[HN Gopher] Intel Problems ___________________________________________________________________ Intel Problems Author : camillovisini Score : 438 points Date : 2021-01-19 14:27 UTC (8 hours ago) (HTM) web link (stratechery.com) (TXT) w3m dump (stratechery.com) | jjoonathan wrote: | The "US manufacturing is actually stronger than ever" camp used | to cook their books by over-weighting Intel profits. Hopefully | this will be a wakeup call. | [deleted] | me551ah wrote: | I wonder how the move from x86 to arm is going to affect desktop | apps. With the move to ARM apple is already pushing it's iOS apps | into MacOS. Once it becomes commonplace on Windows, it would be | super easy to run Android Apps on Windows via simulation(rather | than emulation which is much slower). | | Given that mobile apps are more lightweight and consume far less | resources than their electron counterparts, would people prefer | to use those instead? Especially if their UIs were updated to | support larger desktop screens. | [deleted] | oblio wrote: | Why do you think mobile apps are more lightweight? | | Android phones these days have at least 4GB or RAM and mobile | apps are in general more limited plus you run fewer of them in | parallel as they tend to be offloaded from RAM once the limit | is reached. | phcordner wrote: | > And in that planning the fact that TSMC's foundries -- and | Samsung's -- are within easy reach of Chinese missiles is a major | issue. | | Are processor fabs analagous to auto factories and shipyards in | World War II? Is the United States military's plan for a nuclear | exchange with China dependent on a steady supply of cutting edge | semiconductors? Even if it is, is that strategy really going to | help? | | This article is mostly concerened with Intel's stock price. Why | bring this into it? Let's say Intel gets its mojo back and is | producing cutting edge silicon at a level to compete with TSMC | and supplying the Pentagon with all sorts of goodies... and then | China nukes Taiwan? And now we cash in our Intel options just in | time to see the flash and be projected as ash particles on a | brick wall? | | "The U.S. needs cutting edge fabs on U.S. soil" is true only if | you believe the falied assumptions of the blue team during the | Millenium Challenge, that electronic superiority is directly | related to battlefield superiority. If semiconductors are the key | to winning a war, why hasn't the U.S. won one lately? | | And what does any of this have to do with Intel? Why are we | dreaming up Dr. Strangelove scenarios? Is it just that some | people are only comfortable with Keynesian stimulus if it's in | the context of war procurement? | lotsofpulp wrote: | > If semiconductors are the key to winning a war, why hasn't | the U.S. won one lately? | | Semiconductors aren't going to help change people's cultures or | religion or tribal affiliations without decades of heavy | investment in education and infrastructure, or other large | scale wealth transfers. | | But if "winning a war" means killing the opposing members while | minimizing your own losses, surely electronic superiority will | help. | tgtweak wrote: | I don't feel that there is a meaningful TSMC alternative today. | Samsung, Intel and GlobalFoundries are not suitable | replacements for TSMC with regards to throughput or technology. | | The world does need some meaningful fabs outside of | Taiwan/South Korea. All of the <10nm semiconductor and most of | the >10nm semiconductor fabrication takes place within a | 750km/460mile radius circle today. That is risky. | | Israel, Mexico, Germany, Canada, Japan (not that it would grow | the circle much...) are all viable places to run a foundry. The | fact that Intel is one of the few outside that circle doesn't | inspire confidence in the security of the global supply chain. | oblio wrote: | It doesn't even have to be war: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki | /2011_Thailand_floods#Damages_t... | mdasen wrote: | I mostly agree that there isn't a great alternative to TSMC, | but I would point out that the 2021 Qualcomm Snapdragon 888 | processors are being made by Samsung with their 5nm process | (in addition to their new Exynos 2100). Intel and | GlobalFoundries aren't really replacements, but Samsung has | been winning business for latest-generation flagship | processors. Maybe it isn't as advanced as TSMC and maybe | Samsung will have problems, but a lot of the 2021 flagship | phones will be shipping with Samsung-manufactured 5nm | processors. | | Samsung seems to be keeping it close. | tgtweak wrote: | It's still within that circle. Samsung is a great fab, | probably the only real contender to TSMC. Samsung is 17% | global semiconductor demand vs TSMC at 50%+. Included in | that 17% is all of Samsung's demand (Exynos, SSD/storage, | memory, etc). | | Further agitating the issue, South-Korean SK-Hynix is | buying Intel's nand business this year and will likely | shift production out of intel's US fabs when it comes time. | Ericson2314 wrote: | Gosh, splitting (if not anti-trust at least pro-competition) then | subsidies sounds like way too sane government planning for the US | to actually do it. | eutropia wrote: | I worked at Intel in 2012 and 2013. Back then, we had a swag | t-shirt that said "I've got x86 problems but ARM aint one". | | I went and dug that shirt out of a box and had a good laugh when | Apple dropped the M1 macs. | | Back then, the company was confident that they could make the | transition to EUV lithography and had marketing roadmaps out to | 5nm... | trident5000 wrote: | A company that is being cannibalized by companies ripping the rug | under them by developing their own chips, yet Intel makes no | efforts to return the favor. They need to make an open source OS | phone, maybe that will make a dent and serve as a carrier for the | chips. They dont need to do all the work they can partner. | gmmeyer wrote: | This article seems to mix up AMD and ARM | NoNameHaveI wrote: | Companies that use millions of micros will grow tired of paying | royalties for ARM & other IP. I'm putting my money on RISC-V. If | Intel is smart, they will too and offer design customization and | contract manufacturing of RISC-V. | totalZero wrote: | > This is why Intel needs to be split in two. Yes, integrating | design and manufacturing was the foundation of Intel's moat for | decades, but that integration has become a straight-jacket for | both sides of the business. Intel's designs are held back by the | company's struggles in manufacturing, while its manufacturing has | an incentive problem. | | The only comparable data point says that this is a terrible idea. | AMD spun out GlobalFoundries after a deep slide in their | valuation, and the stock (as well as the company's reputation) | remained in the doldrums for several years after that. Chipmaking | is a big business and there are many advantages to vertical | integration when both sides of the company function | appropriately. If you own the fabs and there is a surge in demand | (as we see now at the less extreme end of the lithography | spectrum), your designs get preferential treatment. | | Intel's problem isn't the structure of the company, it's the | execution. Swan was not originally intended as the permanent | replacement to Krzanich[0], and it's a bit strange to draw | conclusions about whether the company can steer away from the | rocks when the new captain isn't even going to take the helm | until the middle of next month. | | People are viewing Intel's suggestion that it may use TSMC's fabs | for some products as a negative for Intel, but I just see it as a | way to exert pressure on AMD's gross margin by putting some | market demand pressure on the extreme end of the lithography | spectrum (despite sustained demand in TSMC's HPC segment, TSMC's | 7nm+ and 5nm are not the main driver of current semiconductor | shortages). | | [0] https://www.engadget.com/2019-01-31-intel-gives-interim- | ceo-... | garaetjjte wrote: | >The only comparable data point says that this is a terrible | idea. | | Huh, I would say completely opposite thing. AMD wouldn't have | survived if it kept trying to improve their own process instead | of going to TSMC. | ZeroCool2u wrote: | The problem here is not the success of AMD after splitting, | but the complete retreat of Global Foundries from the SOTA | process node. If this happens again with an Intel split then | we have only TSMC left, off the coast of mainland China in | Taiwan, in the middle of a game of thermonuclear tug of war | between the West and China. | | While Capitalism will likely be part of the solution, through | subsidizes for Intel or some other form, it must take a back | seat to preventing the scenario described above from becoming | reality. We are on the brink of this happening already with | so many people suggesting such a split and ignoring what | happened to AMD and GF. | | The geopolitical ramifications of completely centralizing the | only leading process node in such a sensitive area between | the world's super powers cannot be understated. | | Full disclosure: I'm a shareholder in Intel, TSMC, and AMD. | renewiltord wrote: | I feel like that disclosure isn't warranted since like two | of them are in the S&P 500 and everyone here probably has | some exposure to that. | ZeroCool2u wrote: | Fair enough. | Symmetry wrote: | The price of creating the fabs for a new node increases | exponentially with every node. I remember when there were | over 20 top node players. Now there are 3 if you aren't | counting Intel out. If AMD had remained in the game there's | no way they could have won. | ZeroCool2u wrote: | I agree with respect to AMD's situation. I think that was | the right decision for them then. | | I'm saying that there is a difference between the two | situations and there are geopolitical factors at play | that mean the answer here is not as simple as splitting | Intel into a foundry company and a chip design company, | due to what we saw happen to AMD's foundry when they | split. | | I think it's a bit misleading to say that there are 3 top | node players right now. Samsung, TSMC, and Intel, while | from a business perspective do compete, from a technical | perspective TSMC seems to have a fairly significant lead. | Like you said, the price increases dramatically every | node. If Intel were to split, why would that new foundry | company bother investing a huge amount of money in nodes | they can't yet produce at volume? Also, Samsung while | close to TSMC in competition at this point, still | produces an inferior product. There seems to be solid | evidence of this in the power consumption comparison of | AMD vs NVIDIA top end cards.[1] | | My point being, if Intel were to follow the same road as | AMD and split up, we could find ourselves in a situation | that while better for Intel's business, would arguably | leave the world worse off overall by leaving TSMC as the | only viable manufacturer for high end chips. | | 1. https://www.legitreviews.com/amd-radeon-rx-6900-xt- | video-car... | morganw wrote: | Let's just hope that if Intel's position is protected | because of its strategic importance in the tug of war, it | doesn't become another Boeing. | totalZero wrote: | This is a bizarre comparison. Boeing made an entire line | of planes that could randomly dive into the ground, and | insisted that there be no additional training required | for the uptake of those planes. Intel, in contrast, was | over-ambitious with 10nm and didn't wait a few more | months to incorporate EUV into that process node. The | government hasn't banned the use of Intel chips, but the | 737 Max 8 was grounded for 20 months. While the pandemic | slammed air travel, it has been a major tailwind for the | PC and server markets alike. | rjmunro wrote: | I thought Boeing had many issues pre-covid, not just the | 737 Max. Starliner immediately springs to mind. | twblalock wrote: | AMD had to go through that in order to become a competitive | business again. Look at them now! Maybe Intel's chip design | business needs to go through the same thing. | | Maybe there is a way for Intel to open up its fab business to | other customers and make it more independent, without splitting | it off into another company. However, it seems like that would | require a change in direction that goes against decades of | company culture. It might be easier to achieve that by actually | splitting the fab business off. | Covzire wrote: | But look at Global Foundries now. The article does suggest | that Intel's spun off fabs would need state funding to | survive but is that really tenable for the long term? Is that | TSMC's secret thus far? | tgtweak wrote: | Global Foundries has stopped at 12nm and I don't see any | plans to go beyond that. A notable amount of their fabs are | in South Korea anyway so they would fall into the same | bucket. | totalZero wrote: | Self-immolation is only a path to growth if you're a magical | bird -- it's not a reasonable strategy for a healthy public | company. AMD went through seven years of pain and humiliation | between that spinoff and its 2015 glow-up. I understand that | sometimes the optimal solution involves a short-term hit, but | you don't just sell your organs on a lark (nor because some | finance bros at Third Point said so). There are obvious | strategic reasons to remain an IDM, and AMD would never have | gone fabless if the company hadn't been in an existential | crisis. Intel is nowhere near that kind of crisis; it may | have some egg on its face but the company still dominates | market share in its core businesses and is making profits | hand over fist. | | > Maybe there is a way for Intel to open up its fab business | to other customers and make it more independent, without | splitting it off into another company. | | Intel Custom Foundry. They have several years of experience | doing exactly what you describe, and that's how their | relationship with Altera (which they later acquired) began. I | see AMD's subsequent bid for Xilinx as a copycat acquisition | that demonstrates one of the competitive advantages of | Intel's position as an IDM: information. | twblalock wrote: | > Intel is nowhere near that kind of crisis; it may have | some egg on its face but the company still dominates market | share in its core businesses and is making profits hand | over fist. | | Years from now, people looking back will be amazed at how | fast that changed. The time to react to disruption is now, | when the company still has the ability to do so. | totalZero wrote: | It's easy to make that kind of prediction, and in fact | people made the same prediction about AMD in far worse | circumstances -- and were still wrong. Semiconductors are | extremely important to the world's economy right now, not | just in PC and server but all over the tech marketplace. | sradman wrote: | > Solution One: Breakup | | > Solution Two: Subsidies | | Solution Three: lower prices/margins (temporarily) to match the | value proposition of AMD on Windows PCs and Linux Cloud servers. | hakcermani wrote: | Solution Four: Is it even possible that Intel and AMD merge ?! | With ARM based chips clearly accelerating and poised to take a | big market share (Apple, Nvidia, Amazon, Qualcomm becoming | major players) there is less of an antitrust issue ? | vinay_ys wrote: | It is more likely they will stick to their guns like IBM | sticking with Power (which is technically awesome) but still | pricing it too high (because cost economics is likely out of | whack) and in the process they will lose developer mindshare. | | I really hope Intel does better than IBM with Power. | twblalock wrote: | Intel needs to change the way it does business. Simply lowering | prices won't achieve that. Becoming the cheap option is likely | the beginning of a death spiral the company will never recover | from -- it will give the company an excuse to double down on a | failing strategy. | | Furthermore, AMD is not the biggest threat to Intel. The | biggest threat is cloud providers like Amazon designing their | own chips, which is already happening. If those succeed, who | would build them? Certainly not Intel, if they continue to | manufacture only their own designs -- that business, like so | much other fab business, will go to TSMC. | sradman wrote: | > Becoming the cheap option is likely the beginning of a | death spiral... | | Maybe. I didn't suggest becoming the cheap option I suggested | re-evaluating its premium pricing strategy in the short-term | to reflect current and future customer value. Margin | stickiness seems to be a built-in bias similar to the sunk- | costs fallacy. | | Server-side Neoverse is a threat but a slow-moving one. I'm | assuming that "Breakup" (going fabless) will not show | benefits for many months if not years. Price seems like an | obvious lever; perhaps I'm being naive about pricing but it's | not obvious to me why. | iamgopal wrote: | Solution three : Invest to make x86 to become power efficient to | reach at par or better than arm counter part, while outsourcing | manufacturing to TMSC to fill the gap. Reach to the level Future | Apple M chip will achieve. At the same time, start building bare | metal cloud hosting solutions that allow other companies to | provide their own cloud solutions, ( and using energy efficiency | at your advantage ), also use that energy efficiency to create | mobile platform that can enable Mozilla and Ubuntu like provider | to make operating syatem on. | darshanime wrote: | C'mon Intel, this is your opportunity to go all in on RISC-V | moonbug wrote: | why? | jfb wrote: | They're not losing money fast enough on x86? | mikewarot wrote: | They could make a strategic investment in reconfigurable | computing, and pivot around this, _if_ they can survive long | enough to profit from it. | ashtonkem wrote: | I think one day we're going to wake up and discover that AWS | mostly runs on Graviton (ARM) and not x86. And on that day | intel's troubles will go from future to present. | | My standing theory is that the m1 will accelerate it. Obviously | all the wholly managed AWS services (Dynamo, Kinesis, S3, etc.) | can change over silently, but the issue is EC2. I have a MBP, as | do all of my engineers. Within a few years all of these machines | will age out and be replaced with m1 powered machines. At that | point the idea of developing on ARM and deploying on x86 will be | unpleasant, especially since Graviton 2 is already cheaper per | compute unit than x86 is for some work loads; imagine what | Graviton 3 & 4 will offer. | tapirl wrote: | Intel's fate predicted in 2014: | https://pbs.twimg.com/media/ErrFtv0UwAA4JaW?format=png | afavour wrote: | On the flip side that post illustrates just how things can go | wrong, too: Windows RT was a flop. | tapirl wrote: | It is more a stance to show Microsoft is ready to put | Windows on arm CPUs if x86 loses the market. | deaddodo wrote: | Precisely for the reasons he gave though. It wasn't a | unified experience. RT had lackluster support, no | compatibility and a stripped down experience. | | They're trying to fix it with Windows on ARM now, but | that's what people were asking for back then. | dfgdghdf wrote: | Aren't most of us already programming against a virtual | machine, such as Node, .NET or the JVM? I think the CPU | architecture hardly matters today. | dboreham wrote: | Having worked some on maintaining a stack on both Intel and | ARM, it matters less than it did, but it's not a NOOP. e.g. | Node packages with native modules are often not available | prebuilt for ARM, and then the build fails due to ... <after | 2 days debugging C++ compilation errors, you might know>. | DreadY2K wrote: | Many people do code against some sort of VM, but there are | still people writing code in C/C++/Rust/Go/&c that gets | compiled to machine code and run directly. | | Also, even if you're running against a VM, your VM is running | on an ISA, so performance differences between them are still | relevant to your code's performance. | ncmncm wrote: | C, C++, Rust, & Go compile to an abstract machine, instead. | It is quite hard these days to get it to do something | different between x86, ARM, and Power, except relying on | memory model features not guaranteed on the latter two; and | on M1 the memory model apes x86's. Given a compatible | memory model (which, NB, ARM _has not had_ until M1) | compiling for the target is trivial. | | The x86 memory model makes it increasingly hard to scale | performance to more cores. That has not held up AMD much, | mainly because people don't scale things out that don't | perform well when they do, and use a GPU when that does | better. In principle it has to break at some point, but | that has been said for a long time. It is indefinitely hard | to port code developed on x86 to a more relaxed memory | model, so the overwhelming majority of such codes will | never be ported. | wmf wrote: | Note that M1 only uses TSO for Rosetta; ARM code runs | with the ARM weak memory model. | d33lio wrote: | While I generally agree with this sentiment a lot of people | don't realize how much enterprise supply chain / product chain | vastly varies from the consumer equivalent. Huge customers that | buy intel chips at datacenter scale are pandered to and treated | like royalty by both intel and amd. Companies are courted in | the earliest stages of cutting edge technical development and | product development and given rates so low (granted for huge | volume) that most consumers would not even believe. The fact | that companies like Serve The Home exist proves this - for | those who don't know, the realy business model of Serve The | Home is to give enterprise clients the ability to play around | with a whole data center of leading edge tech, Serve The Home | is simply a marketing "edge api" of sorts for the operation. | Sure it might look like intel isn't "competitive" but many of | the intel V amd flame wars in the server space for un released | tech have already had their bidding wars settled years ago for | this very tech. | | One thing to also consider is why amazon hugely prioritizes | using their "services" and not deploying on bare metal is | likely because they can execute their "services" on cheapo arm | hardware. Bare metal boxes and VM's give the impression that | customer's software will perform in an x86 esque matter. For | amazon, the cost of the underlying compute per core is | irrelevant since they've already solved the issue of using | blazing fast network links to mesh their hardware together - in | this way, the ball is heavily in Arm's court for the future of | Amazon data centers, although banking and gov clients will | likely not move away from X86 any time soon. | rauhl wrote: | > I have a MBP, as do all of my engineers. Within a few years | all of these machines will age out and be replaced with m1 | powered machines. At that point the idea of developing on ARM | and deploying on x86 will be unpleasant | | Is it not at least somewhat possible that at least some of | those Apple laptops will age out and be replaced with GNU/Linux | laptops? Agreed that developing on ARM and deploying on x86 is | unpleasant, but so too is developing on macOS and deploying on | Linux. Apple's GNU userland is pretty ancient, and while the | BSD parts are at least updated, they are also very austere. | Given that friction is already there, is it likelier that folks | will try to alleviate it with macOS in the cloud or GNU/Linux | locally? | | Mac OS X was a godsend in 2001: it put a great Unix underneath | a fine UI atop good hardware. It dragged an awful lot of folks | three-quarters of the way to a free system. But frankly I | believe Apple have lost ground UI-wise over the intervening | decades, while free alternatives have gained it (they are still | not at parity, granted). Meanwhile, the negatives of using a | proprietary OS are worse, not better. | narrator wrote: | This is why you run your environment on Linux and MacOS in | Docker, so you don't have these screwy deployment issues | caused by MacOs vs Linux issues. | surajrmal wrote: | I develop on GNU/Linux begrudgingly. It has all of my tools, | but I have a never-ending stream of issues with WiFi, | display, audio, etc. As far as I'm concerned, GNU/Linux is | something that's meant to be used headless and ssh'd into. | Koshkin wrote: | Try a Raspberry Pi. It just works. | ogre_codes wrote: | > Is it not at least somewhat possible that at least some of | those Apple laptops will age out and be replaced with | GNU/Linux laptops? | | Has Linux desktop share been increasing lately? I'm not sure | why a newer Mac with better CPU options is going to result in | increasing Linux share. If anything, it's likely to be | neutral or favor the Mac with it's newer/ faster CPU. | | > But frankly I believe Apple have lost ground UI-wise over | the intervening decades, while free alternatives have gained | it (they are still not at parity, granted). | | Maybe? I'm not as sold on Linux gaining a ton of ground here. | I'm also not sold on the idea that the Mac as a whole is | worse off interface wise than it was 10 years ago. While | there are some issues, there are also places where it's | significantly improved as well. Particularly if you have an | iPhone and use Apple's other services. | rurp wrote: | As much as I would like it to happen, I think it's unlikely | Linux will be taking any market share away from Macs. That | said, I could imagine it happening a couple ways. The first | being an increasingly iPhonified and restricted Mac OS that | some devs get fed up with. | | The second would be Apple pushing all MacBooks to M1 too | soon, breaking certain tools and workflows. | | While I think both of those scenarios could easily happen, | most devs will probably decide just put up with the extra | trouble rather than switch to Linux. | eitland wrote: | > Has Linux desktop share been increasing lately? | | At least I feel I see a lot more Linux now, not just in the | company I work for but also elsewhere. | | The speed advantage over Windows is so huge that it is | painful to go back once you've seen it. | | MS Office isn't seen as a requirement anymore, nobody think | it is funny if you use GSuite and besides, last time I used | an office file for work is months ago: everything exist | inae Slack, Teams, Confluence or Jira and these are about | equally bad on all platforms. | | The same is true (except the awful part) for C# | development: it is probably even better on Linux. | | People could switch to Mac and I guess many will. For | others, like me Mac just doesn't work and for us Linux is | an almost obvious choice. | old-gregg wrote: | > Is it not at least somewhat possible that at least some of | those Apple laptops will age out and be replaced with | GNU/Linux laptops? | | And I personally hope that by then, GNU/Linux will have an | M1-like processor available to happily run on. The | possibilities demonstrated by this chip | (performance+silence+battery) are so compelling that it's | inevitable we'll see them in non-Apple designs. | | Also, as it usually happens with Apple hardware advancements, | Linux experience will be gradually getting better on M1 | Macbooks as well. | davish wrote: | I think we can look to mobile to see how feasible this | might be: consistently over the past decade, iPhones have | matched or exceeded Android performance with noticeably | smaller capacity batteries. A-series chips and Qualcomm | chips are both ARM. Apple's tight integration comes with a | cost when it comes to flexibility, and, you can argue, | developer experience, but it's clearly not just the silicon | itself that leads to the performance we're seeing in the M1 | Macs. | geogra4 wrote: | I think there are serious concerns about Qualcomm's | commitment to competitive performance instead of just | being a patent troll. I think if AWS Graviton is followed | by Microsoft[0] and Google[1] also having their own | custom ARM chips it will force Qualcomm to either | innovate or die. And will make the ARM landscape quite | competitive. M1 has shown what's possible. MS and Google | (and Amazon) certainly have the $$ to match what Apple is | doing. | | 0:https://www.datacenterdynamics.com/en/news/microsoft- | reporte... | 1:https://www.theverge.com/2020/4/14/21221062/google- | processor... | tomp wrote: | I wonder to what extent that's a consequence of Apple | embracing reference counting (Swift/Objective C with ARC) | while Google being stuck on GC (Java)? | | I'm a huge fan of OCaml, Java and Python (RC but with | cyclic garbage collection), and RC very likely incurs | more developer headache and more bugs, but at the end of | the day, that's just a question of upfront investment, | and in the long run it seems to pay off - it's pretty | hard for me to deny that pretty much _all_ GC software is | slow (or singlethreaded). | willtim wrote: | Java can be slow for many complex reasons, not just GC. | Oracle are trying to address some of this with major | proposals such as stack-allocated value types, sealed | classes, vector intrinsics etc, but these are potentially | years away and will likely never arrive for Android. | However, a lot of Androids slowness is not due to Java | but rather just bad/legacy architectural decisions. iOS | is simply better engineered than Android and I say this | as an Android user. | jjoonathan wrote: | Not to mention it took Android about a decade longer than | iPhone to finally get their animations silky smooth. I | don't know if the occasional hung frames were the results | of GC, but I suspect it. | john_alan wrote: | You can easily bring macOS up to Linux level GNU with brew. | | I agree generally though. I see macOS as an important Unix OS | for the next decade. | Steltek wrote: | "Linux" is more than coreutils. The Mac kernel is no where | close to Linux in capability and Apple hates 3rd party | drivers to boot. You'll end up running a half-baked Linux | VM anyway so all macOS gets you is a SSH client with a nice | desktop environment, which you can find anywhere really. | Shared404 wrote: | > all macOS gets you is a SSH client with a nice desktop | environment | | Also proprietary software. Unfortunately, many people | still need Adobe. | | I personally like Krita, Shotcut, and Darktable better | than any of the Adobe products I used to use, but it's a | real issue. | | E: Add "many people" | majormajor wrote: | > Is it not at least somewhat possible that at least some of | those Apple laptops will age out and be replaced with | GNU/Linux laptops? | | Sadly, fewer of my coworkers use Linux now than they did 10 | years ago. | jjoonathan wrote: | > GNU/Linux laptops | | Could we do a roll call of experiences so I know which ones | work and which ones don't? Here are mine. | Dell Precision M6800: Avoid. Supported Ubuntu: so | ancient that Firefox and Chrome wouldn't install | without source-building dependencies. | Ubuntu 18.04: installed but resulted in the | display backlight flickering on/off at 30Hz. | Dell Precision 7200: Supported Ubuntu: didn't | even bother. Ubuntu 18.04: installer silently | chokes on the NVMe drive. Ubuntu | 20.04: just works. | BanazirGalbasi wrote: | Historically, Thinkpads have had excellent support. My | T430S is great (although definitely aging out), and | apparently the new X1 Carbons still work well. Also, both | Dell and Lenovo have models that come with Linux if | desired, so those are probably good ones to look at. | jjoonathan wrote: | I'll have to look into modern thinkpads. I had a bad | experience about ~10 years ago, but it wouldn't be fair | to bring that forward. | | > both Dell and Lenovo have models that come with Linux | | Like the Dell Precision M6800 above? Yeah. Mixed bag. | mrj wrote: | Most companies wouldn't end up trying to shove a disk into | a computer though, they would buy from a vendor with | support and never have compatibility issues. I have owned 3 | System76 computers for this reason... | jjoonathan wrote: | > they would buy from a vendor with support | | Like the Dell Precision 6800 above? The one where the | latest supported linux was so decrepit that it wouldn't | install Firefox and Chrome without manually building | newer versions of some of the dependencies? | | "System76 is better at this than Dell" is valid feedback, | but System76 doesn't have the enterprise recognition to | be a choice you can't be fired for. | | Maybe ThinkPads hit the sweet spot. I'll have to look at | their newer offerings. | Const-me wrote: | Building server software on Graviton ARM creates a vendor lock- | in to Amazon, with very high costs of switching elsewhere. | Despite using A64 ISA and ARM's cores, they are Amazon's | proprietary chips no one else has access to. Migrating | elsewhere gonna be very expensive. | | I wouldn't be surprised if they sponsor their Graviton offering | taking profits elsewhere. This might make it seem like a good | deal for customers, but I don't think it is, at least not in | the long run. | | This doesn't mean Graviton is useless. For services running | Amazon's code as opposed to customer's code (like these PAAS | things billed per transaction) the lock-in is already in place, | custom processors aren't gonna make it any worse. | timthorn wrote: | Ubuntu 64 looks the same on Graviton as on a Raspberry Pi. | You can take a binary you've compiled on the RPi, scp it to | the Graviton instance and it will just run. That works the | other way round too, which is great for speedy Pi software | builds without having to set up a cross-compile environment. | treve wrote: | Maybe I'm missing something, but don't the vast majority of | applications don't care about what architecture they run on? | | The main difference for us was lower bills. | MaxBarraclough wrote: | > Maybe I'm missing something, but don't the vast majority | of applications don't care about what architecture they run | on? | | There can be issues with moving to AArch64, for instance | your Python code may depend on Python 'wheels' which in | turn depend on C libraries that don't play nice with | AArch64. I once encountered an issue like this, although | I've now forgotten the details. | | If your software is pure Java I'd say the odds are pretty | good that things will 'just work', but you'd still want to | do testing. | matwood wrote: | Sure, but you're talking about short term problems. RPi, | Graviton, Apple Silicon, etc... are making AArch64 a | required mainstream target. | MaxBarraclough wrote: | That's true. AArch64 is already perfectly usable, and | what issues there are will be ironed out in good time. | lars-b2018 wrote: | Our experience as well. We run a stack that comprises | Python, Javascript via Node, Common Lisp and Ruby/Rails. | It's been completely transparent to the application code | itself. | Slartie wrote: | Even if the applications don't care, there's still the | (Docker) container, which cares very much, and which seems | to be the vehicle of choice to package and deliver many | cloud-based applications today. Being able to actually run | the exact same containers on your dev machine which are | going to be running on the servers later is definitely a | big plus. | acdha wrote: | Docker has had multiarch support for a while and most of | the containers I've looked at support both. That's not to | say this won't be a concern but it's at the level of | "check a box in CI" to solve and between Apple and Amazon | there'll be quite a few users doing that. | rapsey wrote: | Why would it be lock in. If you can compile for arm you can | compile for x86. | optimiz3 wrote: | Memory model, execution units, simd instructions... | rapsey wrote: | The vast majority of code running is in python, js, jvm, | php, ruby, etc. Far removed these concerns. | jlawer wrote: | Some of those languages (especially python & php) utilise | C based modules or packaged external binaries. Both of | which have to be available / compatible with ARM. | | When you run pip or composer on Amd64 they often pull | these down and you don't notice, but if you try on arm | you discover quickly that some packages don't support | ARM. Sometimes there is a slower fallback option, but | often there is none. | oblio wrote: | The real question is, can you compile for ARM and move | the binary around as easily as you can for x86? | | I'm reasonably sure that you can take a binary compiled | with GCC on a P4 back in the day and run it on the latest | Zen 3 CPU. | easton wrote: | As far as I can tell, yes. Docker images compiled for | arm64 work fine on the Macs with M1 chips without | rebuilding. And as another commenter said, you can | compile a binary on a Raspberry Pi 4 and move it to a EC2 | graviton instance and it just works. | cozzyd wrote: | it will probably be a similar situation to x86, with | various vendors implementing various instructions in some | processors that won't be supported by all. I guess the | difference is that there may be many more variants than | in x86, but performance-critical code can always use | runtime dispatch mechanisms to adapt. | oblio wrote: | It's true that there are extensions to x86, but 99,99% of | software out there (the one you'd commonly install on | Windows or find in Linux distribution repos) doesn't use | those instructions or maybe just detects the features and | then uses it. | | I don't recall encountering a "Intel-locked" or "AMD- | locked" application in more than 20 years of using x86. | Ok, maybe ICC, but that one kind of makes sense :-) | cozzyd wrote: | Encountering SIGILLs is not super uncommon on | heterogeneous academic computer clusters (since | -march=native). | | But yeah, typically binaries built for redistribution use | a reasonably crusty minimum architecture. Reminds me of | this discussion for Fedora: https://lists.fedoraproject.o | rg/archives/list/devel@lists.fe... | mitjam wrote: | Audio software usually runs better on Imtel than on AMD. | ndesaulniers wrote: | That doesn't mean compilers will emit such instructions; | maybe hand written assembler will become less portable if | such code is making use of extensions...but that should | be obvious to the authors...and probably they should have | a fallback path. | volta87 wrote: | > can you compile for ARM and move the binary around as | easily as you can for x86? | | Yes. | chasil wrote: | As I understand it, ARM's new willingness to allow custom op- | codes is dependent upon the customer preventing fragmentation | of the ARM instruction set. | | In theory, your software could run faster, or slower, | depending upon Amazon's use of their extensions within their | C library, or associated libraries in their software stack. | | Maybe the wildest thing that I've heard is Fujitsu not | implementing either 32-bit or Thumb on their new | supercomputer. Is that a special case? | | "But why doesn't Apple document this and let us use these | instructions directly? As mentioned earlier, this is | something ARM Ltd. would like to avoid. If custom | instructions are widely used it could fragment the ARM | ecosystem." | | https://medium.com/swlh/apples-m1-secret- | coprocessor-6599492... | billiam wrote: | It's interesting that if you step back and look at what | Amazon has been most willing to just blow up and destroy, | it is the idea of intellectual property of any kind. It | comes out clearly in their business practices. This muscle | memory may make it hard for ARM to have a long term stable | relationship with a company like ARM. | oblio wrote: | What do you mean? | | Also, I think there's a typo in your last phrase. | stephencanon wrote: | > Maybe the wildest thing that I've heard is Fujitsu not | implementing either 32-bit or Thumb on their new | supercomputer. Is that a special case? | | What's wild about this? Apple dropped support for 32b (arm | and thumb) years ago with A11. Supporting it makes even | less sense in an HPC design than it does in a phone CPU. | dragontamer wrote: | I'm not necessarily disagreeing with you, but... maybe | elaborating in a contrary manner? | | Graviton ARM is certainly vendor lock-in to Amazon. But a | Graviton ARM is just a bog-standard Neoverse N1 core. Which | means the core is going to show similar characteristics as | the Ampere Altra (also a bog-standard Neoverse N1 core). | | There's more to a chip than its core. But... from a | performance-portability and ISA perspective... you'd expect | performance-portability between Graviton ARM and Ampere | Altra. | | Now Ampere Altra is like 2x80 core, while Graviton ARM is... | a bunch of different configurations. So its still not perfect | compatibility. But a single-threaded program probably | couldn't tell the difference between the two platforms. | | I'd expect that migrating between Graviton and Ampere Altra | is going to be easier than Intel Skylake -> AMD Zen. | Const-me wrote: | > you'd expect performance-portability between Graviton ARM | and Ampere Altra | | I agree, that would what I would expect too. Still, are | there many public clouds built of these Ampere Altra-s? | Maybe we gonna have them widespread soon, but until then I | wouldn't want to build stuff that only runs on Amazon or my | own servers with only a few on the market and not yet | globally available on retail. | | Also, AFAIK on ARM the parts where CPUs integrate with the | rest of the hardware are custom. The important thing for | servers, disk and network I/O differs across ARM chips of | the same ISA. Linux kernel abstracts it away i.e. stuff is | likely to work, but I'm not so sure about performance | portability. | dragontamer wrote: | > Also, AFAIK on ARM the parts where CPUs integrate with | the rest of the hardware are custom. The important thing | for servers, disk and network I/O differs across ARM | chips of the same ISA. Linux kernel abstracts it away | i.e. stuff is likely to work, but I'm not so sure about | performance portability. | | Indeed. But Intel Xeon + Intel Ethernet integrates | tightly and drops the Ethernet data directly into L3 | cache (bypassing DRAM entirely). | | As such, I/O performance portability between x86 servers | (in particular: Intel Xeon vs AMD EPYC) suffers from | similar I/O issues. Even if you have AMD EPYC + Intel | Ethernet, you lose the direct-to-L3 DMA, and will have | slightly weaker performance characteristics compared to | Intel Xeon + Intel Ethernet. | | Or Intel Xeon + Optane optimizations, which also do not | exist on AMD EPYC + Optane. So these I/O performance | differences between platforms are already on the status- | quo, and should be expected if you're migrating between | platforms. A degree of testing and tuning is always | needed when changing platforms. | | -------- | | >Still, are there many public clouds built of these | Ampere Altra-s? Maybe we gonna have them widespread soon, | but until then I wouldn't want to build stuff that only | runs on Amazon or my own servers with only a few on the | market and not yet globally available on retail. | | A fair point. Still, since Neoverse N1 is a premade core | available to purchase from ARM, many different companies | have the ability to buy it for themselves. | | Current rumors look like Microsoft/Oracle are just | planning to use Ampere Altra. But like all other standard | ARM cores, any company can buy the N1 design and make | their own chip. | yaantc wrote: | > > Also, AFAIK on ARM the parts where CPUs integrate | with the rest of the hardware are custom. The important | thing for servers, disk and network I/O differs across | ARM chips of the same ISA. Linux kernel abstracts it away | i.e. stuff is likely to work, but I'm not so sure about | performance portability. | | > Indeed. But Intel Xeon + Intel Ethernet integrates | tightly and drops the Ethernet data directly into L3 | cache (bypassing DRAM entirely). | | This will be less of a problem on ARM servers as direct | access to the LLC from a hardware master is a standard | feature of ARM's "Dynamic Shared Unit" or DSU, which is | the shared part of a cluster providing the LLC and | coherency support. Connect a hardware function to the DSU | ACP (accelerator coherency port) and the hardware can | control, for all write accesses, whether to "stash" data | into the LLC or even the L2 or L1 of a specific core. The | hardware can also control allocate on miss vs not. So any | high performance IP can benefit from it. | | And if I understand correctly, the DSU is required with | modern ARM cores. As most (besides Apple) tend to use ARM | cores now, you have this in the package. | | More details here in the DSU tech manual: https://develop | er.arm.com/documentation/100453/0002/function... | gchamonlive wrote: | I think OP was talking about managed services, like lambda, | Ecs and beanstalk internal control, EC2 internal management | system, that is systems that are transparent for the user. | | AWS could very well run their platform systems entirely on | graviton. After all, serverless and cloud is in essence | someone else's server. AWS might as well run all their paas | software on in-house architecture | ogre_codes wrote: | While there is vendor lock in with those services, it also | has nothing to do with what CPU you are running. At that | layer, CPU is completely abstract. | gchamonlive wrote: | Maybe I wasn't clear enough. I am talking about code that | runs behind the scenes. Management processes, schedulers, | server allocation procedures, everything that runs on the | aws side of things, transparent for the client. | pjmlp wrote: | My Java and .NET applications don't care most of the time in | what hardware they are running, and many of other languages | managed languages I use also do not, even if AOT compiled to | native code. | | That is the beauty of having proper defined numeric types and | memory model, instead of the C and derived approaches of | whatever the CPU gives, with whatever memory model. | jorblumesea wrote: | Really, you could make the argument for any AWS service and | generally using a cloud service provider. You get into the | cloud, use their glue (lambda, kinesis, sqs etc) and suddenly | migrating services somewhere else is a multi-year project. | | Do you think that vendor lock in has stopped people in the | past (and future)? Thinking about those kinds of things are | long term and many companies think short term. | ralph84 wrote: | Heck, Amazon themselves got locked-in to Oracle for the | first 25 years of Amazon's existence. Vendor lock-in for | your IT stack doesn't prevent you from becoming a | successful business. | PaulDavisThe1st wrote: | True, true (and heh, it was me who pushed for Oracle, | oops) | | But ... the difference is that Oracle wasn't a platform | in the sense that (e.g.) AWS is. Oracle as a corporation | could vanish, but as long as you can keep running a | compatible OS on compatible hardware, you can keep using | Oracle. | | If AWS pulls the plug on you, either as an overall | customer or ends a particular API/service, what do you do | then? | echelon wrote: | > Building server software on Graviton ARM creates a vendor | lock-in to Amazon | | Amazon already has lock-in. Lambda, SQS, etc. They've already | won. | | You might be able to steer your org away from this, but | Amazon's gravity is strong. | deaddodo wrote: | > they are Amazon's proprietary chips no one else has access | to. | | Any ARM licensee (IP or architecture) has access to them. | They're just NeoVerse N1 cores and can be synthesized on | Samsung or TSMC processes. | skohan wrote: | This is kind of what should happen right? I'm not an expert, | but my understanding is that one of the takeaways from the M1 | success has been the weaknesses of x86 and CISC in general. It | seems as if there is a performance ceiling which exists for x86 | due to things like memory ordering requirements, and complexity | of legacy instructions, which just don't exist for other | instruction sets. | | My impression is that we have been living under the cruft of | x86 because of inertia, and what are mostly historical reasons, | and it's mostly a good thing if we move away from it. | zucker42 wrote: | M1's success shows how efficient and advanced the TSMC 5 nm | node is. Apple's ability to deliver it with decent software | integration also deserves some credit. But I wouldn't | interpret it as the death knell for x86. | sf_rob wrote: | Isn't most of M1's performance success due to being a SoC / | increasing component locality/bandwidth? I think ARM vs x86 | performance on its own isn't a disadvantage. Instead the | disadvantages are a bigger competitive landscape (due to | licensing and simplicity), growing performance parity, and | SoCs arguable being contrary to x86 producers' business | models. | UncleOxidant wrote: | ARM instructions are also much easier to decode than x86 | instructions which allowed the M1 designers to have more | instruction decoders and this, IIRC, is one of the | important contributors to the M1's high performance. | erosenbe0 wrote: | Umm, Intel laptop chips are SoC with onchip graphics, pci4, | wifi, usb4, and thunderbolt4 controller, connectivity | direct to many audio codec channels, plus some other | functionality for dsp and encryption. | kllrnohj wrote: | > weaknesses of x86 and CISC in general | | "RISC" and "CISC" distinctions are murky, but modern ARM is | really a CISC design these days. ARM is not at all in a "an | instruction only does one simple thing, period" mode of | operation anymore. It's grown instructions like "FJCVTZS", | "AESE", and "SHA256H" | | If anything CISC has overwhelmingly and clearly won the | debate. RISC is dead & buried, at least in any high- | performance product segment (TBD how RISC-V ends up fairing | here). | | It's largely "just" the lack of variable length instructions | that helps the M1 fly (M1 under Rosetta 2 runs with the same | x86 memory model, after all, and is still quite fast). | setpatchaddress wrote: | Most RISCs would fail the "instruction only does one thing" | test. ISTR there were instructions substantially more | complex than FJCVTZS in the PowerPC ISA. | | I think it's time for a Mashey CISC vs RISC repost: | | https://www.yarchive.net/comp/risc_definition.html | lambda wrote: | RISC vs CISC isn't really about instructions doing "one | simple thing period." | | It's about increased orthogonality between ALU and memory | operations, making it simpler and more predictable in an | out-of-order superscalar design to decode instructions, | properly track data dependencies, issue them to independent | execution units, and to stitch the results back into | something that complies with the memory model before | committing to memory. | | Having a few crazy-ass instructions which either offload to | a specialized co-processor or get implemented as | specialized microcode for compatibility once you realize | that the co-processor is more trouble than it's worth | doesn't affect this very much. | | What ARM lacks are the huge variety of different | instruction formats and addressing mode that Intel has; | which substantially affect the size and complexity of the | instruction decoder, and I'm willing to bet that creates a | significant bottleneck on how large of a dispatch and | reorder system they can have. | | For a long time, Intel was able to make up this difference | with process dominance, clever speculative execution | tricks, and throwing a lot of silicon and energy at it | which you can do on the server side where power and space | are abundant. | | But Intel is clearly losing the process dominance edge. | Intel ceded the mobile race a long time ago. Power is | becoming more important in the data center, which are | struggling to keep up with providing reliable power and | cooling to increasingly power-hungry machines. And Intel's | speculative execution smarts came back to bite them in the | big market they were winning in, the cloud, when it turned | out that they could cause information leaks between | multiple tenants, leading to them needing to disable a lot | of them and lose some of their architectural performance | edge. | | And meanwhile, software has been catching up with the newer | multi-threaded world. 10-15 years ago, dominance on single | threaded workloads still paid off considerably, because | workloads that could take advantage of multiple cores with | fine-grained parallelism were fairly rare. But systems and | applications have been catching up; the C11/C++11 memory | model make it significantly more feasible to write portable | lock-free concurrent code. Go, Rust, and Swift bring safer | and easier parallelism for application authors, and I'm | sure the .net and Java runtimes have seen improvements as | well. | | These increasingly parallel workloads are likely another | reason that the more complex front-ends needed for Intel's | instruction set, as well as their stricter memory ordering, | are becoming increasingly problematic; it's becoming | increasingly hard to fit more cores and threads into the | same area, thermal, and power envelopes. Sure, they can do | it on big power hungry server processors, but they've been | missing out on all of the growth in mobile and embedded | processors, which are now starting to scale up into | laptops, desktops, and server workloads. | | I should also say that I don't think this is the end of the | road for Intel and x86. They have clearly had a number of | setbacks of the last few years, but they've managed to | survive and thrive through a number of issues before, and | they have a lot of capital and market share. They have | squeezed more life out of the x86 instruction set than I | thought possible, and I wouldn't be shocked if they managed | to keep doing that; they realized that their Itanium | investment was a bust and were able to pivot to x86-64 and | dominate there. They are facing a lot of challenges right | now, and there's more opportunity than ever for other | entrants to upset them, but they also have enough resources | and talent that if they focus, they can probably come back | and dominate for another few decades. It may be rough for a | few years as they try to turn a very large boat, but I | think it's possible. | leshow wrote: | > I'm willing to bet that creates a significant | bottleneck on how large of a dispatch and reorder system | they can have | | My understanding is the reorder buffer of the m1 is | particularly large: | | "A +-630 deep ROB is an immensely huge out-of-order | window for Apple's new core, as it vastly outclasses any | other design in the industry. Intel's Sunny Cove and | Willow Cove cores are the second-most "deep" OOO designs | out there with a 352 ROB structure, while AMD's newest | Zen3 core makes due with 256 entries, and recent Arm | designs such as the Cortex-X1 feature a 224 structure." | | https://www.anandtech.com/show/16226/apple- | silicon-m1-a14-de... | kllrnohj wrote: | > These increasingly parallel workloads are likely | another reason that the more complex front-ends needed | for Intel's instruction set, as well as their stricter | memory ordering, are becoming increasingly problematic; | it's becoming increasingly hard to fit more cores and | threads into the same area, thermal, and power envelopes. | Sure, they can do it on big power hungry server | processors, but they've been missing out on all of the | growth in mobile and embedded processors, which are now | starting to scale up into laptops, desktops, and server | workloads. | | Except ARM CPUs aren't any more parallel in comparable | power envelopes than x86 CPUs are, and x86 doesn't seem | to have any issue hitting large CPU core counts, either. | Most consumer software doesn't scale worth a damn, | though. Particularly ~every web app which can't scale | past 2 cores if it can even scale past 1. | erosenbe0 wrote: | There isn't any performance ceiling issue. Intel ISA operates | at a very slight penalty in terms of achievable performance | per watt, but nothing in an absolute sense. | | I would argue it isn't time for Intel to switch until we see | a little more of the future as process nodes may shrink at a | slower rate. Will we have hundreds of cores? Field | programmable cores? More fixed function hardware on chip, or | less? How will high-bandwidth high-latency gddr style memory | mix with lower-latency lower-bandwidth ddr memory? Will there | be on die memory like hbm for cpus? | mhh__ wrote: | I can see this happening for things that run in entirely | managed environments but I don't think AWS can make the switch | fully until that exact hardware is on people's benches. Doing | microbenchmarking is quite awkward on the cloud, whereas anyone | with a Linux laptop from the last 20 years can access PMCs for | their hardware | api wrote: | I don't think it takes "exact" hardware. It takes ARM64, | which M1 delivers. I already have a test M1 machine with | Linux running in a Parallels (tech preview) VM and it works | great. | ashtonkem wrote: | Professional laptops don't last that long, and a lot of | developers are given MBPs for their work. I personally expect | that I'll get a M1 laptop from my employer within the next 2 | years. At that point the pressure to migrate from x86 to ARM | will start to increase. | mhh__ wrote: | You miss my point - if I am seriously optimizing something | I need to be on the same chip not the same ISA. | | Graviton2 is a Neoverse core from Arm and it's totally | separate from M1. | | Besides, Apple don't let you play with PMCs easily and I'm | assuming they won't be publishing any event tables any time | soon so unless they get reverse engineered you'll have to | do it through xcode. | foobarian wrote: | We have MBPs on our desks but our cloud are Centos Xeon | machines. The problems I run into are not squeezing every | last ms of performance, since it's vastly cheaper to just | add more instances. The problems I care about is that | some script I wrote suddenly doesn't work in production | because of BSDisms, or Python incompatibilities, or old | packages in brew, etc. Would be nice if Apple waved a | magic wand and replaced its BSD subsystem with Centos* | but I won't be holding my breath :) | | * yes I know Centos is done, substitute as needed. | eloisant wrote: | I just wish my employer would let me work on a Linux PC | rather than a MBP, then I wouldn't have this mismatch | between my machine and server... | singhrac wrote: | I think this is a slightly different point from the other | responses, but this not true: if I am seriously | optimizing something I need _ssh access_ to the same | chip. | | I don't run my production profiles on my laptop - why | would I expect to compare how my i5 or i7 chip on a | thermally limited MBP to how my 64 core server performs? | | It's convenient for debugging to have the same | instruction set (for some people, who run locally), but | for profiling it doesn't matter at all. | benibela wrote: | I profile in valgrind :/ | ashtonkem wrote: | Yes, the m1 isn't a graviton 2. But then again the mobile | i7 in my current MBP isn't the same as the Xeon | processors my code runs on in production. This isn't | about serious optimization, but rather the ability for a | developer to reasonably estimate how well their code will | work in prod (e.g. "will it deadlock"). The closer your | laptop gets to prod, the narrower the error bars get, but | they'll never go to zero. | | And keep in mind this is about reducing the incentive to | switch to a chip that's cheaper per compute unit in the | cloud. If Graviton 2 was more expensive or just equal in | price to x86, I doubt that M1 laptops alone would be | enough to incentivize a switch. | mhh__ wrote: | That's true but the Xeon cores are much easier to compare | and correlate because of the aforementioned access to | well defined and supported performance counters rather | than Apple's holier than thou approach to developers | outside the castle. | lostapathy wrote: | This is typical Hacker News. Yes, some people "seriously | optimize" but the vast majority of software written is | not heavily optimized nor is it written at companies with | good engineering culture. | | Most code is worked on until it'll pass QA then thrown | over the wall. For that majority of people, an M1 is | definitely close enough to a graviton. | mhh__ wrote: | > typical hacker news | | Let me have my fun! | sitkack wrote: | Very little user code generates binaries that can _tell_ it | is running on non-x86 hardware. Rust is Arm Memory Model | safe, existing C/C++ code that targets the x86 memory model | is slowly getting ported over, but unless you are writing | multithreaded C++ code that cuts corners it isn't an issue. | | Running on the JVM, Ruby, Python, Go, Dlang, Swift, Julia or | Rust and you won't notice a difference. It will be sooner | than you think. | mhh__ wrote: | It's not the memory model I'm thinking of but the cache | design, ROB size etc. | | Obviously this is fairly niche but the friction to making | something fast is hugely easier locally. | scythe wrote: | If you use a VM language like Java, Ruby, etc, that work | is largely abstracted. | tyingq wrote: | True, though the work/fixes sometimes take a while to | flow down. One example: | https://bugs.openjdk.java.net/browse/JDK-8255351 | sitkack wrote: | The vast majority of developers never profile their code. | I think this is much less of an issue than anyone on HN | would rank it. Only when the platform itself provides | traces do they take it into consideration. And even then, | I think most perf optimization is in a category of don't | do the obviously slow thing, or the accidentally n^2 | thing. | | I partially agree with you though, as the penetration of | Arm goes deeper into the programmer ecosystem, any mental | roadblocks about deploying to Arm will disappear. It is a | mindset issue, not a technical one. | | In the 80s and 90s there were lots of alternative | architectures and it wasn't a big deal, granted the | software stacks were much much smaller and more metal. | Now they are huge, but more abstract and farther away | from machine issues. | mhh__ wrote: | This isn't really about you or me but the libraries that | work behind the spaghetti people fling into the cloud. | vinay_ys wrote: | Yes, and just like Intel & AMD spent a lot of | effort/funding for building performance libraries and | compilers, we should expect Amazon and Apple invest into | similar efforts. | | Apple will definitely give all the necessary tools as | part of Xcode for iOS/MacOS software optimisation. | | AWS is going to be more interesting - this is a great | opportunity for them to provide distributed | profiling/tracing tools (as a hosted service, obviously) | for Linux that run across a fleet of Graviton instances | and help you do fleet-wide profile guided optimizations. | | We should also see a lot of private companies building | high-performance services on AWS to contribute to highly | optimized open-source libraries being ported to graviton. | fhrifjr wrote: | So far I found getting started repo for Graviton with few | pointers https://github.com/aws/aws-graviton-getting- | started | vinay_ys wrote: | What kind of pointers were you expecting? | | I found it to have quite a lot of useful pointers. | Specifically -https://static.docs.arm.com/swog309707/a/Ar | m_Neoverse_N1_Sof... | | https://static.docs.arm.com/ddi0487/ea/DDI0487E_a_armv8_a | rm.... | | - these two docs gives lot of useful information. | | And the repo itself contain a number of examples (like | ffmpeg) that have been optimized based on these manuals. | jerf wrote: | "The vast majority of developers never profile their | code." | | Protip: New on the job and want to establish a reputation | quickly? Find the most common path and fire a profiler at | it as early as you can. The odds that there's some | trivial win that will accelerate the code by huge amounts | is fairly decent. | | Another bit of evidence developers rarely profile their | code is that I can tell my mental model of how expensive | some server process will be to run and most other | developer's mental models tend to differ by at least an | order of magnitude. I've had multiple conversations about | the services I provide and people asking me what my | hardware is, expecting it to be run on some monster boxes | or something when I tell them it's really just two | t3.mediums, which mostly do nothing, and I only have two | for redundancy. And it's not like I go profile crazy... I | really just do some spot checks on hot-path code. By no | means am I doing anything amazing. It's just... as you | write more code, the odds that you accidentally write | something that performs stupidly badly goes up steadily, | even if you're trying not to. | nicoburns wrote: | > Find the most common path and fire a profiler at it as | early as you can. The odds that there's some trivial win | that will accelerate the code by huge amounts is fairly | decent. | | I've found that a profiler isn't even needed to find | significant wins in most codebases. Simple inspection of | the code and removal of obviously slow or inefficient | code paths can often lead to huge performance gains. | mattbee wrote: | I mean I love finding those "obvious" improvements too | but how do you know you've succeeded without profiling | it? ;) | lumost wrote: | given a well designed chip which achieves competitive | performance across most benchmarks, _Most code_ will run | sufficiently well for _most_ use cases regardless of the | nuance of specific cache design and sizes. | | There is certainly an exception to this for chips with | radically different designs and layouts, as well as folks | writing very low-level performance sensitive code which | can benefit from specific platform optimization ( | graphics comes to mind ). | | However even in the latter case, I'd imagine the platform | specific and fallback platform agnostic code will be | within 10-50% performance of each other. Meaning a | particularly well designed chip could make the platform | agnostic code cheaper on either a raw performance basis | or cost/performance basis. | Someone wrote: | I would think the number of developers that have "that exact | hardware" on their bench is extremely small (does AWS even | tell you what cpu you get?) | | What fraction of products deployed to the cloud even has its | developers seen doing _any_ microbenchmarking? | ghettoimp wrote: | If it can emulate x86, is there really a motivation for | developers to switch to ARM? (I don't have an M1 and don't | really know what it's like to compile stuff and deploy it to | "the cloud.") | ashtonkem wrote: | Emulation is no way to estimate performance. | acoard wrote: | Sure, but as a counter example Docker performance on Mac | has historically been abysmal[0][1], but everyone on Mac I | know still develops using it. We ignore the performance hit | on dev machines, knowing it won't affect prod (Linux | servers). | | I don't see why this pattern would fail to hold, but am | open to new perspectives. | | [0] https://dev.to/ericnograles/why-is-docker-on-macos-so- | much-w... | | [1] https://www.reddit.com/r/docker/comments/bh8rpf/docker_ | perfo... | remexre wrote: | The VM that uses takes advantage of hardware-accelerated | virtualization, for running amd64 VMs on amd64 CPUs. You | don't have hardware-accelerated virtualization for amd64 | VMs on any ARM CPUs I know of... | jayd16 wrote: | I guess I don't understand why the M1 makes developing on | Graviton easier. It doesn't make Android or Windows ARM dev any | easier. | | I guess the idea is to run a Linux flavor that supports both | the M1 and Graviton on the macs and hope any native work is | compatible? | _alex_ wrote: | dev in a linux vm/container on your M1 macbook, then deploy | to a graviton instance. | wmf wrote: | It's not hope; ARM64 is compatible with ARM64 by definition. | The same binaries can be used in development and production. | | Windows ARM development (in a VM) should be much faster on an | M1 Mac than on an x86 computer since no emulation is needed. | Steltek wrote: | How much does arch matter if you're targeting AWS? Aren't the | differences between local service instances vs instances | running in the cloud a much bigger problem for development? | BenoitEssiambre wrote: | Yeah and I assume we are going to see Graviton/Amazon linux | based notebooks any day now. | agloeregrets wrote: | Honestly, if Amazon spun this right and they came pre-setup | for development and distribution and had all the right little | specs (13 and 16 inch sizes, HiDPI matte displays, long | battery life, solid keyboard, macbook-like trackpad) they | could really hammer the backend dev market. Bonus points if | they came with some sort of crazy assistance logic like each | machine getting a pre-setup AWS Windows server for streaming | windows X86 apps. | yesbabyyes wrote: | Like a Bloomberg machine for devops. | heartbreak wrote: | > could really hammer the backend dev market | | That's worth, what, a few thousand unit sales? | TheOperator wrote: | The point wouldn't be to sell laptops. | agloeregrets wrote: | Exactly. | easton wrote: | If they could get it to $600-800 and have an option for | Windows, decent trackpad/keyboard, you could sell them to | students just as well. Shoot, if the DE for Amazon Linux | was user friendly enough they wouldn't even need windows, | since half of schools are on GSuite these days. | ksec wrote: | I commented [1] on something similar a few days ago, | | >Cloud (Intel) isn't really challenged yet.... | | AWS are estimated to be ~50% of HyperScalers. | | HyperScalers are estimated to be 50% of Server and Cloud | Business. | | HyperScalers are expanding at a rate faster than other market. | | HyperScaler expanding trend are not projected to be slowing | down anytime soon. | | AWS intends to have all of their own workload and SaaS product | running on Graviton / ARM. ( While still providing x86 services | to those who needs it ) | | Google and Microsoft are already gearing up their own ARM | offering. Partly confirmed by Marvell's exit of ARM Server. | | >The problem is single core Arm performance outside of Apple | chips isn't there. | | Cloud computing charges per vCPU. On all current x86 instances, | that is one hyper-thread. On AWS Graviton, vCPU = Actual CPU | Core. There are plenty of workloads, and large customers like | Twitter and Pinterest has tested and shown AWS Graviton 2 vCPU | perform better than x86. All while being 30% cheaper. At the | end of the day, it is workload / dollars that matters on Cloud | computing. And right now in lots of applications Graviton 2 are | winning, and in some cases by large margin. | | If AWS sell 50% of their services with ARM in 5 years time, | that is 25% of Cloud Business Alone. Since it offer a huge | competitive advantage Google and Microsoft has no other choice | but to join the race. And then there will be enough of a market | force for Qualcomm, or may be Marvell to Fab a commodity ARM | Server part for the rest of the market. | | Which is why I was extremely worried about Intel. (Half of) The | lucrative Server market is basically gone. ( And I haven't | factored in AMD yet ) 5 years in Tech hardware is basically 1-2 | cycles. And there is nothing on Intel's roadmap that shown they | have the chance to compete apart from marketing and sales | tactics. Which still goes a long way if I have to be honest, | but not sustainable in long term. It is more of a delaying | tactics. Along with a CEO that despite trying very hard, had no | experience in market and product business. Luckily that is | about to change. | | Evaluating ARM switch takes time, Software preparation takes | time, and more importantly, getting wafer from TSMC takes time | as demand from all market are exceeding expectations. But all | of them are already in motion, and if these are the kind of | response you get from Graviton 2, imagine Graviton 3. | | [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25808856 | spideymans wrote: | >Which is why I was extremely worried about Intel. (Half of) | The lucrative Server market is basically gone. | | Right. I suspect in time we'll look back to this time, and | realize that it was already too late for Intel to right the | ship, despite ARM having a tiny share of PC and server sales. | | Their PC business is in grave danger as well. Within a few | years, we're going to see ARM-powered Windows PCs that are | competitive with Intel's offerings in several metrics, but | most critically, in power efficiency. | | These ARM PCs will have tiny market share (<5%) for the first | few years, because the manufacturing capacity to supplant | Intel simply does not exist. But despite their small | marketshare, these ARM PCs will have a devastating impact on | Intel's future. | | Assuming these ARM PCs can emulate x86 with sufficient | performance (as Apple does with Rosetta), consumers and OEMs | will realize that ARM PCs work just as well as x86 Intel PCs. | At that point, the x86 "moat" will have been broken, and | we'll see ARM PCs grow in market share in lockstep with the | improvements in ARM manufacturing capacity (TSMC, etc...). | | Intel is in a downward spiral, and I've seen no indication | that they know how to solve it. Their best "plan" appears to | be to just hope that their manufacturing issues get sorted | out quickly enough that they can right the ship. But given | their track record, nobody would bet on that happening. Intel | better pray that Windows x86 emulation is garbage. | | Intel does not have the luxury of time to sort out their | issues. They need more competitive products to fend off ARM, | _today_. Within a year or two, ARM will have a tiny but | critical foothold in the PC and server market that will crack | open the x86 moat, and invite ever increasing competition | from ARM. | ksec wrote: | As long as Intel is willing to accept margin will never be | as good they once were. I think there are _lots_ of things | they could still do. | | The previous two CEO choose profits margin. And hopefully | we have enough evidence today that was the wrong choice for | the companies long term survival. | | It is very rare CEO do anything radical. It is something I | learned and observe the difference between a founder and a | CEO. But Patrick Gelsinger is the closest thing to that. | dogma1138 wrote: | At that point if it will be trouble for Intel it would be a | death sentence for AMD... | | Intel has fabs, yes it's what maybe holding them back atm but | it also a big factor in what maintains their value. | | If x86 dies and neither Intel nor AMD pivot in time Intel can | become a fab company they already offer these services, yes no | where near the scale of say TSMC but they have a massive | portfolio of fabs and their fabs are located in the west, they | also have a massive IP portfolio related to everything form IC | design to manufacturing. | skohan wrote: | AMD also has a GPU division. | dogma1138 wrote: | Intel makes more money selling their WiFi chipsets than AMD | makes on selling GPUs heck even including consoles... | shrewduser wrote: | got a source for that? sounds hard to believe. | dogma1138 wrote: | Computing and Graphics which includes the Radeon | technology group revenue for AMDs last quarter was | PS1.67B industry estimates are that $1.2-1.3B were from | CPU sales. | | Intel's Internet of Things group alone revenue last | quarter was $680M and they hit $1B IOTG revenue | previously | | https://www.statista.com/statistics/1096381/intel- | internet-o... | nickik wrote: | AMD makes great designs, switching to ARM/RISC-V would make | them lose value but not kill them. | dogma1138 wrote: | And Intel doesn't? | api wrote: | How hard would it be for AMD to make an ARM64 based partly on | the IP of the Zen architecture? Seems like AMD could equal or | beat M1 if they wanted. | phkahler wrote: | >> Seems like AMD could equal or beat M1 if they wanted. | | Sometime around 5? years ago AMD was planning to have an | ARM option. You'd get essentially an ARM core in an AMD | chip with all the surrounding circuitry. They hyped it so | much I wondered if they might go further than just that. | | Further? Maybe a core that could run either ISA, or a mix | of both core types. I dunno, but they dumped that (or | shelved it) to focus on Zen, which saved them. No doubt the | idea and capability still exist within the company. I'd | like to see them do a RISCV chip compatible with existing | boards. | moonbug wrote: | "Seattle". tried it, couldn't meet perf targets, canned it. | Joe_Cool wrote: | They already have that: https://www.amd.com/en/amd- | opteron-a1100 | | Didn't sell very well. | oldgradstudent wrote: | > Intel can become a fab company | | Not unless they catch up with TSMC in process technology. | | Otherwise, they become an uncompetitive foundry. | dogma1138 wrote: | You don't have to be a bleeding edge foundry, there are | tons of components that cannot be manufactured on bleeding | edge nodes nor need too. | | Intel can't compete right now on the bleeding edge node but | they outcompete TSMC by essentially every other factor when | it comes to manufacturing. | MangoCoffee wrote: | >Not unless they catch up with TSMC in process technology | | 1. Intel doesn't have to catch up. Intel's 14nm is more | than enough for a lot of fabless. Not every chip needs | cutting edge node | | 2. split up Intel foundry into a pure play allowed Intel to | build up an ecosystem like TSMC. | | 3. Intel's 10nm is much denser than TSMC's 7nm. Intel is | not too far behind. they just needs to solve the yield | problem. split up Intel's design and foundry allowed each | group to be more agile and not handcuffed to each other. | | in fact Intel Design should licensed out x86 like ARM. why | not take best biz model from the current leaders? Intel | Design take ARM business model and Intel foundry take TSMC | business model. | esclerofilo wrote: | The ARM business model isn't that profitable. Intel's | market cap right now is about 240 billion, 6 times the | amount Nvidia is paying for ARM. | MangoCoffee wrote: | >Intel's market cap right now is about 240 billion, 6 | times the amount Nvidia is paying for ARM | | so what? yahoo was a giant in its heyday. blackberry was | the king with its phone. no empire stay on top forever. | | Apple/Amazon created its own cpu. ARM killing it in | mobile space. | | intel is the king right now but with more and more its | customers design their own cpu. how long before intel | fall? | wwtrv wrote: | ARM Ltd. is earning relatively very little from this and | there seems to be little reason why would that change in | the future. This is why it can't really survive as an | independent company. | | If you compare net income instead of mkt. cap Intel is | ahead by 70 times (instead of 6) and is relatively | undervalued compared to other tech companies. | TheOtherHobbes wrote: | The point is Intel can't compete as a fab _or_ as a design | house. | | It's doubtful if Intel would have been able to design an | equivalent to the M1, even with access to TSMC's 5nm | process _and_ an ARM license. | | Which suggests there's no point in throwing money at Intel | because the management culture ("management debt") itself | is no longer competitive. | | It would take a genius CEO to fix this, and it's not | obvious that CEO exists anywhere in the industry. | altcognito wrote: | AMD looked just as bad not so long ago. | oblio wrote: | Plus even though Intel has been super fat for 3 decades | or so, everyone has predicted their death for at least | another 3 decades (during their switch from memory to | CPUs and then afterwards when RISCs were going to take | over the world). | | So they do have a bit of history with overcoming these | predictions. We'll just have to see if they became too | rusty to turn the ship around. | StillBored wrote: | I don't know how you can predict the future like this. | Yes, intel greedily choose not to participate in the | phone soc market and are paying the price. | | But their choice not to invest in EUV early doesn't mean | that they will never catch up. They still have plenty of | cash, and presumably if they woke up and decided to, they | wouldn't be any worse off than Samsung. And definitely | better off than SMIC. | | Similarly, plenty of smart microarch people work at | intel, freeing them to create a design competitive with | zen3 or the m1 is entirely possible. Given amd is still | on 7nm, and are just a couple percent off of the M1 seems | to indicate that if nothing else intel could be there | too. | | But as you point out Intel's failings are 100% bad mgmt | at this point. Its hard to believe they can't hire or | unleash whats needed to move themselves forward. But at | the moment they seem to be very "IBM" in their moves, but | one has to believe that a good CEO with a good | engineering background can cut the mgmt bullcrap and get | back to basics. They fundamentally just have a single | product to worry about unlike IBM. | pcdoodle wrote: | If intel made a SBC or SOC design for low power applications, I'd | consider it if they had long term support. Intel used to power | all of our edge needs in POS and Security, now I see that | slipping as well. | ineedasername wrote: | I found the geopolitical portion to be the most important aspect | here. China has shown a willingness to flex its muscles on | enforcing its values beyond their borders. China is smart, and | plays a long game. We don't want to wake up one day and find | they've flexed their muscles on their regional neighbors similar | to their rare earths strong-arming from 2010-2014 and not have | fab capabilities to fall back on in the West. | | (For that matter, I'm astounded that after 2014 the status quo | returned on rare earths with very little state-level strategy or | subsidy to address the risk there.) | Spooky23 wrote: | That's a good comparison... CPUs are increasingly a commodity. | npunt wrote: | Ben missed an important part of the geopolitical difference | between TSMC and Intel: Taiwan is much more invested in TSMC's | success than America is in Intel's. | | Taiwan's share of the semiconductor industry is 66% and TSMC is | the leader of that industry. Semiconductors helps keep Taiwan | from China's encroachment because it buys them protection from | allies like the US and Europe, whose economies heavily rely on | them. | | To Taiwan, semiconductor leadership is an existential question. | To America, semiconductors are just business. | | This means Taiwan is also likely to do more politically to keep | TSMC competitive, much like Korea with Samsung. | mc10 wrote: | > Semiconductors helps keep Taiwan from China's encroachment | because it buys them protection from allies like the US and | Europe, whose economies heavily rely on them. | | Are there any signed agreements that would enforce this? If | China one day suddenly decides to take Taiwan, would the US | or Europe step in with military forces? | davish wrote: | The closest I've found is this: | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taiwan_Relations_Act | | Not guaranteed "mutual defense" of any sort, but the US at | least has committed itself to helping Taiwan protect itself | with military aid. The section on "Military provisions" is | probably most helpful. | koheripbal wrote: | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taiwan_Relations_Act | | > The Taiwan Relations Act does not guarantee the USA will | intervene militarily if the PRC attacks or invades Taiwan | wwtrv wrote: | There are no official agreements since neither US nor any | major European countries recognize Taiwan/ROC but US has | declared multiple times that they would defend Taiwan (see | ' Taiwan Relations Act' & Six Assurances') | okl wrote: | > [...] and not have fab capabilities to fall back on in the | West. | | I'm not too concerned: | | - There are still a number of foundries in western countries | that produce chips which are good enough for "military | equipment". | | - Companies like TSMC are reliant on imports of specialized | chemicals and tools mostly from Japan/USA/Europe. | | - Any move from China against Taiwan would likely be followed | by significant emigration/"brain drain". | ineedasername wrote: | National security doesn't just extend to direct military | applications. Pretty much every industry and piece of | critical infrastructure comes into play here. It won't matter | if western fabs can produce something "good enough" if every | piece of technological infrastructure from the past 5 years | was built with something better. | | As for moves again at Taiwan, China hasn't given up that | prize. Brain drain would be moot if China simply prevented | emigration. I view Hong Kong right now as China testing the | waters for future actions of that sort. | | Happily though I also view TSMC's pending build of a fab in | Arizona as exactly that sort of geographical diversification | of industrial and human resources necessary. We just need | more of it. | MangoCoffee wrote: | >As for moves again at Taiwan, China hasn't given up that | prize. | | CCP hasn't give up since KMT high-tailed to Taiwan. for | more than 40+ yrs American cozy up with the Chinese govrt | and doing business with China. | | American told Taiwan govrt not to "make trouble" but we all | know China is the one who make all the troubles with | military threat and flying aircraft over Taiwan, day in and | day out. | | Taiwan have build up a impressive defensives from buying | weapon (US) to develop its own. yes, China can take Taiwan. | that's 100% but at what price. | | that's what Taiwanese is betting on, China will think twice | about invading. | nine_k wrote: | I bet TSMC has a number of bombs planted around the most | critical machines, much like Switzerland has bombs | planted around most critical tunnels and bridges. | | Trying to grab Taiwan with force alone, even if formally | successful, would mean losing its crown jewels forever. | icefo wrote: | The bombs have been removed some years ago in Switzerland | as the risk of them going off was deemed greater than the | risk of sudden invasion. | | Just to nitpick, your point absolutely stands | Lopiolis wrote: | The issue isn't just military equipment though. When your | entire economy is reliant on electronic chips, it's untenable | for all of those chips to come from a geopolitical opponent. | That gives them a lot of influence over business and politics | without having to impact military equipment. | bee_rider wrote: | Yeah, for some reason, I assumed that military equipment | mostly used, like, low performance but reliable stuff. In- | order processors, real time operating systems, EM-hardening. | Probably made by some company like Texas Instruments, who | will happily keep selling you the same chip for 30 years. | PKop wrote: | >I'm astounded | | Our political system and over financialized economy seem to | suffer from same hyper short term focus that many corporations | chasing quarterly returns run in to. No long term planning or | focus, and perpetual "election season" thrashing one way or | another while nothing is followed through with. | | Plus, in 2, 4 or 8 years many of the leaders are gone and | making money in lobbying or corporate positions. No possibly | short-term-painful but long term beneficial policy gets | enacted, etc. | | And many still uphold our "values" and our system as the ideal, | and question any that would look towards the Chinese model as | providing something to learn from. So, I anticipate this trend | will continue. | echelon wrote: | It appears the Republicans are all-in on the anti-China | bandwagon. Now you just have to convince the Democrats. | | I don't think this will be hard. Anyone with a brain looking | at the situation realizes we're setting ourselves up for a | bleak future by continuing the present course. | | The globalists can focus on elevating our international | partners to distribute manufacturing: Vietnam, Mexico, | Africa. | | The nationalists can focus on domestic jobs programs and | factories. Eventually it will become clear that we're going | to staff them up with immigrant workers and provide a path to | citizenship. We need a larger population of workers anyway. | ramoz wrote: | A solution to yesterday's problems shouldn't discount tomorrow's | innovations. I don't think iOS and Android are in the best long- | term position. There's more things happening in our global | infrastructure that should be accounted for. Internet is priming | for a potential reverse/re- evolution of itself. (5G is a large | factor for this). | recursivedoubts wrote: | Perhaps now the "Why do people obsess over manufacturing?" | question that many tech workers ask when other US industries were | decimated will become a bit less quizzical. | coldtea wrote: | It only becomes less quizzical when it hits home -- that is | when one's own job is on the line. | yourapostasy wrote: | It was more economics and political policy wonks, economists | and politicians in general, who didn't just ask that question, | but thrust forth the prescriptive rhetoric through a large grid | of trade agreements, "Globalism is here to stay! Get over it! | Comparative Advantage!" This is only the first in a long, | expensive series of lessons these people will be taught by | reality in the coming decades. I'm guessing this kind of | manufacturing loss will cost at least $1T to catch up and take | the lead again after all is said and done, assuming the US can | even take the lead. | | US organization, economic, and financial management at the | macro scale is going through a kind of "architecture astronaut" | multi-decade phase with financialization propping up abstracted | processes of how to lead massive organizations as big blocks on | diagrams instead of highly fractal, constantly shifting | networks of ideas and stories repeatedly coalescing around | people, processes, and resources into focused discrete action | in continguous and continuous OODA feedback loops absorbing and | learning mistakes along the way. Ideally, the expensive BA and | INTC lessons drive home the urgent need for an evolution in | organizational management. | | I wryly think how similar the national comparative advantage | argument looks to much young adult science fiction portrayal of | space opera galactic empire settings with entire worlds | dedicated solely to one purpose. This world only produces | agricultural goods. That world only provides academician | services. It is a very human desire to simplify complex fractal | realities, and effective modeling is one of our species' | advantages, but at certain scales of size, agility and | complexity it breaks down. We know this well in the software | world; some problems are intrinsically hard and complex, and | there is a baseline level of complexity the software must model | to successfully assist with the problem space. Simplifying | further past that point deteriorates the delivery. | mountainb wrote: | The US decided that it didn't like all the political disorder | that came with managing a large proletariat. Instead, it | decided to outsource the management of that proletariat to | Asia and the 'global south.' Our proletariat instead was | mostly liquidated and shifted itself into the service | industry (not that amenable to labor organization) and the | welfare/workfare rolls. | | There are so many things that the US would have to reform to | become more competitive again, but we are so invested into | the FIRE economy that it's not unlike the position of the | southern states before the Civil War: they were completely | invested into the infrastructure of slavery and could not | contemplate an alternative economic system because of that. | The US is wedded to an economy based on FIRE and Intellectual | Property production, with the rest of the economy just in a | support role. | | I'm not really a pro-organized-labor person, but I think that | as a matter of national security we have to figure out a way | to reform and compromise to get to the point to which we | develop industry even if it is redundant due to | globalization. The left needs to compromise on environmental | protection, the rich need to compromise on NIMBYism, and the | right needs to compromise on labor relations. Unfortunately | none of this is on the table even as a point of discussion. | Our politics is almost entirely consumed by insane gibberish | babbling. | | This became very clear when COVID hit and there was no | realistic prospect of spinning up significant industrial | capacity to make in-demand goods like masks and filters. In | the future, hostile countries will challenge and overtake the | US in IP production (which is quite nebulous and based on | legal control of markets anyway) and in finance as well. The | US will be in a very weak negotiating position at that point. | TheOperator wrote: | An IP based economy just on its face seems like such a | laughable house of cards. So your economy is based on | government enforced imaginary rights to ideas? The | proliferation of tax havens should be a sign that the | system is bullshit - it exposes how little is actually | keeping the profits of IP endeavors within a nation. | | There is incredibly little respect for the society owning | the means of production in a tangible real sense, instead | we have economies that run on intangibles, where the | intangibles allow 600lb gorillas like Oracle to engage in | much rent seeking while simultaneously avoiding paying dues | to the precise body that granted them their imaginary | rights. The entire status quo feels like something some | rich tycoons dreamed up to sell to the public the merits of | systematically weakening their negotiating position on the | promise that one day a Bernie Sanders type would descend | from the heavens and deliver universal basic income fueled | by the efficiency of private industry through nothing but | incorruptability and force of personality. | | China seems to be successful in part because they have no | qualms with flexing dictatorial power to increase the | leverage of the state itself. This may be less economically | efficient but it means they actually get to harvest the | fruits of any efficiency. Intellectual property law? They | just ignore it and don't get punished, since punishing them | would be anti-trade. | mountainb wrote: | Yes, the IP economy rests on a bunch of fragile | international treaties the US has with its partner | states. The government provides the court system that | enforces IP claims, but the costs of litigation are | mostly carried by rights holders. So when you are sued | for patent infringement, the court's costs are fairly | minimal and paid by both sides -- but the court's power | is just an externality of state power. | DoofusOfDeath wrote: | > financialization propping up abstracted processes of how to | lead massive organizations as big blocks on diagrams instead | of highly fractal, constantly shifting networks of ideas and | stories repeatedly coalescing around people, processes, and | resources into focused discrete action in continguous and | continuous OODA feedback loops absorbing and learning | mistakes along the way. | | I had trouble reading this _without_ falling into the cadence | of Howl! by Allen Ginsberg. | yourapostasy wrote: | Thanks for introducing me to that, it was enjoyable to | listen to Allen. | | [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MVGoY9gom50 | DoofusOfDeath wrote: | My pleasure :) | | But to my chagrin, I just realized that the reading | cadence I had in mind wasn't Allen Ginsberg's, but | instead Jack Kerouac's. [0] | | [0] https://youtu.be/3LLpNKo09Xk?t=197 | hyper_reality wrote: | This was very nicely expressed, I would read a book in this | style! | | By the way, I'm not sure the hnchat.com service linked in | your profile works any more? | WoodenChair wrote: | The thing about all of these articles analyzing Intel's problems | is that nobody really knows the details of Intel's "problems" | because it comes down to just one "problem" that we have no | insight into: node size. What failures happened in Intel's | engineering/engineering management of its fabs that led to it | getting stuck at 14 nm? Only the people in charge of Intel's fabs | know exactly what went wrong, and to my knowledge they're not | talking. If Intel had kept chugging along and got down to 10 nm | years ago when they first said they would, and then 7 nm by now, | it wouldn't have any of these other problems. And we don't know | exactly why that didn't happen. | ogre_codes wrote: | Intel's problem was that they were slow getting their 10nm | design online. That's no longer the case. Intel's new problem | is much bigger than that at this point. | | Until fairly recently, Intel had a clear competitive advantage: | Their near monopoly on server and desktop CPUs. Recent events | have illustrated that the industry is ready to move away from | Intel entirely. Apple's M1 is certainly the most conspicuous | example, but Microsoft is pushing that way (a bit slower), | Amazon is already pushing their own server architecture and | this is only going to accelerate. | | Even if Intel can get their 7nm processes on line this year, | Apple is gone, Amazon is gone, and more will follow. If | Qualcomm is able to bring their new CPUs online from their | recent acquisition, that's going to add another high | performance desktop/ server ready CPU to the market. | | Intel has done well so far because they can charge a pretty big | premium as the premier x86 vendor. The days when x86 commands a | price premium are quickly coming to and end. Even if Intel | fixes their process, their ability to charge a premium for | chips is fading fast. | JoshTko wrote: | We actually have a lot of insight in that Intel still doesn't | have a good grasp on the problem. Their 10nm was supposed to | enter volume production in mid 2018, and they still haven't | truly entered volume production today. Additionally Intel | announced in July 2020 that their 7nm is delayed by at least a | year which means they figured out their node delay problem. | Spooky23 wrote: | Wasn't the issue that the whole industry did a joint venture, | but Intel decided to go it alone? | | I worked at a site (in a unrelated industry) where there was | a lot of collaborative semiconductor stuff going on, and the | only logo "missing" was Intel. | cwhiz wrote: | Didn't Samsung also go it alone, or am I mistaken? | WoodenChair wrote: | > We actually have a lot of insight in that Intel still | doesn't have a good grasp on the problem. Their 10nm was | supposed to enter volume production in mid 2018, and they | still haven't truly entered volume production today. | Additionally Intel announced in July 2020 that their 7nm is | delayed by at least a year which means they figured out their | node delay problem. | | Knowing something happened is not the same as knowing "why" | it happened. That's the point of my comment. We don't know | why they were not able to achieve volume production on 10 nm | earlier. | JoshTko wrote: | The point of my comment is that Intel doesn't know either | and that's a bigger problem. | spideymans wrote: | I'll also add that it's fascinating that both 10 nm and 7 | nm are having issues. | | My understanding (and please correct me if I'm wrong), is | that the development of manufacturing capabilities for any | given node is an _independent_ process. It 's like building | two houses: the construction of the second house isn't | dependent on the construction of the first. Likewise, the | development of 7 nm isn't dependent on the perfection of 10 | nm. | | This perhaps suggests that there is a deep institutional | problem at Intel, impacting multiple manufacturing | processes. That is something more significant that a big | manufacturing problem holding up the development of one | node. | okl wrote: | I think that's not quite right. While it's true that for | each node they build different manufacturing lines, | generating the required know-how is an | iterative/evolutionary process in the same way that | process node technology usually builds on the proven tech | of the previous node. | sanxiyn wrote: | I think it's just a difficult problem. Intel is trying to | do 10 nm without EUV. TSMC never solved that problem | because they switched to EUV at that node size. | mchusma wrote: | A key issue is volume. Intel is doing many times less | volume than the mobile chipmakers. So intel cant spend as | much to solve the problem. | | It's a bad strategic position to be in, and I agree with | Ben's suggestions as one of the only ways out of it. | okl wrote: | SemiAccurate has written a lot about the reasons, for me | the essence from that was: complacency, unrealistic goals, | they didn't have a plan B in case schedule slips. | klelatti wrote: | Feel this piece ducks one of the most important questions - what | is the future and value of x86 to Intel? For a long time x86 was | one half of the moat but it feels like that moat is close to | crumbling. | | Once that happens the value of the design part of the business | will be much, much lower - especially if they have to compete | with an on form AMD. Can they innovate their way out of this? | Doesn't look entirely promising at the moment. | stefan_ wrote: | Why are people so hung up about the x86 thing? ARM continues to | be sold on because everyone has now understood they don't | really matter; they are not driving the innovations, they were | simply the springboard for the Apples, Qualcomms and Amazons to | drive their own processor designs, and they are not setup to | profit from that. ARMs reference design isn't competitive, the | M1 is. | | Instruction set architecture at this point is a bikeshed | debate, it's certainly not what is holding Intel back. | usefulcat wrote: | I'm not sure that's entirely true. According to this (see | "Why can't Intel and AMD add more instruction decoders?"): | | https://debugger.medium.com/why-is-apples-m1-chip-so- | fast-32... | | ..a big part of the reason the M1 is so fast is the large | reorder buffer, which is enabled by the fact that arm | instructions are all the same size, which makes parallel | instruction decoding far easier. Because x86 instructions are | variable length, the processor has to do some amount of work | to even find out where the next instruction starts, and I can | see how it would be difficult to do that work in parallel, | especially compared to an architecture with a fixed | instruction size. | exmadscientist wrote: | That doesn't make any sense. The ROB is after instructions | have been cracked into uops; the internal format and length | of uops is "whatever is easiest for the design", since it's | not visible to the outside world. | | This argument does apply to the L1 cache, which sits before | decode. (It does not apply to uop caches/L0 caches, but is | related to them anyway, as they are most useful for CISCy | designs, with instructions that decode in complicated ways | into many uops.) | usefulcat wrote: | Maybe it wasn't clear, but the article I linked is saying | that compared to M1, x86 architectures are decode- | limited, because parallel decoding with variable-length | instructions is tricky. Intel and AMD (again according to | the linked article) have at most 4 decoders, while M1 has | 8. | | So yes the ROB is after decoding, but surely there's | little point in having the ROB be larger than can be kept | relatively full by the decoders. | AnimalMuppet wrote: | Well, if we can have speculative execution, why not | speculative decode? You could decode the stream as if the | next instruction started at $CURRENT_PC+1, $CURRENT_PC+2, | etc. When you know how many bytes the instruction at | $CURRENT_PC takes, you could keep the right decode and | throw the rest away. | | Sure, it would mean multiple duplicate decoders, which eats | up transistors. On the other hand, we've got to find | something useful for all those transistors to do, and this | looks useful... | usefulcat wrote: | According to the article I linked, that's basically how | they do it: | | "The brute force way Intel and AMD deal with this is by | simply attempting to decode instructions at every | possible starting point. That means x86 chips have to | deal with lots of wrong guesses and mistakes which has to | be discarded. This creates such a convoluted and | complicated decoder stage that it is really hard to add | more decoders. But for Apple, it is trivial in comparison | to keep adding more. | | In fact, adding more causes so many other problems that | four decoders according to AMD itself is basically an | upper limit for them." | blinkingled wrote: | Well put. People are being their usual teamsport participants | on x86 vs ARM. Intel has execution problems in two | departments - manufacturing and integration. ISA is not an | issue - they can very well solve the integration issues and | investing in semiconductor manufacturing is the need of the | hour for the US so I can imagine they getting some traction | there with enough money and will. | | IOW even if Intel switched ISA to ARM it won't magically fix | any of the issues. We've had a lot of ARM vendors trying to | do what Apple did for too long. | klelatti wrote: | Intel / AMD had a duopoly on desktop / server because of | x86 for a large number of years. | | Loss of that duopoly - even with competitive manufacturing | - has profound commercial implications for Intel. M1 and | Graviton will be followed by others that will all erode | Intel's business. | blinkingled wrote: | On the other hand if x86 keeps competitive there's lot of | inertia in its favor. So it could go either way. Desktop | especially has been a tough nut to crack for anyone other | than Apple and they are only 8% of the market. | klelatti wrote: | Probably more than 8% by value and with the hyperscalers | looking at Arm that's a decent part of their business at | risk - and that's ignoring what Nvidia, Qualcomm etc | might do in the future. | | Agreed that intertia is in their favour but it's not a | great position to be in - it gives them a breathing space | but not a long term competitive advantage. | mhh__ wrote: | It's worth saying that CPU design isn't like software. Intel | and AMD cores are fairly different, and the ISA is the only | thing that unites them. | | If X86 finally goes, and Intel and AMD both switched elsewhere | we'd be seeing the same battle as usual but in different | clothes. | | On top of the raw uarch design, there is also the peripherals | and ram standard etc. etc. | klelatti wrote: | Fair points, but if you're saying that if we moved to a | non-x86 (and presumably Arm based) world then its business as | usual for Intel and AMD then I'd strongly disagree - it's a | very different (and much less profitable) commercial | environment with lots more competition. | mhh__ wrote: | The likelihood of Intel moving to ARM is probably nil. They | have enough software to drag whatever ISA they choose with | them, whereas AMD bringing up an ARM core could be fairly | herculean as they have to convince their customers to not | only buy their new chip but also trust AMD with a bunch of | either missing or brand new software. | hpcjoe wrote: | AMD has already done an ARM 8 core chip. Then abandoned | it. | | ISA changes require a long term investment and building | up an ecosystem. Which were out of scope for AMD at the | time. | | I think the market has changed somewhat, and they don't | have to do all the heavy lifting. Would be interesting to | see what happens there. | klelatti wrote: | They still have an architecture license I think. | | Given that x86 still has an advantage on servers makes | sense for them to push that for then time being. When the | Arm ecosystem is fully established I can't imagine it | would be that hard to introduce a new Arm CPU using the | innovation they've brought to x86 (chiplets etc). | klelatti wrote: | The days when Intel could single handedly successfully | introduce a new (incompatible) ISA are long gone (if it | ever could). I expect they will stick with x86 for as | long as possible. | yjftsjthsd-h wrote: | > The days when Intel could single handedly successfully | introduce a new (incompatible) ISA are long gone (if it | ever could). | | Given itanium, I'd say they never could (although that | _could_ have been a fluke of that specific design) | klelatti wrote: | Indeed and that was with HP. | | Look long enough back and you have iAPX 432! | jecel wrote: | There was also the three way ISA battle at Intel: 486 vs | 860 vs 960. In the end they decided that legacy software | was too valuable and redefined the 860 as a graphics co- | processor and the 960 as a intelligent DMA to keep people | from building Unix computers with them | varispeed wrote: | My view is that currently the only way for Intel to salvage | themselves it to go ARM route and start licensing x86 IP and | perhaps even open source some bits of tech. They are unable to | sustain this tech by themselves nor with AMD anymore. It seems | to me when Apple releases their new CPUs I am going to have to | move to that platform in order to keep up with the competition | (quicker the core, I can do calculations quicker and quicker | deliver the product). Currently I am on AMD, but it is only | marginally faster than M1 it seems. | AlotOfReading wrote: | Are they able to even do that legally? I'm pretty sure the | licensing agreement for x86 with AMD explicitly prohibited | this for both parties. | totalZero wrote: | The demise of x86 isn't something that can be fiated. It could | come about, but there would need to be a very compelling reason | to motivate the transition. Technologies that form basic | business and infrastructural bedrock don't go away just because | of one iteration -- look at Windows Vista for example. | | Even if every PC and server chip manufacturer were to eradicate | x86 from their product offerings tomorrow, you'd still have | over a billion devices in use that run on x86. | klelatti wrote: | I was extremely careful not to say that x86 would go away! | | But it doesn't have to for Intel to feel the ill effects. | There just have to be viable alternatives that drive down the | price of their x86 offerings. | totalZero wrote: | I wasn't trying to refute your comment, nor to imply that | you said x86 is on its way out the door, but we are talking | about the future of x86 after all. | | Intel has already driven its prices downward aggressively | [0]. That seems to be part of their strategy to contain AMD | while they get their own business firing on all cylinders | again, and it's going to be true regardless of whether the | majority of the market demands x86 or not. The more that | Intel can pressure AMD's gross margin, the more relevant | Intel's synergies from being an IDM can become. | | [0] https://www.barrons.com/articles/intel-is-starting-a- | price-w... | spideymans wrote: | Windows Vista's problems were relatively easy to solve | though. Driver issues naturally sorted themselves out over | time, performance became less of an issue as computers got | more powerful, and the annoyances with Vista's security model | could be solved with some tweaking around the edges. There | wasn't much incentive to jump from the Windows ecosystem, as | there was no doubt that Microsoft could rectify these issues | in the next release of Windows. Indeed, Windows 7 went on to | be one the greatest Windows release ever, despite being | nothing more than a tweaked version of the much maligned | Vista. | | Intel's problems are a lot more structural in nature. They | lost mobile, they lost the Mac, and we could very well be in | the early stages of them losing the server (to Graviton, | etc...) and the mobile PC market (if ARM PC chips take off in | response to M1). Intel needs to right the ship expeditiously, | before ARM gets a foothold and the x86 moat is irreversibly | compromised. Thus far, we've seen no indication that they | know how to get out of this downward spiral. | garethrowlands wrote: | Windows 7 was a _substantially fixed_ version of the much | maligned Vista. Its fixes for memory usage, for example, | were dramatic. | nemothekid wrote: | > _look at Windows Vista for example._ | | This is a terrible example for the reasons stated in the | article. Microsoft is already treating windows more and more | like a step child everyday - office and azure are the new | cool kids | marcosdumay wrote: | It's not the demise of x86. It's the demise of x86 as a moat. | | Those are different things. We have seen a minuscule movement | on the first, but we've been running towards the second since | the 90's, and looks like we are close now. | tyingq wrote: | I agree that the moat is falling away. There used to be things | like TLS running faster because there was optimized x86 ASM in | that path, but none for other architectures. That's no longer | true. | | I suppose Microsoft would be influential here. Native Arm64 MS | Office, for example. | toonies555 wrote: | Lets speed run a doomsday: | | 2022: share price tanks, ceo booted, they shuffle but dont have a | plan, no longer blue chip so finance is hard to come by. | delisting. everyone booted. doors close. | | 2023/4: AMD only game in town. profits and volumes up. so are the | faults and vulnerabilities. They spend most of their effort in | fixes and not innovation. | | 2024: M1 chip available on dells/hps/thinkpads. AWS only use | Graviton unless customer specifically buys another chip. | | 2025: Desktop ARM chip available on dells/hps/thinkpads. 2025: | AWS makes a 'compile-to-anything' service. decompiler and | recompiler on demand. | | 2026: AMD still suffering. Hires Jim Keller for the 20th time. | makes a new ZEN generation that beats M1 and Arm. AMD goes into | mobile CPUs. | billiam wrote: | Though provoking, to be sure, but the problem with his solution | of building up Intel's manufacturing arm through spinoff and | subsidy is that we simply don't have the labor force to support | it, and with much more controlled immigration in the future, it | will take decades to build up the engineering education needed to | make the US compete with Taiwan, South Korea, and of course | China. | iamgopal wrote: | The problem was created when they lost focus on energy | efficiency. Rest is just after effect. | hctaw wrote: | Slightly more aggressive take: fully automated contract | manufacturing is the future, those that resist its march will be | trampled and those that ignore it will be left behind. | | Semiconductor manufacturing is just one example where this is | happening, electronics is another. Maybe one day Toyota Auto fabs | will be making Teslas. | cbozeman wrote: | This was a well-written article, but I don't think it came from | someone with a deep understanding of semiconductor technology and | fabrication. | | Intel hasn't lost to Apple and AMD because they employ idiots, or | because of their shitty company culture (in fact, they're doing | surprisingly well _in spite_ of their awful company culture). | Intel lost because they made the wrong bet on the wrong _type_ of | process technology. 10 years ago (or thereabouts), Intel 's | engineers were certain that they had the correct type of process | technology outlined to successfully migrate down from 22nm to | 14nm, then down to 10nm and eventually 7, 5, and 3nm. They were | betting on future advances in physics, chemistry, and | semiconductor processes. Advances that didn't materialize. | | EUV turned out to be the best way to make a wafer at lower | transistor size. | | So now Intel's playing catch up. Their 10nm process is still | error-prone and far from stable. There are no high-performance | 10nm desktop or server chips. | | That's not going to continue forever though. Even on 14nm, Intel | chips, while not as fast as Apple's M1 or AMD's Ryzen 5000 | series, are still competitive in many areas. Intel's 14nm chips | are over 6 years old. The first was Broadwell in October 2014. | What do you think will happen when Intel solves the engineering | problems on 10nm, and then 7nm? And then 5nm? | | It took AMD 5 years to become competitive with Intel, and over 5 | to actually surpass them. | | If you think the M1 and 5950X are fast, then wait till we have an | i9-14900K on 5nm. It'll make these offers look _quaint_ by | comparison. | | EDIT: I say this as a total AMD fanboy by the way, who bought a | 3900X and RX 5700 XT at MicroCenter on 7/7/2019 and stood in line | for almost five hours to get them, and as someone who now has a | Threadripper 3990X workstation. I love AMD for what they've | done... they took us out of the quad-core paradigm and brought us | into the octa-core paradigm of x86 computing. | | But I am under _no_ illusions that they 're technically superior | to Intel. Their _process_ is what allows them to outperform | Intel, not their design. I guarantee you that if Intel could mass | produce _their_ CPUs on _their_ 7nm process (which is far, far | more transistor dense than TSMC 's 7nm), AMD would be 15-25% | behind on performance. | | It isn't so much that AMD is succeeding because they're | technically superior... they're succeeding because Zen's design | team made the right bet and because Intel's engineering process | team made the _wrong_ bet. | oblio wrote: | Interesting perspective. From a paradoxical perspective, I | actually want Intel to stay relevant. | | I think that everyone will take advantage of the migration to | ARM to push more lock in, despite the supposedly open ARM | architecture. | | A sort of poison pill: "you get more performance and better | battery life, but you can't install apps of type A, B and C and | those apps can only do X, Y and Z". | adrian_b wrote: | I agree with most of what you say, except that AMD was also | technically superior during these last years. | | Intel certainly has the potential of being technically superior | to AMD, but they do not appear to have focused on the right | things in their roadmaps for CPU evolution. | | Many years before the launches of Ice Lake and Tiger Lake, the | enthusiastic presentations of Intel about the future claimed | that these will bring some sort of marvelous improvements in | microarchitecture, but the reality has proven to be much more | modest. | | While from Skylake in 2015 to Ice Lake in 2019 there was a | decent increase in IPC, it was still much less than expected | after so many years. While they were waiting for a | manufacturing process, they should have redesigned their CPU | cores to get something better than this. | | Moreover the enhancements in Ice Lake and Tiger Lake seem | somewhat unbalanced and random, there is no grand plan that can | be discerned about how to improve a CPU. | | On the other hand the evolution of Zen cores was perfect, every | time the AMD team seems to have been able to add precisely all | improvements that could give a maximum performance increase | with a minimum implementation effort. | | Thus they were able to pass from Zen 1 (2017) with an IPC | similar to Intel Broadwell (2014), to Zen 2 (2019) with an IPC | a little higher than Intel Skylake (2015) and eventually to Zen | 3 (2020) with an IPC a little higher than Intel Tiger Lake | (2020). | | So even if the main advantage of AMD remains the superior CMOS | technology they use from TSMC, just due to the competence of | their design teams, they have passed from being 3 years behind | Intel in IPC in 2017, to being ahead of Intel in IPC in 2020. | | If that is not technical superiority, I do not know what is. | | Like I have said, I believe that Intel could have done much | better than that, but they seem to have done some sort of a | random walk, instead of a directed run, like AMD. | varispeed wrote: | When I learned that allegedly Intel and nVidia were fixing the | laptop market, I just hope that this company goes down or goes | through a substantial transformation. Their current management | situation is untenable. If I was a shareholder (fortunately I am | no longer), I would pressure them to sack everyone involved. | m3kw9 wrote: | If individual companies developing their own chips is a trend, | and it sure seem like it is starting to, intel has a lot more | competition they have to contend with. Before is always a buy, | now add build into the equation. That's where intels problems are | coming. That's a lot of head winds, they can capture that by | splitting and going the TSMC route, and specialize further on the | design and use some form of licensing model like ARM. | | This is like the Microsoft pivot into cloud to save itself. | darig wrote: | If you want to write an article about how your article website | has matured, maybe start with proofreading the first sentence. | ENOTTY wrote: | Contrary to the article, AMD is not yet shipping 5nm in volume. | (Rumors point to Zen 4 later in 2021.) | | Additionally, Intel works with ASML and other similar suppliers. | Intel even owns a chunk of ASML. | totalZero wrote: | I looked up Canon's and Nikon's lithography numbers yesterday | and was shocked to see that they barely make any money off | their lithography businesses, considering that both companies | make DUV machinery. Although they don't have the street cred of | ASML, they are important because (A) there's a shortage, and | (B) the demand side of the machinery market needs to foster | competition in order to keep ASML from gouging its customers. | | To go even further than your comment (with which I agree, 5nm | isn't the center of AMD's income right now), TSMC isn't even | making most of its wafer revenue from 5nm and 7nm. Straight | from the horse's mouth (Wendell Huang, CFO): | | _" Now, let's move on to the revenue by technology. | 5-nanometer process technology contributed 20% of wafer revenue | in the fourth quarter, while 7-nanometer and 16-nanometer | contributed 29% and 13%, respectively. Advanced technologies, | which are defined as 16-nanometer and below, accounted for 62% | of wafer revenue. On a full-year basis, 5-nanometer revenue | contribution came in at 8% of 2020 wafer revenue. 7-nanometer | was 33% and 16-nanometer was 17%."_ | | https://www.fool.com/earnings/call-transcripts/2021/01/14/ta... | moonbug wrote: | they'll still be depreciating the newer fabs. | totalZero wrote: | Sure, but my understanding is that (assuming that you have | a choice about how much depreciation expense to write down) | from a tax perspective that's what you're supposed to do | when your business is making money. It's also a form of P&L | smoothing. | kolbe wrote: | If TSMC is going to be a monopolist fab for x86, then they will | ultimately suck all the profits out of the server/desktop | markets. This isn't just kinda bad news for Intel/AMD, it's | really bad news. | jeffbee wrote: | Well I got down to the part where the author said that AMD never | threatened Intel in the data center market and I closed the tab. | AMD won entire generations of data center orders while Intel was | flailing with Itanium and NetBurst. | secondcoming wrote: | GCP only offer Epyc CPUs in some regions. None of those regions | are ones we use! Gah! | | Can someone update us on where AWS offer them, if at all? | jeffbee wrote: | If you think about how these providers deploy a cloud | facility, it makes sense that the offerings in a given place | are relatively static. The whole network design, | thermal/mechanical design, and floor plan is built with | certain assumptions and they can't just go in and rack up | some new machines. It evolves pretty slowly and when a | facility gets a new machine it is because they refresh the | whole thing, or a large subset of it. | | That said, the EPYC machine type is available in 12 zones of | four different regions in the US, which isn't bad. | vinay_ys wrote: | Usually you would have some number of enclosed aisles of | racks make up a deployment pod. | | You can usually customize machine configuration within a | deployment pod while staying within the electrical and | thermal envelope of the aisle and without changing the | number of core-spine to pod-spine network links. | | You could potentially build out a data hall but not fully | fill it with aisles. As demand starts to trend up you can | forecast two quarters into future and do the build-outs | with just one quarter lead time. | | I would expect very large operators to have perfected this | supply chain song and dance very well. | jeffbee wrote: | They have perfected it, just not in the manner that you | are suggesting. | mhh__ wrote: | Speaking of Itanium, if the x86 dam has truly burst, I'd much | rather see something more like the Itanium than RISC-V. | Something new. | | It's a shame the Mill is so secretive, actually, they're design | is rather nice. | sitkack wrote: | One of RISC-V's main goals is to be boring and extensible. | Think if it as the control-plane core, or the EFI for a | larger system. You would take RISC-V and use it drive your | novel VLIW processor. | mhh__ wrote: | How? RISC-V will have to have memory model, for example, | which will define some at least effective execution model. | If you turn RISC-V into not RISC-V you might as well just | start from scratch. | garethrowlands wrote: | Pretty sure you can't take RISC-V and use it to drive a | Mill. | tyingq wrote: | There's Russia's Elbrus VLIW chip. | https://www.anandtech.com/show/15823/russias-elbrus-8cb- | micr... | raverbashing wrote: | Nah I think the Itanic concept is dead in the water | | VLIW works (especially in the way it was done in Itanium - | IIRC) when either your workload is too predictable or maybe | if your compiler manages to be one order of magnitude smarter | than it is today (even with llvm, etc) | | It seems even M1 prefers to reorder scalar operations than | work with SIMD ops in some cases (this is one of its | processors) | mhh__ wrote: | Itanium is dead but VLIW as a concept is still interesting | to me. | | If you look at uops executed per port benchmarks you can | see that CPUs are far from all seeing eyes. | hajile wrote: | AMD and Nvidia _both_ used VLIW in the past and _both_ | moved away because they couldn 't get it to run | efficiently. If embarrassingly parallel problems can't | execute efficiently on VLIW architectures, I somehow | doubt that CPUs will either. | | The final versions of Itanic started adopting all the | branch predictors and trappings from more traditional | chips. | | The problem is that loops theoretically cannot be | completely predicted at compile time (the halting | problem). Modern OoO CPUs are basically hardware JITs | that change execution paths and patterns on the fly based | on previous behavior. This (at least at present) seems to | get much better data resulting in much better real-world | performance compared to what the compiler sees. | garethrowlands wrote: | Mill is claimed to run general purpose code well, unlike | Itanic and VLIW in general. Are you claiming Mill would be | like Itanium? | thoughtsimple wrote: | How does Moore's law figure into this? I suspect that TSMC runs | into the wall that is quantum physics at around 1-2nm. | Considering that TSMC has said that they will be in full | production of 3nm in 2022, I can't see 1nm being much beyond | 2026-2028. What happens then? Does a stall in die shrinks allow | other fabs to catch up? | | It appears to me that Intel stalling at 14nm is what opened the | door for TSMC and Samsung to catch up. Does the same thing happen | in 2028 and allow China to finally catch up? | MangoCoffee wrote: | > I can't see 1nm being much beyond 2026-2028. What happens | then? | | whatever marketing people come up? Moore's law is not a law but | an observation. it doesn't really matter tho. we are going to | 3D chip, chiplet, advance packaging ...etc. | kasperni wrote: | Jim Keller believes that at least 10-20 years of shrinking is | possible [1]. | | [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nb2tebYAaOA&t=1800 | kache_ wrote: | moar coars | wffurr wrote: | Quantum effects haven't been relevant for a while now. The | "nanometer" numbers are marketing around different transistor | topologies like FinFET and GAA (Gate-all-around). There's a | published roadmap out to "0.7 eq nm). Note how the | "measurements" all have quotes around them: | | https://www.extremetech.com/computing/309889-tsmc-starts-dev... | viktorcode wrote: | Eventually, CPUs will have to focus on going wide, i.e. growing | number of cores and improving interconnections. | jng wrote: | Modern process node designations (5nm, 3nm...) are not | measurements any more, they are marketing terms. The actual | measure of shrinking is a lot smaller than the name would mean | to indicate, and not approaching the quantum limits as fast as | it may seem. | sobellian wrote: | If I recall correctly from my uni days, one of the big | challenges with further shrinking the physical gates is that | the parasitic capacitance on the gates becomes very hard to | control, and the power consumption of the chip is directly | related to that capacitance. Of course, nothing is so simple | and I'm sure Intel can make _some_ chips at very small | process sizes, but at the cost of horrible yield. | chaorace wrote: | I did not know that! Though, that answer raises its own | questions... | | If the two are entirely unlinked, what's stopping Intel from | slapping "Now 3nm!" on their next gen processors? Surely | _some_ components must be at the advertised size, even if it | 's no longer a clear cut all-or-nothing descriptor, right? | What's actually being sized down and why is it seemingly | posing so many challenges for Intel's supply chain? | rrss wrote: | This article has a pretty good overview of the situation | and other metrics that actually track progress: | https://spectrum.ieee.org/semiconductors/devices/a-better- | wa... | okl wrote: | There's a nice wiki where you can look up more detailed | specs on the processes of each contender, e.g. 5nm: | https://en.wikichip.org/wiki/5_nm_lithography_process | cbozeman wrote: | I think it'll be a good thing when people stop worrying | about process node technology and start worrying about | performance and power usage. | | Intel's 14nm chips are already competitive with AMD's | (TSMC's, really) 7nm chips. The i7-11700 or whatever the | newest one coming out soon is called, is going to be pretty | much exactly on parity with AMD's Ryzen 5000 series. | | So if node shrinkage is such a dramatic increase in | performance and power usage, then when Intel unfucks | themselves and refines their 10nm node and 7nm node and | whatever-node after that, they'll clearly be more | performant than AMD... and Apple's M1. | | Process technology is holding Intel back. They fix that, | they get scary again. | kllrnohj wrote: | > I think it'll be a good thing when people stop worrying | about process node technology and start worrying about | performance and power usage. | | I think it's more that people attribute too much | significance to process node technology when trying to | understand why performance & power are what they are. | | For single-core performance the gains from a node shrink | are in the low teen percentage increases. Power | improvements at the same performance are a bit better, | but still not as drastic as people tend to treat it as. | | 10-20 years ago just having a better process node was a | _massive_ deal. These days it 's overwhelmingly CPU | design & architecture that dictate things like single- | core performance. We've been "stuck" at the 3-5ghz range | for something like half a decade now and TSMC has worse | performance here than Intel's existing 14nm. Still hasn't | been a single TSMC 7nm or 5nm part that hits that magical | 5ghz mark reliably enough for marketing, for example. And | that's all process node performance is - clock speed. M1 | only runs at 3.2ghz - you could build that on Intel's | 32nm without any issues. Power consumption would be a lot | worse, but you could have had "M1-like" single-core | performance way back in 2011 if you had a time machine to | take back all the single-core CPU design lessons & | improvements, that is. | adrian_b wrote: | While you are right that due to their design CPUs like | Apple M1 can reach the same single-thread performance as | Intel/AMD at a much lower clock frequency and such a | clock frequency could be reached much earlier, e.g. | already Intel Nehalem in 2009 reached 3.3 GHz as turbo, | while Sandy Bridge in 2011 had 3.4 GHz as base clock | frequency, it would have been impossible to make a CPU | like Apple M1 in any earlier technology, not even in | Intel's 14 nm. | | To achieve its very high IPC, M1 multiplies a lot of | internal resources and also uses very large caches. All | those require a huge number of transistors. | | Implementing an M1-like design in an earlier technology | would have required a very large area, resulting in a | price so large and also in a power consumption so large | that such a design would have been infeasible. | | However, you are partially right in the sense that Intel | clearly was overconfident due to their clock frequency | advantage and they have decided on a roadmap to increase | the IPC of their CPUs in the series Skylake => Ice Lake | => Alder Lake that was much less ambitious than it should | have been. | | While Tiger Lake and Ice Lake have about the same IPC, | Alder Lake is expected to bring a similar increase like | from Skylake to Ice Lake. | | Maybe that will be competitive with Zen 4, but it is | certain that the IPC of Alder Lake will still be lower | than the IPC of Apple M1, so Intel will continue to be | able to match the Apple performance only at higher clock | frequencies, which cause a higher power consumption. | kllrnohj wrote: | > To achieve its very high IPC, M1 multiplies a lot of | internal resources and also uses very large caches. All | those require a huge number of transistors. | | Yes & no. Most of the M1 die isn't spent on CPU, it's | spent things like GPU, neural net, and SLC cache. A | "basic" dual-core CPU-only M1 would be very | manufacturable back in 2011 or so. After all, Intel at | some point decided to spend a whole lot of transistors | adding a GPU to every single CPU regardless of worth, | there were transistors to spare. | adrian_b wrote: | True, but the M1 CPU, together with the necessary cache | and memory controller still occupies about a third of the | Apple M1 die. | | In the Intel 32-nm process, the area would have been 30 | to 40 times larger than in the TSMC 5 nm process. | | The 32-nm die would have been as large as a book, many | times larger than any manufacturable chip. | | By 2011, 2-core CPUs would not have been competitive, but | even reducing the area in half is not enough to bring the | size into the realm of possible. | kllrnohj wrote: | Where are you getting your M1 CPU + memory controller is | about a third of the M1 die from? Looking at this die | shot + annotation: | https://images.anandtech.com/doci/16226/M1.png The | firestorm cores + 12MB cache is _far_ less than 1 /3rd | the die, and the memory controller doesn't look | particularly large. | | The M1 total is 16B transistors. A 2700K on Intel's 32nm | was 1.1B transistors. You're "only" talking something | like ~4x the size necessary if that. Of course the 2700K | already has a memory controller on it, so you really just | need the firestorm cores part of the M1. Which is a _lot_ | less than 1/3rd of the die size. | | But lets say you're right and it is 1/3rd. That means you | need ~5B transistors. Nvidia was doing 7B transistors on | TSMC's 28nm in 2013 on consumer parts (GTX 780) | adrian_b wrote: | I was looking at the same image. | | A very large part of the die is not labelled and it must | include some blocks that cannot be omitted from the CPU, | e.g. the PCIe controller and various parts from the | memory controller, e.g. buffers and prefetchers. | | The area labelled for the memory channels seems to | contain just the physical interfaces for the memory, that | is why it is small. The complete memory controller must | include parts of the unlabelled area. | | Even if the CPU part of M1 would be smaller, e.g. just a | quarter, that would be 30 square mm. In the 32 nm | technology that would likely need much more than 1000 | square mm, i.e. it would be impossible to be | manufactured. | | The number of transistors claimed for various CPUs or | GPUs is mostly meaningless and usually very far from the | truth anyway. | | The only thing that matters for estimating the costs and | the scaling to other processes is the area occupied on | the die, which is determined by much more factors than | the number of transistors used, even if that would have | been reported accurately. (The transistors can have very | different sizes and the area of various parts of a CPU | may be determined more by the number of interconnections | than by the number of transistors.) | branko_d wrote: | > We've been "stuck" at the 3-5ghz range for something | like half a decade | | It's closer to two decades, actually. Pentium 4 | (Northwood) reached 3.06 GHz in 2002, using 130 nm | fabrication process. | adrian_b wrote: | Since AMD has introduced its first 7 nm chip, Intel's | 14-nm chips have never been competitive. | | Intel's 14-nm process has only 1 advantage over any other | process node, including Intel's own 10 nm: the highest | achievable clock frequency, of up to 5.3 GHz. | | This advantage is very important for games, but not for | most other purposes. | | Since the first 7-nm chip of AMD, their CPUs consume much | less power at a given clock frequency than Intel's 14 nm. | | Because of this, whenever more cores are active, so that | the clock frequency is limited by the total power | consumption, the clock frequency of the AMD CPUs is | higher than of any Intel CPU with the same number of | active cores, which lead to AMD winning any multi- | threaded benchmark even with Zen 2, when they still did | not have the advantage of a higher IPC than Intel, like | they have with Zen 3. | | With the latest Intel's 10 nm process variant, Intel has | about the same power consumption at a given frequency and | the same maximum clock frequency as the TSMC 7 nm proces. | | So Intel should have been able to compete now with AMD, | except that they still appear to have huge difficulties | in making larger chips in sufficient quantities, so they | are forced to use workarounds, like the launch of the | Tiger Lake H35 series of laptop CPUs with smaller dies, | to have something to sell until they will be able to | produce the larger 8-core Tiger Lake H CPUs. | Stevvo wrote: | "This advantage is very important for games, but not for | most other purposes." | | I disagree. The majority of desktop applications are only | lightly threaded e.g. Adobe products, office suites, | Electron apps, anything mostly written before 2008. | adrian_b wrote: | You are right that those applications benefit from a | higher single-thread performance. | | Nevertheless, unlike in competitive games, the few | percents of extra clock frequency that Intel previously | had in Comet Lake versus Zen 2 and which Intel probably | will have again in Rocket Lake versus Zen 3, are not | noticeable in office applications or Web browsing, so | they are not a reason to choose one vendor or the other. | ksec wrote: | >Intel's 14nm chips are already competitive with AMD's | (TSMC's, really) 7nm chips. | | The only metric that Intel's 14nm is better than TSMC's | 7nm is clock speed ceiling. Other than that there is | nothing competitive from an Intel 14nm chip compares to | AMD ( TSMC ) 7nm chip from a processing perspective. | | And that is not a fault of TSMC or AMD. They just decide | not to pursuit that route. | ksec wrote: | >"Now 3nm!" on their next gen processors? | | Nothing. | | It started when Samsung were using features size just to | gain competitive marketing advantage. And then TSMC had to | follow because their customers and shareholders were | putting a lot of pressure on them | | While ingredient branding is important, at the end of the | day the chip has to perform. Otherwise your ingredient | branding would suffer and such strategy would no longer | work. Samsung are already tasting their own medicine. | | P.S - That "Now 3nm!" reminds me of "3D Now!" from AMD. | cglace wrote: | They can call it whatever they want but it will need to | show huge performance improvements for anyone to actually | care. | [deleted] | JumpCrisscross wrote: | > _a federal subsidy program should operate as a purchase | guarantee: the U.S. will buy A amount of U.S.-produced 5nm | processors for B price; C amount of U.S. produced 3nm processors | for D price; E amount of U.S. produced 2nm processors for F | price; etc._ | | I really like this concept, though I'd advocate for a straight | subsidy (sales of American-made chips to a U.S.-registered and | based buyer get $ credit, paid directly to the supplier and | buyer, on proof of sale and proof of purchase) given the | logistical issues of the U.S. government having a stockpile of | cutting-edge chips it can't dump on the market. | Causality1 wrote: | The funny thing is, in the time period being addressed first in | the article (2013) Intel was better at mobile than it is now. Its | Bay Trail and Cherry Trail chips had more performance per dollar | than even today's offerings, eight years later. Intel just | decided low-margin wasn't a concept in which they were | interested. | 11thEarlOfMar wrote: | A major incentive for the US government to get involved is | touched on. Not only is Taiwan 'just off the coast' from China, | China is coming for it and intends to assimilate Taiwan back into | China just as Hong Kong and Macau have been. | | At that point, the only sustainable leverage the rest of the | world would have in chip technology would be ASML. | aluminussoma wrote: | It is thought provoking to think that the USA's interest in | Taiwan is more about protecting TMSC than protecting a | democratic state in East Asia. By this line of thinking, | building capacity in Arizona, or anywhere outside Taiwan, is | good for TMSC and for the USA but weakens Taiwan. | oblio wrote: | > It is thought provoking to think that the USA's interest in | Taiwan is more about protecting TMSC than protecting a | democratic state in East Asia. | | Why it though provoking? It's always realpolitik. All wars | are. | | There's always a pretext but the subtext is what actually | causes wars. | z77dj3kl wrote: | A question for those who've been around in tech longer: was | Google really the first and "disruptive" user of x86 commodity | hardware in datacenters that everyone else then lagged behind? Or | was it just a general wave and shift in the landscape? | gorjusborg wrote: | Totally reasonable argument, and I think most would be better off | with an independent, US-based foundry. | | Unfortunately, I doubt that the US government functions well | enough at this point to recognize the threat and overcome the | influence Intel's money would wield against the effort. | NortySpock wrote: | I thought GlobalFoundries was US based, and they have a fab in | Vermont (and Germany and Singapore) | nicoburns wrote: | Yes, but GlobalFoundries have given up development on leading | edge process nodes. | ncmncm wrote: | It's time for more predictions. | | 1. Apple's CPUs will not improve anywhere near as fast as the | competition. Computation per watt of (some) competitors' products | will outpace Apple's in just a few years. | | 2. Intel will come roaring back on the back of TSMC, but first | will need to wait on growth of manufacturing capacity, as certain | competitors can get more money per mm^2. | | 3. Intel will fail to address its product-quality problem, but it | will not end up hurting them. ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2021-01-19 23:00 UTC)