Intel knows it's no longer inside

http://www.theverge.com/2016/5/31/11817818/intel-computex-2016-keynote-report

by jonbaer • 10 years ago

130 124 10 years ago

walterbell• 10 years ago

Have there been studies on the relative software utilization of client hardware over the years?

If clients are reduced to consumption terminals where special purpose IP blocks (e.g. video decoding) neutralize the difference between x86 and ARM, there is less justification for the price premium of a powerful general purpose CPU.

If powerful clients have large local storage and compute-oriented apps that are optimized for low-latency human interaction on large desktop monitors or VR workspaces, then there would be good reason to pay for a general purpose CPU.

A powerful desktop can also serve as a cloud to mobile devices, but a cloud server cannot offer the low-latency response of a local desktop. Why discard the one form factor that can serve both roles?

Is the problem Moore's Law or the lack of desktop software innovation and business models? If Hollywood can promote business models via PC hardware DRM (e.g. SGX), can the software industry support hardware for client-oriented business models?

bhouston2• 10 years ago

Why discard the one form factor that can serve both roles?

Half way between cloud and mobile means you are not needed for the most part. I think that VR rendering will also be eaten by mobile with high end GPUs.

The only reason I need desktop is for compiles, but compiles could easily be done on the cloud.

ArkyBeagle3• 10 years ago

It is almost as if you're telling us that you can code on a phone. "Mobile with high end GPUs" - what sort of battery do you have in mind for that?

If you're calling a laptop "mobile" then ah - okay, but that's not the general use of the term.

pjmlp2• 10 years ago

On the mobile space unless you are targeting C or C++ code on Android and WP, the CPU doesn't matter.

So in Android with dex, UWP with .NET Native and iOS with bitcode, compiled at store servers the client systems can have multiple CPU offerings.

But that brings some headaches when profiling the applications across devices.

legulere• 10 years ago

LLVM bitcode already has some architecture-specific things baked in (pointer size, supported data sizes, macros matching to architectures in C are already evaluated, ...). You can target a neutral bitcode ABI that can be further compiled down to different architectures. That's what PNaCl still does, but I think Apple doesn't do that.

stephengillie• 10 years ago

The i7 from 2010 still runs fine in my gaming PC. Unlike a Pentium 3 from 2000, there have been no major speed advances in the past 6 years. True, today's i7 can push 16 threads instead of 8, but even with a full screen game, YouTube, Twitch, Chrome, and 2 game servers, it barely uses 6 threads.

The devices aren't necessarily disappearing; we just don't need new ones anymore.

andyjdavis• 10 years ago

I have been looking around for a replacement laptop. Historically I have primarily looked at 3 numbers. RAM, hard drive size and CPU speed. It is just for running one or more IDEs so I don't have any particularly special requirement.

I feel like CPU speeds have plateaued. Not so long ago getting a new machine after a few years meant getting a new CPU that was vastly quicker whereas all of the laptops I am looking at are only marginally faster than my ~3 year old laptop.

My hard drive requirements are not huge so it looks like I am essentially buying a new laptop just to get more RAM.

projectramo3• 10 years ago

There is one important additional fact one ought to keep in mind when reading something like this:

Intel derives much of its competitive advantage from its ability to manufacture.

This means that a lot of Intel's advantage will only express itself when the market grows really large. There have been a number of times when other companies beat Intel to a new technology (introducing, say, the 64 Bit chip several months ahead), but when the market took off and the cycle began, only Intel was able to deliver in sufficient quantity.

I don't know what the total market for a particular chip is likely to be, or how fast it will get there.

vonmoltke• 10 years ago

IMO, Intel's greatest weakness is that they got so large on such a relatively narrow set of product lines. Their fabs are all optimized for massive runs of dies, unlike their competitors in the fab space. It makes them far less agile.

RI_Swamp_Yankee• 10 years ago

ARM is a very compeitive field of a number of manufacturers, building chips for billions of devices. The advantage is no longer Intel's. More, the Great Old Ones - IBM with their zSeries and Power8 and now Oracle with SPARC of all things, are making a play for the server racks again. They're trapped between the massive economies of scale ARM is enjoying at the low end, and improvements in lowering cost and increasing yield for small batches of fancy and performant chips by the big R&D houses at the fat-margined high end.

The middle of the road is shrinking fast.

shortsightedsid2• 10 years ago

Sun didn't fab the Sparc themselves and therefore it's unlikey that Oracle will. AFAIK they were fabbed in companies like TI. Source: TI's annual report from 2007 http://investor.ti.com/secfiling.cfm?filingID=1193125-07-424...

Therefore, Intel's competitive advantage of running their own fabs could keep them ahead in the server space as well.

AnimalMuppet• 10 years ago

Well, the phone market's pretty large already, by any definition...

nl6• 10 years ago

This just isn't correct.

Intel's big advantage has been their ability to reliably and continually improve their manufacturing process, and for this to reliably and continually deliver performance improvements (the tick/tock strategy).

There have been a number of times when other companies beat Intel to a new technology (introducing, say, the 64 Bit chip several months ahead), but when the market took off and the cycle began, only Intel was able to deliver in sufficient quantity.

This is entirely untrue. AMD delivered a better consumer-focused 64bit architecture, and for an entire generation the Athlon outperformed the Pentium4. Yes, Intel sold plenty, but AMD did too.

That was the last time Intel made a misstep in their x64 product line.

Nowdays, desktop chips are facing some challenges. TSMC, Samsung and other are able to deliver plenty of ARM chips to market for the phone and tablet chips. Nvidia is increasingly eating the compute market.

projectramo3• 10 years ago

You've said this isn't correct a few times but nothing you've said in between contradicts anything you seem to disagree with.

leaveyou• 10 years ago

Brian Krzanich said the company's focus was on moving to the cloud, with data centers and the Internet of Things considered primary growth drivers

Cloud, servers.. I get it, Intel is well established there, but IoT ? Do they have a foothold in this area ? When I look on their page I don't see anything promising.. and when I think of IoT, I imagine some low power ARM SOCs like Raspbery Pis combined with Arduinos rather then anything Intel sells today.

http://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/internet-of-things/pr...

lmz• 10 years ago

IoT = more clients = more servers, no?

petra4• 10 years ago

Not really. A typical IOT client sends a few bytes every few minutes or hours. that's not much.

But the "internet of watching things", a world full of connected cameras is a different story. But it ain't a great slogan :)

jethro_tell• 10 years ago

To some extent. But most IoT applications aren't about heavy back-end processing. They are about capturing things that were to small to bother with before. The amazon dash buttons would actually save them a few page loads when you order tide because they never had to load the gui. If your fridge is emailing your shopping list to some server once a day ( assume it makes 5 or 6 calls while you cook dinner or whatever ) so again you're not making a huge impact on a server. It may be some increase, but much of that is probably offset as we become better at over subscription of huge servers.

RyJones• 10 years ago

http://openconnectivity.org/ is the software side of the Intel IoT play

roymurdock5• 10 years ago

Wind River (Subsidiary of Intel) has a large foothold in the IoT market with their VxWorks and WR Linux OSs that play in the embedded/MCU market. Also see their free new open source OS, Rocket, which is being developed as the "Zephyr Project" in collaboration with the Linux Foundation.

petra4• 10 years ago

With regards to OS for microcontrollers, ARM's mbed has far better low-power,security and ecosystem story.

And as far as Linux OS's - nobody will buy an OS that can't be ported to ARM and be done so reasonably, so i'm not sure Wind River helps Intel that much in selling chips.

kevin_thibedeau• 10 years ago

Which are mostly running on ARM and PPC. Intel screwed up by dumping Xscale and their legacy embedded lineup. Windriver isn't going to save them.

swamp40• 10 years ago

Well, there's the new Quark, Curie, Edison offerings.

I don't see how that can save a company though.

They used to sell $200 processors like popcorn.

mixmastamyk• 10 years ago

I wonder if there will soon be room for a non-x86 PC due to the rise of mobile devices. Don't think there's been one available since the demise of the Power Mac.

Frenchgeek• 10 years ago

Well, the raspberry pi ( and others like it ) could be argued to be it, to an extend...

TazeTSchnitzel• 10 years ago

Apple have smoothly changed processor architecture twice before, they could do it again. Maybe they'll go ARM everywhere at some point.

philippnagel• 10 years ago

Is ARM objectively better than x86?

stan_rogers• 10 years ago

I was there for both. It wasn't particularly smooth. Backwards compatibility was... what's the word I'm looking for? Laughable. That's it.

mtgx2• 10 years ago

Only if both Google and Microsoft focus on making that happen. Microsoft seems to have given up on it, so now we're only left with the new Play Store-enabled Chromebooks, that should actually give a slight advantage to ARM chips in terms of efficiency of running those apps. But so far Google hasn't been too enthusiastic about promoting ARM-based Chromebooks either, and has preferred to bring over Intel's monopoly to Chromebooks as well. But we'll see. At the very least we should be seeing some AMD Zen APUs in Chromebooks next year.

Apple could help a great deal here, too, if it decides to turn the iPad Pro, into something more like an iOS-based Remix OS-like notebook. In other words, make the iPad Pro more useful by giving it an actual notebook keyboard, and redesign the OS interface a little more to accommodate a desktop environment. Keep the price at least $300 less than a Macbook Air.

petra4• 10 years ago

> so far Google hasn't been too enthusiastic about promoting ARM-based Chromebooks either, and has preferred to bring over Intel's monopoly to Chromebooks as well.

Is it Google's doing ? or just Intel competing to the max, and desperately ?

alfalfasprout• 10 years ago

I could see such a thing but in the server market. OpenPower (eg; Power8/Power9 when it comes out) could be damaging to Intel.

whazor• 10 years ago

Since the transistors in chips are becoming smaller and smaller, heat is an increasing issue. This is why ARM chips for smartphones and IoT are booming, because their requirements of small chips are compatible with the shrinking size of the transistor. Now Intel tries to get a cut of the market, but they are too late.

Anyway, I think they should keep focussing on making the computer chips and focus on the temperature problem.

mtgx2• 10 years ago

Indeed. Intel's thinking right now (or rather in the past couple of years) seems to be that "hey, we missed the smartphone market, but at least we're early for the IoT market, right?"

Except there are two things wrong with that theory:

1) "IoT" is mainly a new name for something that has already existed - a market that has already been dominated by ARM: the embedded/microcontroller market. ARM has much better expertise in this market, better relationships, and better ecosystem, as well as a full range of products.

2) If Intel's chips weren't competitive in the mobile market (especially when you compare all three metrics of performance, power, and price), then why would they be in the embedded IoT market, which plays even more to ARM's strengths?

roymurdock5• 10 years ago

1) "IoT" is mainly a new name for something that has already existed - a market that has already been dominated by ARM: the embedded/microcontroller market.

The IoT is much more than just the embedded hardware. It's the potential that lies within connecting embedded hardware. Extracting and refining data from embedded machines/sensors/nodes. The whole ecosystem of apps/services that can potentially be created on top of these new data streams.

valarauca1• 10 years ago

Now Intel tries to get a cut of the market, but they are too late.

It's really more complex then that.

x86_64 has a lot of backwards compatibility. Even low power chips made by Intel typically consume 2-5x the wattage of ARM counter parts. Intel's very low power line (matches ARM) doesn't actually have the 64bit extension and is functionally a i586 chip from circa 1999-2003. Modern x86_64 chips have a whole section of die space dedicated to emulation, re-ordering, re-naming, and caching for us to pretend x86 is fast.

Then you have monopoly. Intel is the only company making x86_64 chips (Yes VIA/AMD exist, but collectively they have <10% of the market). They are the only show in town, it's their prices. While ARM simply licenses it's IP to other companies, who then compete with one another and drive prices even lower.

Vanayad• 10 years ago

Actually AMD has around 20-30% marketshare...

mariusmg• 10 years ago

for us to pretend x86 is fast.

"Instruction sets" are not fast, the implementations are. Also AMD has a nice chunk of marketshare which will only get bigger once Zen is out.

StillBored• 10 years ago

I don't know why the argument that x86_64 has some affect on efficiency keeps coming up. All modern OoO chips microarch is decoupled from the instruction decoders. All the "strange" x86 instructions are effectively microcoded, which doesn't affect the execution performance of the instructions actually contained in high performance code. In many ways the ability to easily spill/operate against memory/stack provides instruction density advantages, and simplifies certain dependency calculations.

So, whether ARM64 has an power efficiency advantage isn't clear at all when one tries to actually compare them fairly. I frequently see people linearly scaling power/performance curves, or comparing cores that contain ECC, significantly more IO, etc against cores that don't and claiming that the core with 10x the IO bandwidth is somehow less efficient computationally because it consumes 5 watts more to power a PCIe bus.

So, lets get this out of the way, performance is not linear to power. Simply having a clock rate 50% faster has a large impact on power given the rough P=CV^2f equation because often the voltage goes up to support the higher frequencies. Worse designing for a target top end frequency of 4Ghz may entail extra pipeline stages/etc than one targeting 2Ghz in the same process. The result is significantly higher power draw at the same frequency due to the fact that higher frequencies are supported. Then there is leakage current/etc, which will be proportional to the number of transistors, so a design with 15MB of cache is going to waste more on leakage than one with 1MB. The extra 14MB of cache may only contribute another percent or two to the bottom line in many workloads, but frequently the difference between a processors at X performance and one at 1.5X is not due to a single factor but dozens of design tradeoffs that individually only net small percentage gains.

Bottom line, its better to compare implementations, and when ARM vs x86 chips are compared on similar grounds, they are a lot closer than you hear in glib remarks on forums like this. Intel's handicap in mobile (lack of native x86 android apps) and ARM's handicap in desktop/server all really come down to the software (and maybe in the case of some ARM products what one might consider alpha/immature products).

imtringued• 10 years ago

Modern x86_64 chips have a whole section of die space dedicated to emulation, re-ordering, re-naming, and caching for us to pretend x86 is fast.

"to pretend x86 is fast" is a terrible choice of words. The fundamental problem is the memory wall. There are only two ways to solve it. Either put the processor directly onto the memory or add complex circuitry to mitigate it's effects. The former is difficult because DRAM and CPUs use different manufacturing processes. Thus neither x86 or ARM can avoid the latter if they want to maximise performance and in turn they become less power inefficient.

What you should have said is "to pretend DRAM is fast". It's not.

Panoramix• 10 years ago

Transistors are not becoming much smaller. Moore's law is stagnating, due to a host of reasons. Multiple patterning is very expensive, EUV is not available - and even if it comes, it will be really expensive with a host of technical challenges for everyone. And then it will very quickly hit a wall as well. The future of computer chips is dim. I think Intel is smart to diversify into other markets.

frik• 10 years ago

@Intel: how about thinking about 10GHz single core CPUs? And where is Atom? Why are we stuck in 2006 era CPU singe core performance?

@nVidia: how about thinking about affordable high end GPUs? The GPUs got 400% more expensive since 2011.

It's a pitty that AMD bought ATI, and now they can't compete with Intel and nVidia. And we all have to suffer and pay higher prices and get less performance - because no real competition exists any more.

raverbashing2• 10 years ago

MHz/GHz are overrated. Not to mention today's 3GHz Intel and AMD offerings are much faster (per core) than let's say, the 3GHz offerings of 10y (?) ago

nVidia got their bets right with investing on uses other than gaming for their GPUs now they're eating AMD/ATI in the deep learning field

Affordable and High End are rarely on the same phrase, so there's your answer to when nVidia is going to do that

protomyth3• 10 years ago

MHz/GHz is basically RPM in a car, not the greatest determinate of speed.

cfallin2• 10 years ago

@Intel: how about thinking about 10GHz single core CPUs?

They tried that -- the Pentium 4. The key design goal was to push clock speed as high as possible, and they used some crazy tricks, like 30-some-stage pipelines, a really long instruction scheduling loop with a pretty long lookahead, a double-pumped ALU with staggered 16-bit half-adds, etc. Fascinating from a microarchitecture perspective, but the big lesson was that high clock speeds sacrifice efficiency. The tricks needed to get there cause a lot of performance outliers/bad cases too -- e.g. the instruction scheduling replay system on lookahead conflicts was notorious for "tornados" which would kill IPC. And the branch prediction of the day was somewhat suboptimal for the pipeline lengths involved.

Why are we stuck in 2006 era CPU singe core performance?

We aren't! The core microarchitecture teams at Intel and their competitors have made a lot of incremental progress -- Intel gets about 15% single-thread performance per generation, for example. No one is evilly scheming and holding back from turning a knob higher. There's just a lot of really hard engineering. Clock speed has topped out due to power limitations so we're at the point of looking for better branch prediction algorithms, cache replacement algorithms, and lots of little tricks everywhere to optimize bad cases. It's hard work (this was my job for a bit).

I'd recommend looking at, e.g., the proceedings of ISCA and MICRO conferences in the 2000-2006 timeframe -- this was when the industry and associated academia figured out that chasing clock speed was a losing battle after a certain point.

sirsar2• 10 years ago

What does it mean to have a "double pumped" ALU? Google is failing me.

TillE• 10 years ago

Right, even single CPU performance of mainstream Intel chips has more than doubled in 7 years (Nehalem to Skylake).

Many important things which affect performance have been stagnant for a very long time, especially cache size and RAM latency. But there's been steady progress in raw CPU power, coupled with a significant reduction in TDP.

xyience• 10 years ago

Atom is no longer needed since their non-atom CPUs have a low enough power profile now. We're stuck in single core performance hell because physics.

I don't know where you've been but GPU competition between nvidia and AMD has been pretty healthy for the last few years, and AMDs specifically have been quite affordable. (That's not even taking into account they easily paid for themselves with Litecoin mining at one point.) It's only CPU competition that has been dead, but that's been the case ever since the Core line came out. (I guess you could count ARM too for low-end CPU competition, but both Intel and ARM can actually afford to lose that market entirely as their businesses are propped up by other things.)

paulmd• 10 years ago

Competition really hasn't been healthy, beginning with the Kepler generation. Ever since then, AMD has been unable to get a solid win, and most of their cards have been rebrands. They're still running some first-gen GCN chips (dating back to 2012) in their current lineup. Heck, some of their prices have actually increased in the last few years (eg the 390 rebrand raised the price by $100).

NVIDIA held the upper hand with GK110 (780/Titan), then AMD dropped the 290X. This forced NVIDIA to readjust their prices and release the 780 Ti as an interim measure, but they held onto their lead position. Then NVIDIA started with the Maxwell series, which drastically improved both performance and efficiency. AMD tried to respond to the Titan X with the Fury X, but NVIDIA cut the legs out from under them by releasing the 980 Ti. Now once again AMD is behind the performance curve - NVIDIA has staked out the high-end space with the 1080 and the midrange with the 1070, and AMD is stuck in the low-end market with the RX480 until NVIDIA can get GP106 out.

AMD's response to the 1080 is going to be the Vega 10 chip, and unfortunately it's unlikely to be released before Q4 2016 at the earliest (more likely Q1 or Q2 2017). NVIDIA already has GP102 coming down the pipe, which is going to be a Titan/1080 Ti, and they'll drop that when they feel it's necessary to spoil AMD's sales.

That's the story of AMD and NVIDIA recently. AMD has put out some cards that were good value for the money - both the 7950/7970 and 290/290X have been very long-lived performers (and will likely continue to perform well thanks to DX12). But they haven't taken the top since 2012, all they can do at this point is force some price reductions. Like it or not they aren't a serious competitor in the GPU space any more than they are in the CPU space. They are a budget choice, not a serious contender.

the8472• 10 years ago

We're stuck in single core performance hell because physics.

Wouldn't other semiconductor materials allow higher clock speeds and it's just that the switch would be difficult to do incrementally?

RussianCow• 10 years ago

@Intel: how about thinking about 10GHz single core CPUs? And where is Atom? Why are we stuck in 2006 era CPU singe core performance?

Because that's physically impractical (if not impossible) with today's technology. Intel themselves actually have a good article[0] on the topic. Besides, there's way more to CPU performance than clock speed—today's Intel CPUs are several times faster than the Penitum 4, for instance, even at lower frequencies.

@nVidia: how about thinking about affordable high end GPUs? The GPUs got 400% more expensive since 2011.

What are you talking about? GPU performance is plateauing a little bit, but the cards are only getting cheaper and more energy efficient, especially the high-end ones. Both Nvidia and AMD have announced new high-end cards coming soon that will give you the performance of the current high-end cards (Titan X and Fury X) at a little over half the price. Edit: Apparently they won't be that much cheaper than previous generations, but certainly within the grasp of any enthusiast or professional who really wants/needs them.

Plus, isn't "affordable high end" kind of an oxymoron? "High end" is almost by definition not affordable for most people.

[0] https://software.intel.com/en-us/blogs/2014/02/19/why-has-cp...

redtuesday2• 10 years ago

I would guess frik probably means this: in 2010/2011 you had to pay ~350 euros for AMDs 5870 when it launched, or ~450 euros for nvidias GTX 580. Now you have to pay ~700 euros for AMDs Fury X or ~800 euros for nvidias GTX 980ti at launch. That's not 400% more expensive but they are not cheaper either.

_ihaque• 10 years ago

A humorous take on answering these questions: http://scholar.harvard.edu/files/mickens/files/theslowwinter...

rlonstein• 10 years ago

Everything by James Mickens seems to humorously puncture research. Take his essay The Saddest Moment, https://www.usenix.org/system/files/login-logout_1305_micken..., which had me laughing out loud because I've attended just that kind of conference talk, seen that set of diagrams, and I swear I've had to coordinate lunch via IM with those kinds of people ;)

agumonkey• 10 years ago

I'm curious, what would you do that 10GHz would allow ?

IMO the only issue is commercial pressure killing integration. Until Vulkan GPUs were underutilized. Audio drivers lying about hardware capabilities. Software layers ever shifting. Absurd use cases: ads invaded html5, half accelerated html video....

astazangasta• 10 years ago

Anyone else think this VR stuff is going to crash and burn hard? I'm really not sure why there is so much optimism around this area, it seems way too niche to drive general trends in computing.

bduerst3• 10 years ago

I'm on the fence because I'm biased against something that requires changing user behavior, like wearing headgear.

With rehashing of 3D tv in the last few years, it was obvious that it was more of a product gimmick with manufacturers than real value.

With VR, you're seeing big companies pushing into the space from a spectrum of angles, ranging from re-imagining the workspace to 3D gaming. The bigger question is whether or not VR will become commonplace before augmented reality advances enough to replace it.

criddell2• 10 years ago

Other than for gaming and watching certain kinds of videos, I can't see VR (or AR) being a huge deal. I can think of all kinds of neat things that could be done with it, but the production costs are just too high and the equipment is too clunky.

Even in gaming, I expect VR games will be only moderately successful.

artursapek2• 10 years ago

I'm very skeptical. I think something like Voxiebox has a better chance of creating an immersive 3D experience, because it doesn't require you to hijack your senses.

http://www.voxiebox.com/

FiatLuxDave• 10 years ago

I agree with your assessment.

I saw a voxiebox demonstrated at the NIAC symposium last year, and I was quite impressed. Being able to display a real-time 3D picture of my face as I made expressions was pretty cool. However, with the price point and mechanical manufacturing required for it, I don't think it will ever become mass-market in its current form. The state of the technology reminds me of the PDP-11 before PCs became a common thing; the basics are in place but it's just not quite there yet.

I don't want to invest in a voxiebox, but I think I would bet strong on whatever replaces it.

kirrent• 10 years ago

While I understand the scepticism if you've used a VR headset then you'd likely know that it's a very compelling experience in a way a 3d tv isn't. I don't know if it'll get big enough to drive trends in computing but I think its niche is likely to be large enough to be sustainable.

B1FF_PSUVM• 10 years ago

if Intel's vision comes to pass then that device — the smartphone — will constantly be communicating with Intel-powered data centers

So Intel and Microsoft want to go where IBM and Oracle are withering?

Intel knows it's no longer inside

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