Hacker News Reader

Comment by gwbas1c | Hacker News Reader

When I worked for Intel in 2005-2007, a lot of the workforce joined near the beginning, and planned to make their career at Intel. Most of those people probably retired in the last few years.

After two years, I was still "the new guy."

They also totally goofed mobile, as the article explains. Everyone knew mobile would be a big deal; it was "obvious." Even Moore's law predicted mobile. (Every 18 months the number of transistors you can fit in a given area doubles = every 18 months you can make the same chip use half the space.)

Why did they goof mobile? I think the article explains the symptoms well, but even I have trouble explaining "why" given that everyone could see mobile coming.

View on HN

In 2003, Intel was able to reinvent its CPU design center in response to the previous iteration of PC miniaturization (the laptop market was ready to explode, while desktops were slowing down). They did this by running a skunkworks design project in Intel's Israel division (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pentium_M). After the Israeli engineers were able to show how their design fixed Pentium 4's architectural issues, it became the basis for all successful Intel processors for the next decade.

Intel did great in process technology and the ecosystem around their chips. They were extremely well positioned to grab the smartphone market. Contrary to popular belief, x86 is entirely capable of the TDPs required by mobile phones. The Core m3 has a configurable TDP under 4W while making none of the compromises of Atom. It might have taken another skunkworks project to cut some modules and bring it down to the milliwatt range, but it could have been done. Intel simply allowed itself to be outmaneuvered out of the smartphone market, by complacency and unwillingness to lower the "tax". That worked fine for a decade, but now they're seeing the side effects of the resulting brain drain.

The Core m3 launched nearly 10 years too late tho. They didn't have anything near 4w in 2007.

>The Core m3 has a configurable TDP under 4W

No. This is best to say a safety measure: going over 4w over 5 seconds? turning on deep throtlinng.

Real engineering datasheets you get as a client tell very clearly that TDP of Y line chips is 17w.

Intel chips at such wattages are just a lot of dark silicon.

Your analysis is wrong.

> Why did they goof mobile? I think the article explains the symptoms well, but even I have trouble explaining "why" given that everyone could see mobile coming.

Okay, so exactly how do you sell:

"Hey, we need to get in on this mobile thing. It's an order of magnitude more chips, but instead of margins of 30 dollars per chip, we'll only receive ... get this ... 30 cents. Isn't that a great idea?"

"30 cent mobile chips will replace most most of your 30 dollar chip market, by not getting in the market you're giving a competitor a massive leg up"

Kinda like saying "why should this big company named Sears care about this little company named Amazon"

If profits are going away, there's no point in cutting your throat prematurely. You might as well milk your customers while you can.

Intel didn't make the transition the last time until it was against the wall:

https://anthonysmoak.com/2016/03/27/andy-grove-and-intels-mo...

Reply on news.ycombinator.com