[jomohke]

There's definitely a lot that can be critiqued about that period.

Famously they divested their ARM-based mobile processor division just before smartphones took off.

The new CEO, as the article mentions, seems to have a lot more of a clue. We just hope he hasn't arrived too late.

[huppeldepup]

  a lot that can be critiqued about that period.

Like the time they appointed Will.I.Am?

https://youtu.be/gnZ9cYXczQU

[dralley]

>Famously they divested their ARM-based mobile processor division just before smartphones took off.

Wasn't that AMD (perhaps also AMD)? Qualcomm Adreno GPUs are ATi Radeon IP, hence the anagram.

[tirant]

Intel sold their XScale family of processors to Marvell in 2006.

I remember very well as back then I was working in University porting Linux to an Intel XScale development platform we had gotten recently.

After I completed the effort, Android was released as a public beta and I dared to port it too to that Development Board as a side project. I thought back then Intel was making a big mistake by missing that opportunity. But Intel were firm believers in the x86 architecture, specially on their Atom Cores.

Those little Intel PXA chips were actually very capable, I had back then my own Sharp Zaurus PDA running a full Linux system on an Intel ARM chip and I loved it. Great performance and great battery life.

[tverbeure]

Intel divested their StrongARM/XScale product line.

[KerrAvon]

Yes, just before the iPhone came out and with Apple newly fully engaged as a major Intel CPU customer (for x86 Macs) for the first time ever.

Kind of like Decca Records turning down The Beatles.

[TylerE]

It's really sort of been downhill since they decided to play the speed number game over all else with the Pentium IV. Even the core i7/i9 lines that were good for a long time have gone absolutely crazy lately with heat and power consumption.

[ColonelPhantom]

That's overly reductionist. Conroe topped out at around 3 GHz, compared to its predecessor Presler achieving 3.6 GHz.

I think Netburst mostly came from a misguided place where Intel thought that clock frequency was in fact the holy grail (and would scale far beyond what actually ended up happening), and that all the IPC issues such as costly mispredicts could be solved by e.g. improving branch prediction.

[TylerE]

It is exactly that short sited mhz over all else attitude im referring to as a fatal mistake.

[toast0]

Intel's market reality is (percieved) speed sells chips.

It's embarassing when they go to market and there's no way to say it's faster than the other guy. Currently, they need to pump 400W through the chip to get the clock high enough.

But perf at 200w or even 100w isn't that far below perf at 400w. If you limit power to something like 50w, the compute efficiency is good.

Contrast that to Apple, they don't have to compete in the same way, and they don't let their chips run hot. There's no way to get the extra 1% of perf if you need it.

[TylerE]

Oh, I'm quite well aware. I traded a spaceheater of an i9/3090 tower for an M1 Studio.

The difference in performance for 95% of what I do is zero. I even run some (non-AAA) Windows games via crossover, and that's driving a 1440p 165hz display. All while it sits there consuming no more than about 35w (well, plus a bit for all my USB ssds, etc) and I've never seen the thermals much past 60c, even running nastive-accelerated LLMs or highly multithreaded chess engines and the like. Usually sits at about 40c at idle.

It's exactly what almost 40 year old me wants out of a computer. It's quiet, cool, and reliable - but at the same time I'm very picky about input devices so a-bring-your-own peripherals desktop machine with a ton of USB ports is non-negotiable.