[HN Gopher] Intel Refreshes 2nd Gen Xeon Scalable, Slashes Prices
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Intel Refreshes 2nd Gen Xeon Scalable, Slashes Prices
Author : rbanffy
Score : 58 points
Date : 2020-02-29 21:04 UTC (1 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (fuse.wikichip.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (fuse.wikichip.org)
| rubyn00bie wrote:
| I'm sort of amazed they haven't dropped prices more; I guess they
| can still charge a premium to anyone who wants their AVX512 (? I
| think that's it) performance to be as high as it can be.
| Otherwise, most of these processors have already had an epyc shit
| taken on them.
|
| I was just again pricing processors and if that 7302 isn't the
| real killer in the Epyc lineup I dunno what is. It craps on
| pretty much anything and everything Intel has, and is only about
| $1100 right now (pricing is inflated, but meh).
|
| It's pretty crazy how cheap hardware is compared to the cloud
| these days; sure, it's not in a data center or if it is that's a
| headache of its own... but it is really fucking cheap. I
| personally think a lot of mid-sized orgs could benefit from
| moving a lot of their non-production environments to an on-prem
| server. The VPN is probably already locking people out, causing
| connection headaches anyway, so it's not like you're gonna have
| less connectivity than you did ;-)
| thedance wrote:
| Isn't the intel 6208U a strong competitor to the AMD 7302? At
| the same price and TDP it has higher clock speeds and a unified
| memory domain, compared to the AMD 4-way NUMA architecture. It
| seems like you can make a case for either, depending on your
| workload.
| rubyn00bie wrote:
| It would be for me, but it's a single socket only processor.
| I like the 7302 specifically for the non-P variant. If I was
| going to stick to just one socket, I'd probably spend a bit
| more and go with the entry level Threadripper 3960x...
|
| It's a nice looking processor though and probably the only
| one worth a damn in that line up.
| consp wrote:
| The AMD Rome chips (including the 7302) behave as one numa
| node I thought (and can find online). You also get quite a
| lot of PCIe4 as a bonus and a higher all core base frequency.
| Though your mileage may vary depending on workload as you
| already stated.
| bitcharmer wrote:
| Too little, too late.
|
| After years of ruthlessly milking us I just hope they loose a big
| market share and become equals with AMD. The consumers can only
| benefit from that.
| fizixer wrote:
| Oh this is a tried-and-true strategy that both nVidia and Intel
| follow again and again. And it works like a charm.
|
| Think of market share as a fragile glass or ceramic cup sitting
| right at the edge of the table. You're usually oblivious cz it
| hasn't fallen (or you're busy with other stuff). Then you
| notice it has tipped over and is now in free fall. If you have
| very good reflexes, as a big market share company, you catch it
| mid-air (you lower the prices to the point where it prevents
| drop from breaking anything). If you succeed, now you have the
| cup in your hand; it didn't hit the floor, and it didn't
| shatter. Great. Now you slowly raise that cup back to the table
| surface level (you raise the prices back to the same level in a
| few years) and place it at the table. Done.
|
| - AMD revenue is between $5-10b,
|
| - nVidia, between $10-20b
|
| - Intel, over $50b.
|
| Intel and nVidia can eat AMD alive anytime they want.
| Invidually or together. Once, or many times.
| frostburg wrote:
| One of several of Intel's issues is that they can't do this
| to TSMC.
| 1e-9 wrote:
| I whole-heartedly welcome AMD's new offerings and have
| completely switched to buying servers with AMD CPUs, but I have
| to disagree with the characterization of "ruthless milking" by
| intel. There was no instituted monopoly here. Others were free
| to compete, but they failed. Intel's high prices motivated AMD
| to create something better and now they have. If anything, the
| high pricing was a screwup on intel's part and good for the
| consumer. Intel could have better protected their lead by
| charging less (but not as less as now) to discourage
| competition. I'm glad they didn't, even though it cost me for
| the last few years. Now that there is a valid competitor again,
| maybe we will see better conformance to Moore's Law.
| pixl97 wrote:
| >There was no instituted monopoly here
|
| You're talking about the Intel that was used for monopoly
| practices, right?
| charleslmunger wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_Micro_Devices,_Inc._v.
| ...
| the_duke wrote:
| > Others were free to compete, but they failed.
|
| Intel engaged in a lot of anti-competitive practices, lost a
| civil lawsuit over it and was fined 1bn by the EU. [1]
|
| They almost killed AMD in the process.
|
| Every company this size with a quasi-monopoly (in a certain
| segment) will squeeze the market and try to buy or push out
| competition any way they can get away with.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel#Litigation_and_regula
| tor...
| 3fe9a03ccd14ca5 wrote:
| Competition works.
| gigatexal wrote:
| Isn't competition great?
| sneak wrote:
| I can't wait until this happens with last-mile internet access
| too, and, in a funny twist of circumstance, quality electric
| cars.
|
| What other long-moated industries are going to crack open in the
| next half-dozen years?
| thedance wrote:
| If this is really your impression of the industry, you must be
| really young. It's not "long-moated". Intel was in a similar
| situation when the Opteron was current, and before they had to
| go head-to-head with Sun and IBM and before that nobody would
| even think of putting intel in a server at all. The period
| during which Intel's products were the obviously superior
| choice lasted maybe 5-8 years at most. And it wasn't some
| nefarious plot, either. Just good product.
| sneak wrote:
| The first computer I built myself was an 800MHz Athlon, so I
| am somewhat familiar with Intel's history of competition.
|
| Moats don't have to be malicious or nefarious. Sometimes
| there are just high barriers to entry to compete.
|
| See tractors with DRM, for instance. Apparently building
| tractors and a tractor repair/parts network is a very
| expensive undertaking.
| thedance wrote:
| A moat implies barriers against new entrants, but none of
| the parties in the current market are new. They are all
| well within the moat.
| gonzo41 wrote:
| Residential Power, Solar will hit a tipping point soon for home
| installs. And I'd expect the proliferation of microgrids around
| renewable sources mixed in with batteries.
| jchw wrote:
| Honest question: do you think Teslas are, on the whole,
| overpriced? I am neither an owner nor an expert in electric
| cars, but I have been routinely impressed with the rate at
| which the price has come down. I don't doubt that the $35k
| Model 3 configuration is probably non-sensical (at $35k minimum
| spec seems silly) but also it seems pretty competitive for an
| electric car that can replace a gas car. My personal hunch has
| always been that the price for relatively cheap Tesla
| configurations that make sense probably are limited by volume
| and initial cost of R&D and scaling up manufacturing. (Of
| course almost any company does some market segmentation for
| better or worse, so I'm sure the prices of options are non-
| sense.)
|
| Not to say the prices won't go down. But I actually didn't
| think the reason they were high was due to mature, moated
| companies. My personal belief is that Tesla would be foolish to
| rest on their success in such a way when other companies with a
| lot more resources are surely going to be competing more
| competently soon.
| sneak wrote:
| No, I don't think they are super overpriced, I just think the
| quality isn't there yet. Hopefully we can see higher quality
| all-electric options at similar or lower price points.
|
| Tesla's service reputation is the main reason I still
| currently drive an ICE. (Before that, it was their laggy
| touchscreen - my gas guzzler has an iPad on a bracket on the
| dash, which does not lag.). Also I'm never going to drive
| something that spies on me; I had the GSM radio transceiver
| removed from my current vehicle.
|
| AIUI if you do that to a Tesla you never receive future
| updates, even to features you paid for in advance.
|
| More competition in the EV market is going to be awesome.
| Right now it's just a bloodbath where Tesla can basically do
| whatever they want, because until very recently every other
| EV was simply hot garbage.
| cptskippy wrote:
| You've never owned an EV but you're perpetuating the notion
| that they're of __unspecified __poor quality compared to
| ICE vehicles?
|
| I have a Nissan Leaf and a Tesla Model 3 and both are of
| comparable quality to ICE vehicles. They are in two
| different categories in terms of materials finish but
| neither is bad quality. The fit and finish of both is
| average to above average in the industry.
| leeoniya wrote:
| > Also I'm never going to drive something that spies on me;
| I had the GSM radio transceiver removed from my current
| vehicle.
|
| i'd like to do the same to my VW Golf. i bought a VCDS tool
| to go in and fiddle with the settings to essentially put
| the gsm module into airplane mode (i think it's verizon
| telematics). dunno if this will be sufficient though.
|
| i read that just ripping it out causes a bunch of the
| infotainment system misbehave, etc.
| chapium wrote:
| I doubt you could convince me that there is $40k more value
| in a Model X than a Model 3.
|
| In terms of $ per "car" I'd also say yes, but that comes down
| to my own personal preferences being categorically outside of
| the luxury car market.
| cptskippy wrote:
| Those are very different situations. Intel has held a
| technological advantage and, up until recently, no one could
| compete with them so they could command their price. With ISPs
| there is a huge capital investment cost, and with EVs there are
| supply chain issues limiting capacity and commanding higher
| costs.
|
| With last-mile internet, the incumbents have made significant
| capital investments and competitors have so far been unwilling
| to engage in the sort of long term slow return investment
| necessary to build out infrastructure. Google Fiber has tried
| all means to lower the cost of entry and has thus far failed to
| deliver significant gains and they're unwilling to make the
| huge capital investments necessary to truly compete because
| ensuing price wars would make realizing a return near
| impossible.
|
| With BEVs the problem is manufacturing cost, primarily the cost
| of batteries needs to drop but the demand for EVs has not
| warranted dramatic ramp ups in battery manufacturing necessary
| for that to occur. The supply of suitable batteries is so
| limited that Jaguar and others have actually had to stop
| production.
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(page generated 2020-02-29 23:00 UTC)