[timschmidt]

> He failed on GPU. The product was substandard.

I will never understand this line of reasoning. Why would anyone expect an initial offering to match or best similar offerings from the industry leader? Isn't it understood that leadership requires several revisions to get right?

[mnau]

Oh, poor multi billion company. We should buy its product with poor value, just to make it feel better.

Intel had money and decades of integrated GPU experience. Any new entrant to the market must justify the value to the buyer. Intel didn't. He could sell them cheap to try to make a position in the market, though I think that would be a poor strategy (didn't have financials to make it work).

[timschmidt]

I think you misunderstood me. I wasn't calling for people to purchase a sub-par product, rather for management and investors to be less fickle and ADHD when it comes to engineering efforts one should reasonably expect to take several product cycles.

Honestly, even with their iGPU experience, Arc was a pretty impressive first dGPU since the i740. The pace of their driver improvement and their linux support have both been impressive. They've offered some niche features like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_Graphics_Technology#Grap... which Nvidia limits to their professional series.

I don't care if they have to do the development at a loss for half a dozen cycles, having a quality GPU is a requirement for any top-tier chip supplier these days. They should bite the bullet, attempt to recoup what they can in sales, but keep iterating toward larger wins.

I'm still upset with them for cancelling the larrabee uarch, as I think it would be ideal for many ML workloads. Who needs CUDA when it's just a few thousand x86 threads? I'm sure it looked unfavorable on some balance sheet, but it enabled unique workloads.

[mnau]

> I don't care if they have to do the development at a loss for half a dozen cycles,

And here is the problem. You are discussing a dream scenario with unlimited money. This thread is about how CEO of Intel has retired/was kicked out (far more likely) for business failures.

In real world, Intel was in a bad shape (see margins, stock price ect) and couldn't afford to squander resources. Intel couldn't commit and thus it should adjust strategy. It didn't. Money was wasted that Intel couldn't afford to waste.

[timschmidt]

Well, seeing as GPU is important across all client segments, in workstation and datacenter, in console where AMD has been dominant, and in emerging markets like automotive self-driving, not having one means exiting the industry in a different way.

I brought up Intel's insane chiplet [non-]strategy elsewhere in the thread as an example where it's clear to me that Intel screwed up. AMD made one chiplet and binned it across their entire product spectrum. Intel made dozens of chiplets, sometimes mirror images of otherwise identical chiplets, which provides none of the yield and binning benefits of AMD's strategy. Having a GPU in house is a no-brainer, whatever the cost. Many other decisions going on at Intel were not. I don't know of another chip manufacturer that makes as many unique dies as Intel, or has as many SKUs. A dGPU is only two or three of those and opens up worlds of possibility across the product line.

[lmm]

Pulling out of a vital long-term project because it can't deliver a short-term return would be a bigger waste. Unless you think Intel is already doomed and the CEO should be pursuing managed decline?