Why is Intel Corp dying?

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#41
Actually, Windows 11 is also said to be inferior to Windows 10, and also losing market share...most people here are using wireless internet to see movies, listen to music, surf the net, do work like filling forms etc.
It is usually cell phones with a 6 to 7" display, tablet at times, Apple is not popular here, expensive. Mostly different flavors on Android, and many cell phone brands.

We get the phones and service separately here in India, not provided together like in the USA, so the customer realises that Apple phones tend to be expensive, with a smaller display size, and expensive paid apps, not like on Android....so not very popular, less than 5% of the total market here.

And some people found the same flight tickets and hotel rooms tended to cost more if you used an Apple phone while booking, peculiar....! Those guys thought Apple user gotta be rich, let us charge more!

The desktop, and increasingly the laptop are losing market share.
So the Wintel (Windows + Intel) part looks like it will be history in a few years, good while it lasted.
 
#43
NareshBrd said:
Actually, Windows 11 is also said to be inferior to Windows 10, and also losing market share...most people here are using wireless internet to see movies, listen to music, surf the net, do work like filling forms etc.
It is usually cell phones with a 6 to 7" display, tablet at times, Apple is not popular here, expensive. Mostly different flavors on Android, and many cell phone brands.

We get the phones and service separately here in India, not provided together like in the USA, so the customer realises that Apple phones tend to be expensive, with a smaller display size, and expensive paid apps, not like on Android....so not very popular, less than 5% of the total market here.

And some people found the same flight tickets and hotel rooms tended to cost more if you used an Apple phone while booking, peculiar....! Those guys thought Apple user gotta be rich, let us charge more!

The desktop, and increasingly the laptop are losing market share.
So the Wintel (Windows + Intel) part looks like it will be history in a few years, good while it lasted.
Click to expand...

Back around Y2K we (Internetworking designers) realized that we were moving towards PERVASIVE computing. The Internet of Things. People would move away from sitting in front of a computer on a desk to taking the computer everywhere. The form factor of the PC and the laptop would go away and move towards touchscreen devices. (1). The Internet connections would be delivered to the user wirelessly. Voice costs would drop to a commodity.

Around '98 a lot of money started to be poured into all kinds of ways to brake the stranglehold that US Telcos had on the last mile and 802.11b started to be delivered. (2)

In the very early 00s, Apple came out with the iPod. Signaling the path. Meanwhile the cost of 802.11xx started to crater while the performance begun to improve tremendously. The last mile because fast as the cable companies started to use their wire harnesses to provide high speed ethernet to the curb... they also used their cable harness, and existing fiber is some cities -like mine- that had underground vaults with multimedia fiber in place.

Around '06, '07? Apple finally came out with the iPhone. It signaled the beginning of almost-pervasive computer that married voice, multimedia and some utilities in a wireless LAN environment.

But all along, PC were needed.... Until around '10, if you wanted high speed internet, and wanted to do stuff like bills, writing documents, etc, etc.. you needed a PC - or a Mac. You sat down at your desk and used "the computer"...

However, once the wireless cell carriers started to deploy true high speed digital signals (1G, 2G, 3G, 4G, 5G...).. started to provide an ISP over their cellular networks, and the ever dropping cost of cell phones, and specifically the touchscreens, then tablets begun to supplant PC. The iPad was selling well and Android started to make a big market dent.

The threshold was crossed around '12 or so, IMHO. At that point, "apps" were coined and suddenly a tablet could do most of what anyone really needed in a PC. Sure it's limited, sure it can't do a lot, sure the touchscreen keyboard sucks, sure I need my reading glasses, but it does more than most people want and need... and... it's mobile. You can use it with a wireless Internet WAN connection!

Pervasive computing at last!

Android Auto, Apple Car ( whatever they call it )... Even your car.

So Microsoft had to join the chorus ( so did Intel as its PC processors are big, power hogging and overkill )...

Windows started to morph into something that would support mobile platforms ( although their Surface Tablet is overpriced ).

Compromises... Today?

Win11 is too mobile oriented.... so was Win10. Win8 was likely the last PC centric release.

Most people don't need/want a PC... they can do their stuff fine with a tablet... or even a cell phone (3)

I guess I'm a old cantankerous guy... I think I'll quit tomorrow (4), I prefer a keyboard than a touchscreen and I think most mobile applications are simply too simplistic, and a huge privacy black hole. I also have a fully wired home..

But most people don't want a PC. Even our PCs today are those Dell Micro Form Factors and for trips I've bought a couple of chromebooks which do everything I need on a trip... Webmail, browsing, supports my USB-OTG DACs I also have an Android cell phone -with an SD card- and three Android Tablet -all with SD cards.

For my wife I even bought her one of those nice, big, Samsung watches that she connects to her Samsung S21 (with SD card) ...

Pervasive computing has sharpened what people want in a "computer"... and it's not a power machine that can rip DVDs or compile hundreds of thousands of code... Apple is still riding the wave of those dumb, "form over function" cool kids... but Android into a large screen smart phone -mid range- is sufficient for billions of people.

The World has changed tremendously since '98 when I joined an IoT group. Wow.

Intel and Microsoft are not dying... they are simply no longer the monopoly they used to be because the market place has expanded enormously and there are many more players and form factors in the field.

Still, I miss Motorola.

(1) Heck, in '92 I proposed to my hardware coworkers that we flip the screen placement in a laptop, make it a touchscreen and make the keyboard detachable... then in '94 Apple came out with the Newton... Remember that?

(2) I had the very first residential 802.11b in my part of the city. It was me and the University. The fools didn't have a password... I did. ;-)

(3) I mean, that's kinda small for me. My main display is an LG 35" Ultra Wide curved display.

(4) I've decided that at 66 I may not live that long... so why should I give up my life? I got enough money to eat well and listen to records... my Linn finally has a Keel and an Ekos 2 and the P3 is playing well....
 
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#44
@zman01
Slice the data this way:
PC sales / total net connectible devices sold.
Windows devices sold / total devices sold.

Then you will understand that Wintel is declining.

Many banks and government departments here are moving to server based systems, the users are basically using terminals.

The police and courts here in Gujarat State use a KDE based Linux, more secure than Winows, and the courts here have tiny HP terminals, external supply, no disks, no USB (for security). Fast, secure, less investment, and a software engineer can fix them remotely if there is a problem.

The courts have a system here, you can check the case status by case number, party name, court number, lawyer name and so on.
If needed, even the decisions are available to those interested.
Linux is far more secure in such a public interactive environment.

Tony above has covered pretty much everything else I was trying to say.
I am using a Win7 Ultimate PC, Chrome, DG41, Core2Duo.
Net surfing, making and paying bills, music player...quite enough for my use.
Win 10 was confusing, with too may anti privacy and anti piracy features.....so I am sticking to Win7.
And some of my drawing and accounts software do not work on Linux, so that is a dead end for me.
 
#45
I saw an article in the LA Times (e-newspaper) that the planned Intel fab in Ohio was being delayed until 2030. Also, I only know one person who has been employed at Intel Corp Rio Rancho, NM fab for over 20 years. At one time, there were >10,000 employees and contractors out there.

Intel, like several manufacturing companies (Tesla comes to mind), are highly dependent on corporate welfare. Another thing is water. Without water, these fabs literally dry up, turn to dust in the deserts of AZ and NM.

I'll stick to my Mac for probably the rest of my life. The Mac Mini I'm using right now is 11 years old now. Mainly because I like the big monitor, don't have to scroll and zoom on a stupid phone. And I'm not happy that Apple Music now wants $10.99 per month instead of selling me a song to load onto my iPod Classic. Yes, that's still my main audio source. After my vinyl LPs. I don't do the social media stuff. I've got an iPhone 6 with Mint Mobile for my cellphone service. My son keeps telling me I need a new phone, right after he tells me his cellphone service and latest, greatest cellphone costs well over $140/month. No thanks, I'll pay $15/month until the phone dies, then buy another used phone.

We have one laptop PC in this house. It's used for tuning my 1995 Chevy LT-1 engine.

Did I tell you that I retired at age 56? That's 10 years ago. I'm gonna do what TonyEE does- eat well and listen to records.
 
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#46
Tubelab_com said:
Motorola designed and manufactured chips and discrete semiconductors (diodes and transistors) predating my career at Mot which began in 1972. I still have a digital music synthesizer that I built with Motorola RTL logic chips from the 1960's that got from boards obtained from the dumpster at Coulter diagnostics in Miami in the late 60's. I know that the 8 bit MC6800 and related families, the 16 and 32 bit MC68000 families, and the spinoff's for the automotive industry were all designed and produced at Motorola plants in Texas and Arizona. The Power PC stuff was a joint design between IBM and Motorola, with Motorola making the parts. When chips were still relatively simple, times were good.

Things got sticky as the economy faltered, so some unprofitable business operations were shut down or sold. The shut down of the discrete semiconductor business was planned, but a group of employees got funding to spin that group off as On Semiconductor. Motorola made some expensive "not ready for prime time" investments, most notably, Iridium. This made them ripe for the corporate raider Carl Icahn to take enough control to bust up the company and part it out like a junk car. The chip business became Freescale, which is now part of NXP and the cell phone group got sold to Google who took the patents and sold the rest to Lenovo, so my Motorola branded phone is actually a Lenovo product. The original two way radio division where I worked was pared down to less than half its former size and remains the only part of the original Chicago based Motorola left. I was "encouraged" to take a buyout in 2014, so I took the money and left.

The picture shows the old synthesizer boards that I built in 1971. The chips in the round metal cans are all Motorola RTL logic chips. The black ones are Fairchild equivalent chips. Fairchild is now part of On Semiconductor. Each 8 pin round can is the size of a TO-5 transistor and contains a single gate or Flip-Flop comprising of 5 to 20 transistors and resistors. Max clock speed, maybe 1 MHz on a good day with a little extra B+ voltage. 3.6 volts was the specified voltage. The chips locked up or died between 4 and 5 volts. The green board is a monophonic (one note at a time) synth that divides a master clock down by a "magic number" to produce 12 unique musical notes. One of the 12 is fed to another set of dividers to produce the lower octaves. The three brown boards are basically twelve copies without the note selection logic.
Click to expand...
Back when I was very young I was trained on Mote 2 way radios. We had a guy come out from the US (product group manager probably) to talk about them and do some training. Best 2-way radios in the world. We had a lot of SSB stuff as well.
 
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#47
Holy crap, that brings back memories. I still remember boards bring laid out on film with black tape and sticky pads!

IMG_2934.jpeg
 
#48
DSP_Geek said:
https://www.reuters.com/technology/...-fumbled-revival-an-american-icon-2024-10-29/

tl;dr: Intel had a sweet deal with TSMC until Gelsinger p****d them off. He had a good idea with setting up Intel as a foundry, but it's not as simple as it looks so the process had problems.

Foundry process problems can be solved, but right in the middle of the transition the board canned the CEO and replaced him with a couple of finance people, just the recipe for success they had with Bob Swan (MBA) and Paul Otellini (MBA), who blew strategic decisions. What are the odds the two new beancounters will can the upcoming fabs, snatching defeat from the jaws of victory? Stay tuned.

MBAs have their place, perhaps, but running technical companies is not one of them. Look at MacDonnell-Douglas then Boeing for more examples.
Click to expand...
It’s not specifically MBA’s that are a problem (I have one). The issue is the way business works nowadays and its relationship with the stockholders. Institutional investors are absolutely not first and foremost interested in what the company does - it’s a very distant 2nd to what they are really focused on: a listed firm is simply an instrument with which to generate wealth by driving stock valuation. For this reason, they will almost always insist that stock market savvy people are the majority on the board, and the CEO is someone seasoned in the art of driving stock market valuation.

If you look around at who runs the biggest listed companies in the US and to some extent Europe, you will see a lot of people who have been floating around as CEOs and board members for decades and in many cases hopping across industries that are completely unrelated. Deep industry specific business knowledge resides in middle management. In semiconductors which I worked in for 20 years, this was the product line, business line and business unit managers. These people nearly all started at the bottom with serious technical qualifications and worked their way up.

Company valuations have been driven higher and higher over the last 30 yrs. Tesla was valued at over 1 Trillion, Nvidia as well. Seriously? Will Tesla or Nvidia ever deliver 1 Trillion in shareholder value over the full economic cycle (this is taken as 10 years)?

The bottom line is the relationship between a companies true value - broadly the 10 year full economic cycle earnings less depreciation and amortisation - and the stock market is broken.
 
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#49
NareshBrd said:
@zman01
Slice the data this way:
PC sales / total net connectible devices sold.
Windows devices sold / total devices sold.

Then you will understand that Wintel is declining.

Many banks and government departments here are moving to server based systems, the users are basically using terminals.
Click to expand...
I see quiet the opposite in my job as consultant IT system engineer. Intune made it way easier to integrate all kind of devices, so everybody gets a laptop now. A large part of the systems run centally on servers, but their workstation and office is on a laptop on windows 10 or 11, and strictly managed trough intune. USB ports are often closed for data (except approved devices) indeed, but for the rest it's less fixed computers (terminals or real computers) and more laptops so the employee can work from anywhere. Desks are flexdesks mostly, except for higher functions (managment) or specialised functions. And most of the laptops are stilll using Intel CPU's and GPU's.

If that market is enough for Intel to survive is another question, but it's not that nobody use their processors anymre. It's just that the big homecomputing market of 10 years ago shrunk to a fraction of what it once was because of the phones.
 
#55
waxx said:
I see quiet the opposite in my job as consultant IT system engineer. Intune made it way easier to integrate all kind of devices, so everybody gets a laptop now. A large part of the systems run centally on servers, but their workstation and office is on a laptop on windows 10 or 11, and strictly managed trough intune. USB ports are often closed for data (except approved devices) indeed, but for the rest it's less fixed computers (terminals or real computers) and more laptops so the employee can work from anywhere. Desks are flexdesks mostly, except for higher functions (managment) or specialised functions. And most of the laptops are stilll using Intel CPU's and GPU's.

If that market is enough for Intel to survive is another question, but it's not that nobody use their processors anymre. It's just that the big homecomputing market of 10 years ago shrunk to a fraction of what it once was because of the phones.
Click to expand...

In R&D we all get i9 laptops... and we'll get assigned hardware in a lab with file servers.... the lab and file servers run over a VPN, either in the office or away from home.

Some companies, ie: Broadcom, are crazy about locking down USB ports. They've been burned by IP theft. Others don't care so much. But they all track USB sticks being injected into their laptops. It's always a big no no... and some companies (actually most R&D) will disable VPN access when outside of the CONUS. If you gotta go international, you gotta take a loaner and you're not taking the development tool kit.

I have seen IT over the years push to control R&D into moving the tool kits under their control... but they are unable to do so effectively, after all, it's our job, not theirs. So at most we'll be assigned one or more machines (usually Xeon Super Duper towers) in the office/lab so we will do our builds in there, so the file system is never exported (you can't do builds with a remote file system it takes hours..). Shh,... don't tell IT, but if I run my compiler remotely over a remote terminal connection or an X server using PuTTy I really don't need that heavy i9...

In Y2K I needed 64 static IP addresses.... the IT guy -a Microsoft trained weenie- would not give them to me. So I had a meeting with the Weenie, his boss and my boss and stated our need. The Weenie Guy said that we were using the wrong tool kit to develop our flight software.... silence... 3... 2...1... needless to say, his boss asked me how many static IP addresses I needed.... I asked for 264.

Got them that afternoon.

For other tools, I saw a move back to centralized control... using cheap PCs as dumb terminals... "back to the future"... but with the advent of html applications, I see that everyone is getting a laptop, a security fob, two factor authentication and sometimes offered an extra display, keyboard and mouse. Told to go home...

So yes, in enterprise market, laptops are the rule nowadays. Running Windows and Intel. I do see people installing Linux machines in the lab, but that's just lab equipment not under IT control. And the major vendors, WindRiver, Lauterbach, Greenhills, etc... have all migrated to Windows machines. The switch happened around 2006.
 
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#56
It's very similar how i see it in my job. I worked for a lot of companies as consultant, and all run windows on intel based laptops for their work computer. Servers for speciality gear can run on linux, but the users connect by remote desktop, mostly over vpn to it to work on it. Fixed computers are almost only used for machine steering or for very fixed positions (computer for meeting room to run meeting software).

Staff, even blue collar, are mobile today, and don't always work on the same place, even in factories. So if they have a computer, it's a laptop or a toughbook that can be connected to the dockings that are on all workplaces. Each his own computer, and very often also a company smartphone. Office workers in europe work largely at least partial from home now, often one or two days, and the other days in the office. So they al also got a laptop, not a fixed computer.
 
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