June 2, 2018 - link

    SoC Chips Issue Overheating
    https://youtu.be/R5B4o9ePvcI
  • Jiang - Saturday, June 2, 2018 - link

    SoC Chips Issue Overheat
    https://youtu.be/_XaRaSdSwdM

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