[Closi]

> Intel really wanted to release (in my opinion) very interesting processors, but had serious problems over years with getting their 10 nm process "stable" (i.e. sufficiently high and reproducible yield rates).

Intel was just doing what they have been doing for the last 40 years - building faster x86 CPU's.

They weren't even considering something as grand for desktop/laptops as Apple was with the M1 (i.e. a fully integrated SOC).

I don't think they were twiddling their thumbs to be fair - they were probably pushing hard in the same direction they have been pushing in for the last 40 years, but failed to see the industry change under their feet.

[q-big]

> They weren't even considering something as grand for desktop/laptops as Apple was with the M1 (i.e. a fully integrated SOC).

Perhaps I misinterpret your argument, but it is my impression that Intel (and also AMD!) did huge steps into that direction, just in a more incremental way than what Apple did:

- integrated GPU: check

- integrated memory controller: check

- integrated northbridge: check: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Northbridge_(comp...

- developing a smartphone SoC: Intel did invest serious money into it and developed SoFIA and Broxton. Intel even strongly subsidized smartphone producers to use them. This all turned out to be a huge commercial failure and thus Intel left the smartphone SoC business.

It is also not the case that a fully-integrated SoC is "better". Rather having not everything in one SoC enabled much more flexibility for OEMs. Fully integrated SoC versus more chips is rather a trade-off between various goals.

[Closi]

Integrated GPU's have been around since 1991, so I wouldn't personally point to that as an example of Intel continuing to be highly 'incrementally' innovative.

Similarly the M1 chip came out of a smartphone SOC - it was just that Apple saw the potential for laptop/desktop adoption while Intel clearly didn't (maybe because they failed to get into the smartphone business - but their failure in that market is yet another example of 'too slow, too little, too late').

[AtlasBarfed]

"Intel was just doing what they have been doing for the last 40 years - building faster x86 CPU's."

Yes Intel has been doing some minimum improvement to CPUs each year, but the reality of "Intel was just doing what they have been doing for the last 40 years - " is....

"Milking their Monopoly"

The AMD lawsuit with Intel back in the Netburst days showed how Intel was just as bad if not worse than Microsoft at anticompetitive behavior to lock out competitors in the PC market. I'll throw Intel a bone in that for decades with this monopoly power they still continued to push the process and design envelope (probably because they were afraid of becoming Motorola, and when they still had engineering leadership left over from the earlier days).

But Intel is a badly overfed Jabba the Hut. Gelsinger has his work cut out for him.

[tallanvor]

It's expected that they're trying to build chips that are faster on x86 rather than switch to an entirely new architecture - they can't switch without the full support of Microsoft and at least some major Linux distributions, not to mention the OEMs they sell their chips to.

[Closi]

They absolutely could have built an ARM chip.

The fact that Microsoft has released several ARM laptops but selected Qualcomm to provide the processors suggests that Intel at least had an opportunity to play the game, they just never came to the table. It’s hardly Microsoft slowing them down when Microsoft is ahead of Intel on this, but their reluctance to push forwards means that they are now behind.

It’s not Microsoft’s job to push intel anyway, it’s intels job to create a product so compelling that their partners adopt it. If they want the support of major Linux distros, they just have to write it themselves rather than wait for volunteers to do their work for them.