[dbatten]

For those who (like me) didn't get the "toothpaste company" reference - it seems to be a reference to Intel trying to squeeze every last bit of performance out of an old architecture (as one would squeeze every bit of toothpaste out of a tube), rather than innovating with new architectures and technologies.

It's hard to figure out exactly where the toothpaste reference originated, but at least one source makes it sound like it was a mis-translation of materials published by AMD. See https://www.hardwaretimes.com/amd-takes-a-jab-at-intel-we-do...

[mizzack]

It has a bit of a double meaning.

Starting with the Ivy Bridge (3rd) generation, Intel switched to using thermal paste between the core and heat spreader instead of solder on socketed desktop processors. Presumably this was done as a cost savings measure.

This caused a marked increase in core temperatures and thermal throttling. Enthusiasts discovered that you could remove, or "delid", the heat spreader and replace the "toothpaste" with higher quality paste or liquid metal to drastically improve temperatures (15-20c) and improve overclocking headroom.

Edit: This event is commonly reflected on to showcase Intel's greed at a time where they dominated the market. It wasn't until the i9-9900k that Intel went back to soldering heatspreaders for consumer CPUs, at which point they were forced to because they were being challenged by AMD.

[bserge]

Cost saving would've been to get rid of the IHS entirely. Their mobile chips work fine without them, I don't really understand why they're a thing for desktop processors.

AMD uses them too, so there must be a reason... is it because they're afraid of improper installation breaking them? That's on the user.

The weight of the desktop heatsinks? Small changes to latch design should suffice. Or you can have a metal spacer around the chip with the die exposed, kinda like GPUs do.

I've replaced many laptop chips and even ran some on desktops with no issues.

[mizzack]

> is it because they're afraid of improper installation breaking them?

Yes. This was an issue back in the Athlon Thunderbird days.

"It's on the user" doesn't work as an argument when all of your large desktop/server OEMs notice a large uptick in failure rate post-assembly.

[cptskippy]

Looking back it seems so barbaric.

I remember how they briefly tried those black foam sticker pads in the corners of the substrate before acquiescing and using the IHS.

At some point they realized they could do better than a heatsink mounting system that involved trying to balance a heavy metal object on a small pedestal while trying to hook a tensioned spring to a clip you couldn't see by exerting tremendous downward force with a flathead screwdriver. I guess those motherboard return rates finally got to them.

[aners]

I always wondered why that mounting mechanism even existed. Would've thought it would get scrapped on the drawing board but maybe no one in the design pipeline ever put a screwdriver through their motherboard.

[cptskippy]

It was probably all part of Intel's strategy to sell more chips. It's hard to repair a gouged motherboard and not worth the time to recover the chips soldered into it. After the introduction of the IHS and new cooling solutions the motherboard market became unprofitable, that's why Intel had to exit it. /s

[mizzack]

Only as barbaric as the ~50dB, 4krpm tiny fans on enthusiast coolers in those days.

[grp000]

I don't know if there's any truth to this, but I heard that there were also issues that could arise more easily with electrically conductive thermal paste and that there was essentially fraud going on where lower end SKUs were being passed off as higher end units. That being said, that seems like something that would only affect the consumer used market.

[cptskippy]

> Cost saving would've been to get rid of the IHS entirely.

The IHS itself is a cost saving measure.

When Intel and AMD first introduced flip chips, they didn't have the IHS and the heatsink was balanced on top while you tensioned a spring. If you rocked the heatsink in any direction you would (not could) crush an edge or corner of the chip and likely kill the CPU.

The IHS protected the chip and reduced the failure/return rate.

[tjoff]

Desktop cooler: https://d1lss44hh2trtw.cloudfront.net/assets/editorial/2018/...

Laptop cooler: https://guide-images.cdn.ifixit.com/igi/4h3FmQQNHsITcHTq.med...

[bserge]

nVidia GPU: https://www.techpowerup.com/gpu-specs/quadro-4000m.c1428

[monocasa]

> Cost saving would've been to get rid of the IHS entirely. Their mobile chips work fine without them, I don't really understand why they're a thing for desktop processors.

Because there's a huge difference between running 5watts sustained through something the size of your fingernail, and 100 watts sustained. That heat has to go somewhere and there's 20x more of it on a desktop part, as it requires way more integrated cooling to not immediately thermally throttle.

[xxs]

The IHS is needed to prevent the die from, hence RMA.

[tambourine_man]

I think the parent meant an anecdote I've heard many times, in slightly different ways. It goes like this: a major toothpaste company was having a meeting, trying to increase sales. Many solutions were tried: new flavors, advertising, none had much effect.

On a whim, a director asks the guy serving coffee:

  - Jack, what would you do to increase sales?
  - Have you tried increasing the hole on the toothpaste?

There might be some truth to this, toothpaste tubes used to be metal in the 60s and you were supposed to punch a hole on the front of it with the back of the cover cap. That hole got a lot smaller than the ≈1cm wide in the plastic ones of today. It was also much easier to squeeze the very last gram by folding it.

[cge]

I had also heard a point for toothpaste involving the marketing: toothpaste advertisements, and all marketing imagery of toothpaste on a toothbrush, almost always show absurdly larger amounts of toothpaste than is effective or appropriate to use brushing teeth, trying to increase consumption by increasing waste.

[FridayoLeary]

Another explanation could be that advertisers are trying to increase the visibility of the product being sold.

[dimitrios1]

It's amazing how backwards we went from a sustainability perspective when you consider likely no one had this issue front and center as they did in the early industrial days.

We used reusable metals and glasses much more. Now everything is plastic.

[mschuster91]

On the other side, just take a "Tragerl" of beer (German beer crate with 20x0.5l):

- It weighs much more than a crate of 20x0.5l aluminium cans or plastic bottles

- it is more voluminous: glass bottles have way thicker walls and they need plastic spacers to prevent the bottles from crashing each other, whereas cans and bottles can be shrinkwrapped just fine)

- the return logistics are simpler: glass bottles and the crates have to be returned to the brewery to be refilled, whereas PET bottles and aluminium cans enter the normal, regional recycling stream

The switch to plastics has saved lots of money and environmental pollution in logistics. What was missed though was regulating recycling capabilities of plastics - compound foils are impossible to separate, for example - and mandating that plastics not end up in garbage, e.g. by having a small deposit on each piece of plastic sold.

[dimitrios1]

> The switch to plastics has saved lots of money and environmental pollution in logistics

Ah, but this is debatable!

https://www.wri.org/insights/planes-trains-and-big-automobil...

"Trains move 32% of goods in the United States, but generate only 6% of freight-related greenhouse gas emissions. Meanwhile trucks account for 40% of American freight transport and 60% of freight-related emissions."

From the beginning of the industrial period, we relied on rail and boat for logistics, and buggies for last mile deliveries, until the advent of affordable, mass produced vehicles, and the interstate system, this didn't change much. Our reliance on plastics combined with airplanes and trucks for logistics results in much greater pollution in my view.

Granted, coal was the primary fuel source for steamboats and steam engines, but sail still was common until iron boats became widespread, and still more economical for cross-sea transportation.

All this to say, as an amateur historian, in my view, this all comes to a precipice between the late 1950s and early 1960s, with the completion of the interstate highway system in the US, and DuPoint proliferating plastics in 1960s.

[elihu]

That's an interesting point that without the interstate highway system (which had many benefits) we might be using rail a lot more than we are currently and therefore emitting less CO2.

Another way of looking at it is that we could consider the interstate highways only half-complete, and that the important part that was never built was an electrical delivery system for the cars and trucks that use it, so they can recharge their batteries without even stopping. It's what we would have been forced to build if fossil fuels weren't plentiful and cheap and we still wanted to use cars and trucks for our main transportation. We could have built that in the 70's in response to the oil crisis, and we could've had 50 years of electric vehicles by now, and it could have worked even using awful lead-acid batteries if cars didn't have to go more than twenty miles or so between electrified road sections.

Building the same thing now would be a lot easier. Battery technology is good enough that it would only be needed at regular intervals on the major freeways, and we can pair the electrified road sections with cheap solar power where it makes sense to do so.

[vagrantJin]

> electrical delivery system for the cars and trucks that use it, so they can recharge their batteries without even stopping.

> and we can pair the electrified road sections with cheap solar power

I don't know. More cars on the road in general is just a bad idea IMO. Traffic, noise, accidents, parking lots, Fast and the Furious movies...

Alternatively we can use a system of transport that can carry a whole neighbourhood in one go, is electrified and can be built underground like a billionaire suggested we do for cars. It can be automated and sorta self driving too, can hit 180km/h without too much of a fuss. And we've been building them for almost 200 years.

Wouldn't that make more sense?

[sbierwagen]

>in the United States.

Fun fact, Europe moves most of its freight by road: https://www.eea.europa.eu/data-and-maps/figures/road-transpo...

Compare with the US: https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcQ13vD9... (A screenshot from this PDF: https://www.kth.se/polopoly_fs/1.87118.1550154619!/Menu/gene... )

[m4rtink]

Another big thing is cleaning - maybe someone put paint thinner, bleach or some acid to their used bear bottle before returning it ?

It could be even an accident (eq. someone turning in old beer bottles found somewhere), but you have to still account for that when cleaning all the beer bottles before refill.

[einpoklum]

> the return logistics are simpler

Umm, explain to me exactly how it is simpler to recycle a set of PET bottles than to transport a crate of glass bottles? It is infinitely more costly and complex, and involves multiple industries.

As for aluminum cans, it's perhaps less of an ordeal, but still you only recycle between 1/3 and 2/3 of the material:

https://www.container-recycling.org/index.php/calculating-al...

I believe you are only thinking about the logistics directly experienced by the end consumer... which is part of the problem with disposable consumption goods.

[Dylan16807]

Aluminum is pretty great for recycling. And plastic bottles can work okay, but most types of plastic use are going to end up in the garbage.

[LambdaComplex]

> toothpaste tubes used to be metal in the 60s and you were supposed to punch a hole on the front of it with the back of the cover cap

I'm definitely too young to remember anything from the 1960s, but you can still buy tomato paste in tubes like that. Neat.

[selimthegrim]

Anchovy paste too.

[lupire]

Many medicines have the same tube style.

[chriscjcj]

Reminds me of the Alka-Seltzer campaign "plop plop fizz fizz." One tablet was enough, but there wasn't any harm in consuming two. So they just told people to take two tablets. https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/double-bubble/