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Disagree because there would be far more instant differentiation in architecture than in process. A 2 GHz Kabylake with 4 GHz turbo would instantly become the fastest merchant android phone chip selling for at least $25-30 which would be profitable with a smaller die of a single core and smaller cache than its dual-core tablet brothers and one core even with SMT would be a natural fit in the 2W phone wattage segment.
It's just so glaringly obvious but Intel is conservatively afraid of cannibalisation even though i don't believe there would be any as tablets with multi core Skylake/Kabylake would be in the same ballpark price as the phones with this single core and offer more heavy duty multi threading/tasking performance. Instead Intel has just meekly ceded the high end phone market to Apple without even fighting for it with the cores it already has !
Excellent so he's not completely brain-dead.
Sofia was all BK's idea way back in 2014 and none of the models involved any new architectures as they involved pairing existing silvermont/airmont cores with intel modems on the same die. I thought the 28nm tsmc one was a complete waste of time as it negated Intel's in-built foundry advantage over fabless competitors but the 14nm airmont Sofia could still be and should be done now as it would be a compelling product at the right price.
Tie that up with a high end modern Medfield like a single core Skylake with smt and intel would have competitive mobile products again but this would require a CEO with a clue and the attention span of an animal higher than a goldfish !
https://www.cnet.com/uk/news/meet-intels-sofia-the-new-low-cost-smartphone-processor-created-in-singapore/
How does the metal/gate pitch compare to Intel's 14nm ?
Have any chips been commercially produced in volume on these processes ?
They got to the densest 14nm process first but are now proving just as fallible as the foundries in making future expeditious progress using the same old 193nm lithography technology. The laws of physics are limiting everyone here so until the foundries turn up with a denser smaller process than Intel's don't believe it's just incompetence.
Even this one core for all market segments is not being done properly as there should have been done a high end phone chip which consisted of a highly clocked single-core Core with SMT which would do a better job of competing with apple phone chips than other merchant arm chips. Seriously BK is bringing nothing to the Intel table except clueless misdirection and should be replaced asap.
They should do both as x86 needs to be in the mobile software space for future growth. Arm had power problems too when it initially went to triple issue with A15 but it persevered and the power issues are well under control with the A72 derivative in smaller processes. Just because goldmont is a mobile bust at 14nm it does not mean its derivatives would be at 10/7nm and anyway who says Intel must only have one mobile atom core when arm has many for different market segments.
Just develop airmont further if goldmont is fundamentally flawed as a mobile processor. Instead BK has just made Intel a laughing stock in mobile which all of its worst critics have been claiming for years just when competitive mobile chips were being produced literally snatching defeat from the jaws of future victory. Clown.
Since Grove all the CEOs have been hit and miss. The fundamental problem is that all the original innovators that created Intel have long passed to be replaced by career technicians whose innovative strategic prowess has never been proven on a grand scale and are found wanting when promoted to the big seat. Apple is having similar problems now that their great innovator has left the mortal coil.
PS all of those BK character faults could have been surmised from his ridiculous flip-flopping on mobile chips so i was not surprised by any of that interesting detail in that pdf. Even now I can't believe after all the money and time spent in getting atom to be respected and sold as serious tablet/phone competitors to arm chips he just abruptedly dropped them all when airmont at least would still have been competitive in some market segments and the other divisions would have paid for the die process giving Intel an innate cost advantage over its fabless competitors. BK is a bigger clown than Ronald McDonald !
Usual mobile destroys desktop market nonsense which has been thoroughly disproved by the reality of the last few years. If the most powerful cores that Apple, Arm and Qualcomm have produced have not dented Intel's core markets and business model then Intel using cheaper less powerful Atoms will not do it either. Intel was second in the tablet market using them at 22nm and it could have continued this policy at 14nm in phones if not with the goldmont core then with the airmont one which is more then adequate to compete successfully against A53 at the sub $10 chip range.
Of course Intel would not have made much money at those prices if any but that's not the point. It's about establishing a market presence both with OEMs and software vendors and maintaining it for future more profitable products. Now Intel just looks like an amateur fair weather mobile competitor whose participation cannot be relied on. The damage that BK has done to Intel's reputation is incalculable and he is undoubtedly the worst CEO Intel has ever had.
Chips that are poor in integer are usually poor in server apps so don't get your hopes up too high otherwise you will be disappointed like AMD gamers !
Nothing wrong with the plan, it should just have been followed through with not abandoned at the first signs of any implementation problems. Cheap 14nm integrated airmont/modem chips sold at around die cost would have compelling competitive solutions against any similar cost Arm chips which would have been A53 chips under $10.
Take over the market from the bottom like Intel did with servers until more powerful follow-ons arrive. But that idiot BK could not see that and see it through even though he was specifically employed to improve Intel mobility which he mistakenly now believes is IoT. Makes you miss Craig Barrett who now seems a genius in comparison lol !
The way he led the troops up the mobile hill with all the planned cheap integrated mobile chips and back down again showed me he has no intellectual depth, he really is as stupid as he looks. At least Barrett and Otellini were mature enough to see their projects until the end. He is a lightweight and it is up to his subordinates to find the products to move Intel forward as it won't come from any of his strategic thoughts.
You Only Have One Chance to Make a Good First Impression.
Slow but steadily incrementally better but it is fighting the laws of physics which are limiting everybody's clockspeeds and process shrinks. Seriously how long has everybody been at 4 GHz, 15 years ? Chipguy can give you the detailed reasons why but this in unprecedented in transistor history where chipspeeds went from MHz to GHz in 25 years.
I think Intel needs a new chip architecture to take the next big step forward which I hear they are doing. EUV also needs to become economical so that process shrinks become normal but even there transistor shrinks will end when you are down to single atom level. For Intel to become a super soaring stock again it needs to be first in a new faster cooler computing medium that replace silicon transistors.
Ryzen is basically a workstation chip, like SPARC, PowerPC and Itanium were in their day. Very good luck on justifying the grossly inflated and hyped AMD stock price on that small market because the market is not convinced and true price discovery has only just begun. The fact that its hpc abilities are limited to legacy apps show that it is even a more limited chip than I originally thought.
No-one with a current modern PC is going to look at ryzen unless they need the extra cheap cores or are religious anti-intel haters and they are a dying breed. Your favorite company lied again when claiming they had a cheaper cooler Core killer when all they have done is delivered Itanium in PC form which even Intel was not stupid enough to do as the market for such a chip is TINY !
About that Ryzen 95w tdp ...
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/amd-ryzen-7-1800x-cpu,4951-11.html
Server customers are also conservative in that they take their time even upgrading the next iteration of their current favored architecture. Where I only see Rizen making an immediate impact is in hpc orientated sites but that is not a huge market. To me it looks like a 2017 version of a chip like the last Mac IBM PowerPC or even Itanium, generally competent and even great in hpc niches but not great all-rounders.
AMD did not go from 2 to 15 on that basis but on the thesis that AMD spread that they had a cooler Core killer which they clearly don't. Intel may have to cut prices to accommodate the stiffer competition but they have room to do so as they have not had any serious x86 competition in a decade and have made serious fat margin hay during that time with scope for cuts which trade margin for more sales. AMD stock will fall further as all those big institutional boys who bought shares/notes at 7 will want to take profit while they can now that retail momentum has turned south.
You might want to wait until it stops falling if you are that keen which will probably be in the 4-7 range as there will be a lot of profit takers leaving the stock now that momentum has moved downward and Risen has shown to be flawed/uneven in performance.
This chip needed to be a great integer/gaming performer like A64 was in its time so enthusiasts could propel its sales. There might be some upside in workstation/server but those markets are smaller and have more inertia to new chips.
Ryzen, it seems, is a much better floating point performer than it is an integer performer. And with the latter being important for games—since most FP calculations are handled by the more effective GPU—Ryzen takes an FPS hit.
https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2017/03/amd-ryzen-review/3/
AMD Bulls have had a lot of fun pumping their stock to 15bn market cap but this chip does not justify it, Athlon64 it is not ! The stock will collapse as I can't see Intel allowing them to make a billion annual profit to justify the current market cap as they still have the superior chips and therefore pricing power to squeeze AMD profits.
That does not look good enough based on Gb4 even with shrinks but I have little faith in that benchmark series generally so will await more application specific benchmarks or a SPEC comparison.
If the Gb4 mark is generally indicative though Intel will need a major redesign or even new core to be mobile competitive going forward. Hats off to the Army though for fending off Intel's first serious attempts at mobile cores ...
Do you have any performance/clock comparisons with Arm cores to hand ?
triple issue : that kinds of help explain the big jump in power, kind of like the very first hot A15 compared to A9. This can be refined though with process shrinks and re-spins and design tweaks as the original A15 was.
More important for this model is the absolute performance/clock compared to say A72/3 to gauge its future potential in future iterations. If I was to hazard a WAG this original Goldmont design probably looks good at 7nm without any future design tweaks.
I disagree that Atom will never be mobile competitive even if the current iteration currently bombed. It will just need another extensive redesign as Silvermont was over the original but we are talking years for that.
As for compatibility this will become less of an issue with time as later versions of Android are more ISA agnostic.
You are not taking into account that a mobile optimized Core would be built in the low power version of 14nm that Atom currently uses. I think a mobile oriented Core SoC would be very competitive around 2-2.5 GHz. Of course Intel is not used to selling Cores at 30usd which is the biggest problem here. They could do it but would it be worth it without a guarantee of selling tens of millions of SoCs ? I suspect Intel investors will just have to wait for a future Atom to perform.
I doubt it as SMT only has about a 10-15% power hit so would already have been enabled and bragged about by Cook on intro although no doubt will be likely in future generations as with a fat core SMT is low hanging performance fruit.
As Core-M is now more power-efficient than Goldmont I can't see the harm in now using a low clocked version of it as Intel's new mobility chip. At least it would be performance competitive at say 1.5-2 GHz without harming asps in its more traditional markets. That's the only fear about using Core as a mobile chip, the big difference between mobility and PC asps but I suspect they could find a clock speed to beat say A72 but still leave an appreciable performance gap to Core-M. The mobility market is too big to ignore for too long and perhaps Core needs to take up the task now Atom has temporarily failed.
Amd will need to get closer to 4 GHz to make a significant impact with Zen but it does not look a bad design and starting point for an Amd revival sometime in the future.
http://seekingalpha.com/article/4002864-amd-zen-likely-good-enough
http://seekingalpha.com/article/4003352-amd-confirmation-zen-troubles
Goldmont appears less power-efficient than Airmont which might explain why Intel has beaten an unexpected retreat from Mobile. So not only have you been proven completely right about Intel mobile efforts but you actually underestimated the cluster**** it eventually turned out to be ! Absolutely amazing and not in a good way !! ...
http://www.anandtech.com/show/10635/intel-quietly-launches-apollo-lake-soc
He is an ex shareholder as I am, he has earned the right to be angry and upset over the years of broken promises and false dawns.
long-term investments i.e. treasuries will be converted into cash when needed. ASTC's liquid assets are about $30m now.
I doubt it is true as Intel now have perpetual use of all Nvidia patents they have already licensed. AMD is being seriously pumped these days but it is about a year too soon as they still have bad quarters to come this year as Skylake starts mauling the Dozy cores in gpu too .
AMD have been basically shooting themselves in the foot for the last decade. As long as the company did not go bankrupt it was unrealistic to assume this state of affairs would persist forever. Who really knows whereabouts in Intel's sku range Zen will fit exactly but it should snuggle a lot tighter than the Dozy cores do as they were exceptionally badly designed. Intel investors may not automatically allow themselves the luxury of totally ignoring AMD in the future. AMD won't make any real trouble for Intel this time as it is a fabless company now where profit is more important than marketshare so any future competitive relationship will be more like the one AMD and Nvidia have in high-end gpus where they both take turns in milking customers for hundreds of dollars. Intel also has a lot of price elasticity to react and can of course curtail volume if necessary but still Zen could be a factor to take note of.
Smiths partners with 1stDetect (ASTC) for mass spectrometer technology
http://ih.advfn.com/p.php?pid=nmona&article=70694918
So eventually these two companies finally directly compete ...
Department of Homeland Security Awards Contract to Smiths Detection and Astrotech Subsidiary 1st Detect for Next Generation Explosives Trace Detection Systems
1st Detect to provide chemical analyzer technology for next generation ETD sensor solution to DHS for passenger and carryon baggage screening and other homeland security operations -
http://ih.advfn.com/p.php?pid=nmona&article=70694918
1st Detect, Inc., a subsidiary of Astrotech (ASTC), has partnered with Smiths Detection Inc.- a subsidiary of Smiths Group (LSE: SMIN, ADR: SMGZY) to develop next generation explosives trace detection (ETD) systems for the Department of Homeland Security Science and Technology Directorate (DHS S&T) using 1st Detect’s breakthrough chemical analyzer technology.
Smiths Detection Inc. is currently one of three TSA prime contractors and an incumbent ETD provider. This development contract represents the first phase and is expected to last 24 months. Subsequent phases include design for manufacturability followed by procurement.
Smiths Detection and 1st Detect will work together towards providing a revolutionary next generation solution helping to enhance passenger and carryon baggage screening as well as other homeland security operations.
“We are very excited to be working with Smiths Detection on this worldwide opportunity,” said Thomas B. Pickens III, Chairman and CEO of Astrotech and 1st Detect, Inc. “We have been working for years to position our technology to reach the high level of performance needed to be selected by both the DHS and Smiths Detection. Being selected for this important program validates both our technology and our long term corporate strategy.”
It's true that this company pps is below what you would expect from a rational analysis of its IP and potential and actual backlogs but technically the pps is below all its major moving averages which are all still descending which is bearish and scares off technical traders. No serious retail money is going to come back into this stock until this management make all the toxic debt go away, until then it's just retail gamblers thinking they can counter DMRJ's constant selling which has not worked out so far. The point about last earnings was that it showed the revenue is still not high enough to overcome the interest payments to enable overall profitability meaning there is no prospect in conventionally paying off the debt through profit which many longs had been hanging on for.
The relentless waves of constant dilution have worn down the existing longs and prospective new investors are not too impressed that there is still no overall profitability despite record revenue. Management have been financially inept ever since Buldoc to McGann. The only company I have seen more inept WRT shareholder price and excessive dilution is GBSN. DMRJ probably are still pulling the strings behind the scenes with their latent majority shareholding.
Maybe this stock becomes a buy at 7c and under, dunno, but the pps sure sadly has turned out like my worst case scenarios which many thought was mindless bashing at the time but was just extrapolation of continual heavy losses/dilution for the foreseeable future that would overcome any pumping or good news. Remember in the long run the market is a weighing machine and they have found the management here extremely lightweight.
NOBODY was willing to accept the TSA number on its face.
I shipped a lot of pointless noisy flak from angry Longs at the time for suggesting just that ! On the plus side though it does mean the original IDIQ will go further if fully realized at $162m and there will be a big consumable secondary business evolving over time. No-one can really quibble with the business success, they delivered everything they promised but on capital structure and debt they have and continue to deliver absolute squat to retail shareholders who have indirectly paid for the company debt with their losses so far. Time for empty talk is over, time to get rid of those 8c DMRJ options before they start looking pricey !
Au contraire, Intel is just getting warmed up in mobile. If you had experienced their slow but steady Server invasion as I had from birth i.e. I commercially programmed on a company's 180Mhz Pentium Pro, you would have a better perspective on the time needed to get truly established in brand new markets e.g. where is ARM even now in PCs or Servers ?
Fabless companies can't just compete on price as basically Intel can sell their mobile chips at or even less than wafer price indefinitely so they will grow their share from the bottom. Sure these current established mobile companies are making hay now but Intel will reel them all in over time apart from say Apple, Samsung and Qualcomm who either have differentiated enough IP or are foundries themselves.
The most immediate mobile concern for Intel investors is for the division to lose less money each quarter as that will be a positive contribution to both the bottom line and morale.
Their execution makes the aforementioned AMD, which at least managed to roll out "Dozy" successors each and every year, look like a semiconductor superstar.
Disagree. In the same time AMD went from 32nm Bulldozer to 28nm Excavator, which still looks like the same useless core to me, Intel went from 32nm Clover Trail/Medfield to 14-22nm Cherry View/Moorefield which were serious jumps in capability.
As for the foundry 14/16FF competition they just can't go where Intel can go in pricing and the Bay Trail experience proved that Intel will pick up major mobile business if priced ultra-competitively. The trick now is to do it without subsidies which is where Intel's dense 14nm will come in.
I think you and others are worrying about the wrong dangers. Intel at this moment has record PC/Server market-share so where does it go from there except potentially down ? The trick then will be to keep the overall market growing even if m/s falls back. Worst case Zen danger is if it beats the 'Lakes in throughput and especially throughput/power in which case AMD will have a major Server/high-end PC renaissance and Intel's GMs will fall. The threat of ARM mobile chips making PC/Server chips obsolete was always a paper tiger threat and the only one with an ARM core to compete, Apple, prices its products higher than the competing generic windows/android x86 products. Customers will always want the best processor the more they pay for a computing device, that will never change and as long as Intel keeps pushing the performance envelope it will exist as a rich profitable company.