[HN Gopher] An Interview with Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger
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An Interview with Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger
Author : oumua_don17
Score : 103 points
Date : 2022-02-27 09:31 UTC (13 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (stratechery.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (stratechery.com)
| vvanders wrote:
| > Some of these conversations, Ben, I just find them delightful.
| We have these five whale customers that we've talked about, these
| are active conversations. Active, daily things and in that, the
| teams are now saying, well, what about the ultra low voltage
| threshold for the thin pitch library that we're going to use in
| this particular cell? "TSMC is giving us these characteristics,
| you don't characterize that corner." Okay, guess what? Go
| characterize the corner! "Your PDK isn't as robust as the Samsung
| or TSMC PDK is to describe the process technology for my team to
| simulate."
|
| I get where he's going with this but if you're ever on the other
| side interacting with a vendor you should be very careful about
| what, if at all you disclose that their competitors are doing.
| Vendors notice what they learn from your teams and if they know
| it is leaky they will not disclose things that make the technical
| side easier.
|
| At a past gig we used the be the central point of contact for our
| vendors because we kept a strict firewall on the technical side
| between different product lines and SoCs.
|
| The first instinct of most engineers when you're trying to
| evaluate something or get the best performance is to say "X does
| Y, why don't you do Y" or "X does Y, how can we get similar
| results" and you've just disclosed something and that vendor will
| notice. On the flip side if you build up that trust and are known
| to not disclose you can be read in on things that normally
| wouldn't be shared. This can be incredibly valuable when you're
| trying to close on a key technical issue under schedule/time
| constraints.
| adityar wrote:
| I find "X does Y, why don't you?" As a means to keep vendors
| from becoming complacent. As customers, we don't know what the
| tools limits are. Sometimes, vendors will not invest in
| improving their tools/results without a credible threat. The
| results from competing vendors is the closest you can get to
| impartial results that create pressure to perform.
| vvanders wrote:
| A good chunk of my time was in SoC eval so if the vendor was
| being complacent they didn't get the bid. You should always
| be running multiple solutions so you don't get locked in with
| a certain vendor(and also a really good reason to keep any
| tech stack you have highly portable).
|
| Even then though there's ways to approach it that don't
| disclose. You can set KPIs that you expect to hit and talk
| through how they plan too approach it from their side. If
| something is known in the public you can reference it
| although I generally prefer not to.
|
| Depending on what part of the industry you're in some vendors
| prefer not to patent and keep approaches internal so
| discussion of certain aspects can be pretty sensitive.
| criticaltinker wrote:
| I think that is a reasonable counter argument to the solid
| advice GP shared. In my experience, vendors are usually well
| aware of their competition. It's a thin and subtle line
| between motivating them and recklessly sharing details
| regarding trade secrets, IP, competitive advantages etc.
|
| Only mentioning this because I wish someone had clued me in
| earlier in my career. I only learned after my friend in opsec
| called me out for my loose lips.
| danielmarkbruce wrote:
| >> Every day I sell another x86 socket, that is the highest
| margin, most strategic thing that Intel can do
|
| This basically summarizes why Intel is in so much trouble. They
| can execute well for the next 10 years and they are still hosed -
| they used to be practically the only supplier (AMD wasn't doing
| well) of the by far most used architecture in servers (and
| clients), and sold to 100s of thousands of customers, none of who
| could push them around. Now there are several architectures and
| several suppliers and the buyers are bigger and more concentrated
| than ever. They are just lucky the server market has been growing
| while the big cloud providers built out. It's not going to be a
| pretty 10 years to 2032... selling those x86's in 2032 won't be
| so.. high margin.
| initplus wrote:
| I'm not sure focusing on the instruction set is the right
| angle.
|
| x86 would be more competitive in the mobile space if Intel had
| offered efficient chips. Is the instruction set the biggest
| blocker that prevented this? Or is it the licensing model?
| Perhaps if Intel had licensed their architecture and
| instruction set to others, like ARM does, they would be in a
| better position?
|
| ARM's licensing model get's a lot more eyes on instructions
| sets and chip designs. It allows big companies like Apple come
| in and run the show, licensing just the instruction set. Why
| wasn't Intel working with large customers with an interest in
| custom x86 designs? In hindsight it seems presumptuous to
| assume there is no x86 talent outside Intel/AMD.
|
| Really impossible to know how much the actual instruction set
| is holding Intel back without being on the inside.
| convolvatron wrote:
| true. but I really cant imagine that the area and latency
| associated with the uop translator is really where this is
| all falling down. i have always wondered how much support for
| the old vector units, segmentation and all the rest cost, but
| it cant really be that much since caches keep getting bigger
| and bigger. its a really good question.
| xchaotic wrote:
| It's a classic innovator's dilemma- they can continue milking
| the x86 or reinvent the company but not both at the same time.
| gumby wrote:
| > but not both at the same time.
|
| For 20 years they could have afforded to. Now it may be too
| late. If they try I don't think the market would punish them
| for it.
|
| And in fact they are famous for killing their cash cow
| (memory) and focusing on the new thing (microprocessors) in
| the 80s under Grove. They have fallen far.
|
| Other big companies, like Google, have this problem and
| haven't made efforts to address it.
| tester756 wrote:
| If Microsoft managed to do turn around, then why they cant?
| n7pdx wrote:
| Intel is not going to beat anyone else in architecture or
| design in any compute system besides x86. They don't have the
| experience, the talent, or the culture to do so. Heck, Intel
| can't even beat AMD in x86 power/perf. So Pat is just stating
| the obvious, Intel has no option but to go maximal x86.
| awill wrote:
| Skimmed. I was hoping to read a deeper question about Intel's
| power consumption. I keep seeing benchmarks showing Intel's
| massive gains with the 12th gen that avoid talking about power.
| It's not that hard to match or exceed a competitors benchmark if
| you double the power budget.
|
| I've read that for the original iPhone Steve Jobs was in talks
| with Intel to produce a low power x86 chip. Intel said no. The
| silicon landscape would be very different if that had happened.
| bloodyplonker22 wrote:
| I calculated once that the cost of buying an intel chip is
| around double that of a similar performing AMD chip if you
| factor in the cost of electricity over a few years.
| Unfortunately for intel, their latest generation is still on
| very old 10nm technology while AMD is currently on 7nm and is
| going to 5nm soon. Because of their giant screw-ups with a
| sales and marketing CEO, Intel has fallen far behind with their
| own fabs, and power consumption has not improved at all. All
| they can do for now is sell their latest generation chips with
| a terrible profit margin in order to compete against AMD.
| pinewurst wrote:
| But Intel has renamed their 10nm to "Intel 7"! ;)
| fnbr wrote:
| Stratechery (& Dithering) is the only paid newsletter I subscribe
| to. It's so worth it. I think that everyone working in tech
| should subscribe to maintain an objective view of the overall
| tech landscape. Otherwise, you get sucked into the gravitational
| well of your employer's propaganda.
|
| This is especially true at big tech, as Ben covers them often.
| enos_feedler wrote:
| I am not sure how many people really get sucked into employer's
| propaganda. However, it is a great newsletter with good
| interviews and an energetic and passionate voice on tech.
| fnbr wrote:
| I think it's easy to get sucked into it accidentally if the
| only source of tech news you read is your employer's internal
| newsletters.
| pphysch wrote:
| A bit off topic but every other (public) article from
| Stratechery reads like a hagiography of Intel. Now he landed an
| interview with the man himself. Hmm. Pat's time is
| extraordinarily valuable. Either the author lets his personal
| bias affect his analysis too much, or there is some PR money at
| work here.
|
| There's still a lot of interesting analysis but my opinion of
| the newsletter has soured over time.
| ghaff wrote:
| >Pat's time is extraordinarily valuable.
|
| It is. On the other hand, a not insignificant part of his job
| is talking to journalists, industry analysts, financial
| analysts, etc. Doesn't mean just anyone can drop an email and
| get an interview but, although I haven't spoken with Pat for
| quite some time, I had 1:1s with him (and did a little work
| for him) when he was CTO.
| binarynate wrote:
| It sounds like you should read more of Ben's articles. He
| doesn't write about Intel every other article and he has long
| been critical of them for losing ground to TSMC.
| marcodiego wrote:
| Not a single word about IME.
| xchaotic wrote:
| What's that?
| JonChesterfield wrote:
| Intel management engine. Remote code execution backdoor /
| feature.
| mooreds wrote:
| This is OT, but can I just say how amazing it is that the head of
| a large public tech company is being interviewed by a smart guy
| with a paid newsletter?
|
| What a world.
|
| Edit: corrected typo.
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(page generated 2022-02-27 23:00 UTC)