Intel Announces Major Reorg To Combine Mobile and PC Divisions 75
MojoKid writes: For the past year, Intel has pursued what's known as a "contra-revenue" strategy in its mobile division, where product is deliberately sold at a loss to win market share and compete effectively. This has led to a huge rise in tablet shipments, but heavy losses inside Intel's mobile division. Today, the company announced that it would take steps to fold its mobile and conventional processors into a single operating division. While this helps shield the mobile segment from poor short-term results, it also reflects the reality that computing is something users now do across a wide range of devices and multiple operating systems. Intel may not have hit anything like the mobile targets it set out years ago, but long-term success in laptops, tablets, and smartphones remains integral to the company's finances. Desktops and conventional laptops are just one way people compute today and Intel needs to make certain it has a robust long-term presence in every major computing market.
Dumping (Score:1)
where product is deliberately sold at a loss to win market share and compete effectively
Isn't that also called dumping?
Re:Dumping (Score:5, Interesting)
In the case of Intel trying to break into tablets, my understanding is that it's a known matter of fact that Bay Trail parts are being practically given away(along with a nontrivial amount of Intel software work, including an emulator to handle ARM NDK stuff and general porting and polishing to make the x86 Android not look like, say, the blasted hellscape that is MIPS Android); but it is less clear whether Intel has been able to dump hard enough to actually damage competition.
The one product line that they definitely helped bury was Windows RT (which was mostly an unloved bastard child anyway, even before you could cram an x86 into the same chassis, and definitely had no reason to exist afterwards); but that didn't hurt MS much, since the quality of Windows tablets went up. In the wider ARM ecosystem, ARM Ltd, themselves seem to be riding high and unbelievably cheap SoCs continue to pop out of the woodwork.
Their Bay Trail pricing has definitely made x86 Android something you might actually see in the wild, and tablet-Windows something you might actually consider at a sub-Windows Surface price point; but it doesn't seem to have crushed the ARM market very much.
Re: (Score:1)
Considering that the USA reciently put tariffs on Chinese produced solar panels, because they were being subsidised by the Chinese government. I wonder if the Chinese could do the same thing, as Intel's subsidised SoC's are competing primarily in the Chinese market against local Chinese companies (i.e Mediatek)
Re: (Score:2)
It'd also be interesting to know if they would want to or not: Aside
Re: (Score:1)
"That said, taking action against a private company, selling at a loss out of its own pocket, would likely play differently than taking action against a company being supported by the state to sell at a loss. "
The USA has done it on many occasions. Farming tariff barriers spring to mind immediately (USA farmers are extremely inefficient and are very good at lobbying their politicians for protection+subsidies instead of getting their shit together).
Re: (Score:2)
It tends to be; but I think regulatory authorities only get nervous if it shows signs of being dangerously effective, or if there is reason to believe that the pockets behind it are deep enough to ignore losses almost indefinitely(as with international dumping/tariff slapfights, where a mixture of xenophobia and the fact that a nation state can typically afford to keep dumping longer than a company can afford to keep competing).
In the case of Intel trying to break into tablets, my understanding is that it's a known matter of fact that Bay Trail parts are being practically given away(along with a nontrivial amount of Intel software work, including an emulator to handle ARM NDK stuff and general porting and polishing to make the x86 Android not look like, say, the blasted hellscape that is MIPS Android); but it is less clear whether Intel has been able to dump hard enough to actually damage competition.
The one product line that they definitely helped bury was Windows RT (which was mostly an unloved bastard child anyway, even before you could cram an x86 into the same chassis, and definitely had no reason to exist afterwards); but that didn't hurt MS much, since the quality of Windows tablets went up. In the wider ARM ecosystem, ARM Ltd, themselves seem to be riding high and unbelievably cheap SoCs continue to pop out of the woodwork.
Their Bay Trail pricing has definitely made x86 Android something you might actually see in the wild, and tablet-Windows something you might actually consider at a sub-Windows Surface price point; but it doesn't seem to have crushed the ARM market very much.
Will we see the I7 47xx cpus drop in price, or will that price increase to sustain the Intel mobile market/tablet?
Re: (Score:1, Interesting)
Technically yes.
It's not very effective though. Android x86 tablets are basically garbage as they can't run Android ARM Native binaries, and have extremely weak GPU's compared to the ARM parts.
But Android on a tablet is a lost cause. Intel hasn't a hope in hell. Android made some headway against the iPhone because Samsung was offering something "compelling enough" compared to the iPhone, but it's having the low-end completely washed out from beneath it. In the tablet space, you can't get away with the weak
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Technically yes.
It's not very effective though. Android x86 tablets are basically garbage as they can't run Android ARM Native binaries, and have extremely weak GPU's compared to the ARM parts.
Intel's Android platform has a ARMv7 translation layer called houdini, and their mobile parts use the same GPU's (PowerVR) as ARM parts, so I'm not entirely sure where you're getting that 'information' from.
Re: (Score:2)
And Google and Samsung disappeared in a puff of fanboyism.
Re: (Score:2)
Venn Diagram:
1. People who claim that x86 can't run Android.
2. People (like me) who actually own Baytrail Android Tablets and have seen what they can do first hand (hint: for $150 I got a tablet that's flat-out better than an iPad Mini. I also get the warm & fuzzy feeling of supporting the only Android hardware vendor in the world that supports Linux with both money, developers, and gobs of GPL compliant driver code).
3. Overlap between the two circles: Empty Set.
Re: (Score:2)
2. People (like me) who actually own Baytrail Android Tablets and have seen what they can do first hand (hint: for $150 I got a tablet that's flat-out better than an iPad Mini. I also get the warm & fuzzy feeling of supporting the only Android hardware vendor in the world that supports Linux with both money, developers, and gobs of GPL compliant driver code).
It's easy to make a competitive tablet when the parts are free or -- worse yet -- when the manufacturer gets kickback for using Intel chips.
Fortunately, it's an unsustainable business model, so maybe you should cherish this moment of smug before it disappears.
Re: (Score:1)
Uh.. I thought companies making profits was evil. Shouldn't we be applauding Intel for not making any money? Would you insult the Raspberry Pi project for giving away free devices?
I'd much rather live in a world with a made-up "Intel monopoly" that doesn't exist where Intel is literally the largest contributor to the Linux kernel that isn't a Linux-specific company (look it up, Intel is usually #3 right after the Linux foundation & Red Hat) vs. the very real ARM monopoly of intellectual property minefi
Re: (Score:2)
Uh.. I thought companies making profits was evil. Shouldn't we be applauding Intel for not making any money?
There's not making any money, and then there's hemorrhaging billions in a vain effort to break into the market [appleinsider.com].
And for the record, I don't happen to think that making profits is inherently evil.
I'd much rather live in a world with a made-up "Intel monopoly" that doesn't exist where Intel is literally the largest contributor to the Linux kernel that isn't a Linux-specific company (look it up, Intel is usually #3 right after the Linux foundation & Red Hat) vs. the very real ARM monopoly of intellectual property minefields, backdoored binary firmward blobs, opaque drivers, and poor support.
Try to stay on topic.
Not dumping (Score:5, Informative)
Isn't that also called dumping?
Strictly speaking no it is not dumping [wikipedia.org]. Dumping is the act of charging less in a foreign market than you charge in your domestic market. That isn't what Intel is doing. What Intel is doing might be considered a form of predatory pricing [wikipedia.org] but it isn't dumping. All dumping is predatory pricing but not all predatory pricing is dumping.
Re:Not dumping (Score:4, Informative)
In U.S. legal parlance at least, all of the following must to be true behavior to qualify as "predatory pricing" for predatory pricing:
-The business in question must have a dominant or substantial market share,
-It must be more likely than not that the company's practices are affecting not only specific rivals but the entire market as a whole,
-There must be a "substantial likelihood" that the predatory pricing will result in successful market monopolization,
-The company's prices must be below any reasonable measure of the cost of production,
-And, there must be evidence of actual harm to consumers (merely having a monopoly is not necessarily illegal, as long as the monopoly isn't provably causing actual harm).
Point 4 might be true for Intel, but the others definitely are not.
Re: (Score:2)
Yuck - please excuse my poor phrasing. It was early in the morning.
Re: (Score:2)
Selling your product at market prices in order to try increase market share toward levels where economies of scale kick in enough to cover R&D and operational costs, is not "dumping", it's just normal business that basically every company that makes a product does.
If e.g. BMW makes a new model of car, the first sale of that car will be at a loss of hundreds of millions. It requires selling many cars to break even on a new model, and if they don't sell enough of that model in the end, the model is just
Re: (Score:2)
It could be predatory pricing, or dumping, if you sell below marginal cost, i.e. the cost of producing each additional car (or chip). However, even then, it can be tricky, as companies can sell below marginal cost as they expect marginal costs to fall as production is bedded in.
Looks like they want to hide their loss in mobile? (Score:5, Insightful)
Seems like they want to conceal how well/poorly they are doing in the mobile sector. Makes a certain amount of sense most people see the mobile market as the hot new future.
Re: (Score:3)
Phones, tablets, laptops, all is mobile. The days of tower rigs are over.
Given that a 'tower rig' is basically a server turned on its side, with fewer 40mm fans and some of the classy reliability features cut, that category will take a great deal of killing. On the other hand, the CPU in a server or tower is almost certainly using nearly as many of the power gating, adjustable clock speed, and various other thermal protection and power saving strategies as the mobile CPUs are. Overall efficiency is still going to be lower ('eh, we're on AC, just keep the PSU energized so a USB p
Re:only greyneckbeard dinosaurs use PCs anyway (Score:4, Informative)
That might be marginally true, but only for consumers. The people who actually make the shit everyone consumes still need those tower rigs. Try running MSVC, Photoshop, Max, CRYENGINE and other DAW tools, all at once on your phone or tablet. You could run it on a beefy laptop, but that would seriously cost several times more than a standard PC and still be worse at the job.
So sure, over for the people who's only real need is a web browser...still going strong for the rest of us.
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
Phones, tablets, laptops, all is mobile. The days of tower rigs are over.
From an architectural POV, I wouldn't bundle laptops w/ phones/tablets. ChromeOS is still a fringe OS, and Linux/BSD even more so. Laptops are still overwhelmingly Wintel, and even WinRT failed to make any impact. You might as well bunch laptops w/ your 'tower rigs'.
ARM pretty much owns the phone & tablet markets with not just Android, but iOS as well. Intel pretty much owns the laptop and server markets w/ Wintel. A good indicator is Apple, who've gone w/ ARM for their iOS toys - iPhones &
Can Apple Move to ARM on the Desktop? (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
Are you brave enough to post this kind of tripe under your own slashdot ID?
Magic Eight Ball says "no way, Jose!"
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Given the fairly lame update to the Mac Mini caused mainly by the lack of choices in Intel's mobile CPU offerings (and Apple's refusal to design and stock a separate motherboard just for quad core), I'm wondering just what would it take for Apple to make yet another CPU transition.
Abject stupidity. At least, they're not changing instruction sets again any time soon. They won't do that until they feel bytecode translation becomes a viable option for a desktop OS.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:1)
A comment I left on Apple Insider after doing all the math required, suggests that Apple can do it with the current A8X just by clocking it to 3Ghz. But that would only bring it within performance parity of a Dual Core i5 Mobile, not a desktop. How much energy it would use at twice the clock speed is something we might never know.
Re: (Score:2)
How would that 3Ghz A8X benchmark against an Atom SoC such as the 14nm Cherry Trail?
Sufficiently well enough to justify a switch away from x86-64 to ARM?
Re:Can Apple Move to ARM on the Desktop? (Score:5, Insightful)
Short answer: an A8X won't work at 3 GHz, period.
Long answer:
All CPU, and other digital logic circuits, designs have a maximum target frequency at which they can operate correctly.
And by targeting a higher maximum frequency there is penalty to pay in area, power and performance. A well designed CPU targetting 3 GHz but running at 1.5 GHz will consume more power and perform worse than a well designed CPU targetting 1.5 GHz.
All available evidence and educated guessing points that Apple's CPUs are in fact targetting the frequency range in which they are shipping (~1.5 GHz) and there is no chance in hell they will work at much more than 2 GHz.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Many caveats there.
First, Apple A8 cores are relatively big. They clearly are optimized for power and performance, not size and cost.
Not sure how much advantage they have over a Broadwell core.
Secondly, a higher performance design would require a major work. Current A8X chips are not multi-socket capable, so you can't just put more of them together. Compared to desktop Intel/AMD chips, they also have relatively weak memory systems (less than 50% of bandwidth), smaller caches and weaker GPUs.
So Apple would n
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
I don't see a transition happening any time soon, Apple make a lot of money selling high-end Intels and the A8X is not nearly a replacement for that. They might pull a WinRT though, as long as they:
a) make a meaningful merge of iOS and OS X
b) make it detachable for use as an iPad
c) most importantly, make sure to say it's not a Mac
If Google can sell "ChromeBooks", I think there's a market for Apple to sell something similar, maybe with an emphasis on the pad-side since it runs all pad software. Maybe call it
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Highly unlikely.
First of all, the Mac Mini, like the
Re: (Score:2)
Given the fairly lame update to the Mac Mini caused mainly by the lack of choices in Intel's mobile CPU offerings (and Apple's refusal to design and stock a separate motherboard just for quad core)
Why would you be faulting Intel for this?!?
Not only that, but your argument is based on factually incorrect information. If Apple designed the new Mac Mini using the FCBGA1364 socket (high end mobile Haswell) instead of the FCBGA1168 socket (often referred to as Haswell ULT) then they could offer 2 core and 4 core minis without any board change.
The truth is Apple's designers care more about form and power dispation than having a quad core mini. Consider that the 13 inch Macbook Pro uses FCBGA1168 and the
47W versus 15W (Score:2)
Intel lost the ARM wrestling then (Score:5, Insightful)
Old term is Loss Leader (Score:1)
Been used effectively for years.
The problem is cost per mm of silicon (Score:5, Interesting)
Intel is the world leader when it comes to silicon advancement, there's no doubt of that. Their quite real and appropriately named 14nm process starts shipping incredibly soon, and TSMC/Global Foundries, now seemingly their only competition, don't even hope to have their inappropriately named "16nm" process shipping in products for two years out, a process not actually much to any denser than the just now shipping TSMC 20nm process.
Intel's Core technology is also excellent in terms of silicon to performance. The problem comes in at the cost of that world leading silicon. TSMC has concentrated on costs, and while 20nm process might be a day late and a few dollars short in terms of performance and density, in terms of cost TSMC can make a profit at the same price Intel can produce chips at, let alone sell them.
And with mobile products being relatively cheap, and their prices coming down for the most part, its that profit at a low cost to consumers and high volume that's selling. Intels Atom products are actually perfectly competitive for performance. They just cost Intel too much to produce at their super fancy fabs and that just have to be cutting edge instead of cost efficient.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Yes, also it's quite telling that Intel's low cost SoFIA SoC (i.e. they one that will not require contra revenue to sell) is made at TSMC, not at Intel's own fabs.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Intel still claims a reduction of cost per transistor in their 14 nm process.
Not sure whether TSMC claims the same for their 16FF process.
Re: (Score:2)
I do believe Samsung is making high end chips for their own use as well, but for foundry companies it's down to TSMC and GloFo. The real question is whether they're in the same hurry as their customers though or if they just need to stay ahead of the other guy. Take for example the graphics market, in March 2012 nVidia launched the GTX 680 on a 28nm process. Fast forward to September 2014 and they launch the GTX 980 still on a 28nm process. That's 2.5 years with no progress on the process side and AMD has b
Re: (Score:2)
Remember that Intel has a massive war chest from $1000+ server CPU sales and $300+ desktop CPU sales,
This is true, but if Intel does not design better CPUs in a timely manner then those sales are going to drop dramatically. This is precisely the problem they are now facing. People are not buying new computers because those new computers are no faster then their old computers. But they are buying new mobiles.
Intel is competing against themselves. Unless they expand into a new market, as they are attempting to do with the mobile market, then the limited PC market will result in their demise. They can
Anti-competitive? (Score:2)
Surely using their market power in one segment to sell at a loss in a different segment is anti-competitive.
Re: (Score:2)
Anti-competitive is legal if you're not a monopoly. Intel has a lot of market power in desktops/laptops, but certainly no monopoly, so they're well within their rights to use that power to break into mobile.
Re: (Score:2)
Not necessarily. Legally speaking, "tying" as you describe is only a problem if it demonstrably restricts consumer choice (consumers in this case being the phone OEMs). In this case, Intel's actions have if anything increased consumer choice, by providing an alternative to the market-dominating Qualcomm.
We need a business phone!! (Score:3)
Let's rewind to 2007. RIM owns the mobile space for business, while consumer devices are primarily "dumb phones". In comes Apple, flush with iPod money, and looking for the next evolution of it's highly profitable device. The solution is simple: why carry an iPod and a phone? Thus, the iPhone is born.
In a single generation the iPhone brings massive innovation to the market. The device is targeted at Apple's primary demographic: the consumer, but the features are so beyond what is currently available that this type of smartphone doesn't take long to become a favorite in the business commnuity as well.
The large touch screen destroys the conventional track ball/pad, allowing the user to display more text, and use multi-touch to navigate more efficiently. The full webkit browser completely destroys the WAP-based dinosaurs giving the user a desktop grade browser at their finger tips. The user can carry all forms of media with them and display it at their whim. And, finally, and most importantly, the design of the operating system is centered around a robust API which doesn't take long to bloom into a wealth of independent applications that let the user do things they never before thought possible.
The response at RIM is unforunately short-sighted. RIM sees the device as a "toy". It sees it as a consumer-grade flash in the pan that will eventually collapse in the face of the established security and familiarity of their Enterprise Server platform, and BBM. RIM does opt to borrow some of the innovations - like the touch screen - and implement it their own, poorly advised ways but, ultimately, things at RIM continue as usual.
Now let's fast forward to 2013. The market has spoken. Blackberry market share is down to single digits and the company needs to do something quick to turn things around. They've been working for years on something that is supposed to change our lives and we're finally going to get to see it. What they unveil is astonishing: a consumer-targeted device.
The playing field in consumer-grade devices is now beyond saturated. We've had Google, Apple, and even Microsoft all battling each-other for the last 5 years. Innovation year-over-year is staggering. Why blackberry decided to try to compete in this market is baffling. What's worse, is they released an inferior product, on their own independent platform, that - of course - is going to gather no developer support in an already saturated market.
So here we are, 2014 and - still - no business-grade device in the mobile market. We have a dizzying amount of consumer-grade choice, but nothing properly designed with business in mind. In response I would like to say the following to the entire tech community involved in mobile device development:
We're here. We have money. We have a lot more money than all these teenage kids. Please, please, I want to spend it. Someone give me a business-grade mobile phone and tablet. Important things to me are: checking my email, security, centralized device management, and integration with existing business technologies. Reward: see Microsoft's stock price in the 90's.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
In the last 5 years, all work being done has been focused on the consumer. Phones now have pedometers, FM radio chips, and IR transmitters, but we're no closer to having real business support. This extends way be
Re: (Score:2)
Most of Intel's desktop Core i3s are STILL running circles around AMD in single threaded performance tests. Sure, if you can use 8+threads AMD has a few decent options, but that's not most consumer workloads.
Most consumer workloads won't tax either processor, the AMD chip costs a lot less, and the AMD chipset costs a lot less, too. When the system is "good enough" (even my old-ass 1045T is peppy both when puttering around and also when the system is heavily loaded) and literally a couple hundred dollars cheaper between the cost of the CPU and the cost of the motherboard, a lot of people are going to go AMD. I have other places to spend my money, and wringing a few more FPS out of a game isn't worth adding 20% o
Re: (Score:2)
The problem with your post is that on newegg, 48 USD gets you an AMD A6-5400K while 46 USD gets you an Intel Celeron G1610.
The Celeron is actually a bit faster faster CPU and uses less power, although the A6 has a much faster GPU.
Intel is, essentially, in the enviable position of having chips which are faster, consume less power and are actually smaller, thus cheaper to manufacture.
And they are segmenting and slicing the market as they wish.
Yes, they offer top notch performance at a premium. And even more p
Re: (Score:3)
You must also work in an area of the country that is either really ahead, or really behind. I'm Sr sysadmin for a medium sized company and I haven't encountered a single person - outside of a geologist or engineer that needs real power -
Re: (Score:1)
I'm Sr sysadmin for a medium sized company and I haven't encountered a single person - outside of a geologist or engineer that needs real power - who prefers a desktop to a laptop in many years.
CPU power is not the only issue.
Desktops can be made really quiet, far more so than laptops of comparable power. There are a number of clever solutions to achieve this, each addressing different aspects of computer noise, such as the huge "NoFan" heatsinks. The lack of machine noise can be very useful in many work environments. Artists, for example, often value silence when they work.
Also, desktops can run really high end graphics cards: nice if you want good performance while running multiple big monito
Intel i8 / i8.1 (Score:1)
So does this mean they will be releasing a processor that runs applications equally as poor on mobile and desktop? They will probably straighten in out in Intel i8.1 or just skip to i10 where they re-introduce the PCI bus bridge they disabled in i8.