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Businesses Intel Hardware

Samsung Ends Intel's 2-decade-plus Reign in Microchips (ap.org) 117

Posted by msmash from the end-of-era dept.
Intel has lost its long-held title as the world's top computer chip makerâ"at least by one important yardstick. From an Associated Press report: Intel's more than two decade reign as king of the silicon-based semiconductor ended Thursday when Samsung Electronics surpassed the U.S. manufacturer to become the leading maker of the computer chips that are a 21st century staple much as oil was in the past. Samsung reported record-high profit and sales in its earnings report for the April-June quarter, and while Intel's reported earnings beat forecasts, the U.S. company's entire revenue was smaller than sales from Samsung's chip division. Samsung said its semiconductor business recorded 8 trillion ($7.2 billion) in operating income on revenue of 17.6 trillion won ($15.8 billion) in the quarter. Intel said it earned $2.8 billion on sales of $14.8 billion.
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Samsung Ends Intel's 2-decade-plus Reign in Microchips More

Samsung Ends Intel's 2-decade-plus Reign in Microchips

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  • Samsung celebrated with fireworks (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 28, 2017 @01:02PM (#54899817)

    They didn't have any actual fireworks on hand, they just turned on Note 7's and threw them in the air.

  • Intel losing to ARM, not just on mobile (Score:5, Informative)

    by cerberusss ( 660701 ) on Friday July 28, 2017 @01:18PM (#54899915) Journal

    Basically Intel is losing to ARM. But not just on mobile. They're also in trouble for tablets, and desktops are going to get real close. Bare Feats regularly does comparative synthetic benchmarks between Apple's tablets (ARM) and laptops (Intel). Last time was in June: http://barefeats.com/ipadpro20... [barefeats.com]

    Below, Intel means 3.5GHz Dual-Core i7 processor + Iris Plus Graphics 650 GPU. And ARM means Apple's ARM-based 2.39GHz A10X processor. As you can see, these tablets are getting really close to laptop performance.

    Single-Core (highest=fastest):
    Intel: 4650
    ARM: 3951

    Multi-Core (highest=fastest):
    Intel: 10261
    ARM: 9332

    GPU compute score (highest=fastest):
    Intel: 26353
    ARM: 27814

    GFXBench Metal Manhattan (highest=fastest):
    Intel: 37 FPS
    ARM: 42 FPS

    I for one, am really happy. Intel has needed some competition desperately. Now there's AMD, and there's ARM, and we as the consumers are getting more and better options.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      http://www.pcworld.com/article/3006268/tablets/tested-why-the-ipad-pro-really-isnt-as-fast-a-laptop.html

      This is a good article on why performance tests aren't always the best.

    • TL;DR:
      Intel should have kept StrongARM.

      • I believe Intel had a royalty-free arrangement with ARM, Ltd. for some historical reasons carried over from DEC (patents trade?). It was a very sweet deal for Intel, and they sold it off to Marvell. Marvell hasn't had much success with the XScale business either, so in the end I guess Intel made the right call even if I don't understand why XScale has been a failure.

    • Samsung fabs Apple A#, as well as Qualcomm Snapdragon ARM processors in addition to their own Exynos ARM. ARM processors in general are much less expensive/lower margin than x86.

      If Samsung is only making a foundry manufacturing fee on Apple and Snapdragon, how can their "operating income" be larger than Intel? Exynos can't be that profitable.

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by aliquis ( 678370 )

        Samsung also is a world leader in memory production, including to computers, phones, SSDs, .

        I don't know if any of their display technology falls into this or if all of it does but if so then they are massive there too.

        I don't know what other IC stuff they may do but they of course do lots of home electronics and a whole lot of non-electronic-focused stuff Korea too.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by AHuxley ( 892839 )
        Apple makes a lot of money on sales per unit sold. A lot of other bands use a lot of cpu's and other chips in a lot more devices.
        Win, win, win.

    • I have to wonder about the accuracy of these benchmarks. I deal with reasonably powerful ARM Cortex-A53 chips at work and, we generally develop on fairly modern Intel i7 desktop chips and then cross compile the code to the ARM chips. We always assume the A53 chip will do 1/10th the integer or floating point operations of the i7 chips. It's almost always true. If it takes 10 seconds to do some complex test on the i7, it's usually going to take 100 seconds to do it on the A53.

      Most likely what is happening

      • Yeah, they're completely synthetic benchmarks so that must be kept in mind. Plus an Intel CPU has the whole PCI express stuff.

      • Yeah. Benchmarks are interesting and even useful, but they're so extremely context-sensitive that it's hard to compare across non-similar implementations of anything.

  • The decline of the Personal Computer/Desktop (Score:5, Insightful)

    by jellomizer ( 103300 ) on Friday July 28, 2017 @01:27PM (#54899977)

    Microsoft and Intel for the past generation was king of computing, with their dominance in the x86 IBM (Compatible) Personal Computer.
    Which had been people primary computing platform. This has been moved to mobile devices for most people primary computing.

    Now Intel and what we call the PC isn't going to die, but be used more towards workstation and server jobs. There is plenty of business opportunity and long term growth in these markets. As long as Microsoft and Intel don't try to bring back the good old days of dominance again.

    We still need faster computers and operating systems with mouse and keyboards for serious work. But email and web browsing is not longer a primary function, it will be on these workstations, just because people are using it for more important stuff.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by mikael ( 484 )

      Originally it was the UNIX workstations with custom graphics hardware that were king. Then in the late 1990's, they were competing against Windows NT with commodity hardware. Price competition for the low-end home PC used for Email and Web browsing/purchases drove prices down to below $600 and made the Windows licence the largest overhead:

      https://linux.slashdot.org/sto... [slashdot.org]

      Dual socket quad-SLI motherboards became the new high-end workstation (and many laptops), while netbooks, then smartphones became the new

      • For the workstation market they were.
        However some of the real reasons for the decline, was that the Intel CPU's (Pentium) and the rise of higher end video cards. Started to make the standard Desktop PC perform better than a work station.
        Microsoft dominance in the desktop, which allowed for compatibility with NT to cross over as well meaning your exe file will install and work on your workstation and the low end desktop at home. Also Microsoft marketing pushed their product as user friendly compared to Unix

      • It was, after all, designed as a stripped-down MULTICS that could run on constrained hardware.

        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Kjella ( 173770 )

      Now Intel and what we call the PC isn't going to die, but be used more towards workstation and server jobs. There is plenty of business opportunity and long term growth in these markets. As long as Microsoft and Intel don't try to bring back the good old days of dominance again.

      WinTel hasn't exactly given up the business desktop or the gaming desktop just yet. I think it'll be a long while before they retreat into the workstation/server market.

      • I wouldn't call it retreating, however I would like to see More Workstation based features in their systems. We need fast computers with less eye candy now, but with UI features that are helpful and productive.

  • Reign? More like niagra!

  • In his brain. Those crazy Russians.

  • The time of the Tiny People (Score:3)

    by puddingebola ( 2036796 ) on Friday July 28, 2017 @01:42PM (#54900073) Journal
    Intel can't beat ARM on cost, and the difference in performance is no longer as significant as it once was. Consumers value mobility more than power now. Cheap smartphone on Google returns search results ranging from $5 to $20.

  • What exactly did Samsung sell that helped them achieve this? Did they have the bulk of Qualcomm's fab orders? I saw somewhere that flash memory was one driver. While memories - both flash and DRAM do have volumes, they are also commodity priced, so that wouldn't exactly help them in terms of margins. Does Qualcomm's chips have higher margins than Intel's?

    Intel might want to consider upping the ante on their Custom business, fabbing things for Qualcomm, Apple & others. They do have process ad

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by tlhIngan ( 30335 )

      What exactly did Samsung sell that helped them achieve this? Did they have the bulk of Qualcomm's fab orders? I saw somewhere that flash memory was one driver. While memories - both flash and DRAM do have volumes, they are also commodity priced, so that wouldn't exactly help them in terms of margins. Does Qualcomm's chips have higher margins than Intel's?

      Intel might want to consider upping the ante on their Custom business, fabbing things for Qualcomm, Apple & others. They do have process advantages, an

      • List of semiconductor fabrication plants:: [wikipedia.org]

        Company / YR........ Products.................. Location
        Samsung / 2011.......DRAM, VNAND....South Korea, Hwaseong
        Samsung / 2011.......Microprocessors......USA, TX, Austin
        Samsung / 2014.......VNAND..................China, Xian

        • That's what I thought. When I worked in the flash memory industry 10 years ago, Samsung used to be one of the fabs for one of my previous employers, and another of my employers would procure pSRAM, DRAM and NAND flash from them.
  • The following represents the tears I have shed:

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Myrdos ( 5031049 )

      The following represents the tears I have shed:

      Poor fellow. Looks like they shorted out his keyboard.

      • >> Poor fellow. Looks like they shorted out his keyboard.

        That was just Priebus cracking it in half over his ex-employer's head.

  • makerawithahatdoublequote? Is that Portuguese?

  • computer chips that are a 21st century staple much as oil was in the past

    21st century societies are still much more able to stand a shortage of chip production than an oil shortage. You can carry on using your last year's mobile, but you cannot use last year's oil.

  • I always welcome more competition...
    Still wondering why Intel abandoned Atom though.
    I know it wasn't doing particularly well, but sounds weird for them to completely step out of a market.

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