ELI5 Intel's new chip offerings

I've worked on some machines with Ryzen APU's that were real dogshit.

BUT the 1st generation Ryzen 7 chip in my daily driver rig has been rock solid stable for 7 years now. My previous system I used an intel core i7 930 and it's triple channel memory and X(58 I think) motherboard were nothing but trouble after a while. System was very finicky about cold booting. Performance wise it didn't age well either.


That said, both camps make solid CPU's these days. When I rebuild will be buying based upon best bang for the buck. I always get stuck in the "whens the best time" to upgrade / rebuild situation.... do I wait for new chips to land? Do I wait for last gen chips to get discounted? Do I go used?
 
Big time Ryzen Pro lover here....have sold truckloads of 'em and they're running great out there for my clients. And my P14s laptop is Ryzen/Vega based...I run that thing hard every single day! So dang fast.

Already had some Intel Ultras come through on a few high end laptop sales lately, thing with those that is appealing with be ...so they say...long battery runtime on laptops. Time will tell....only deployed them over the past two months.

AMD is playing the long game for AI...slowly and steadily getting in there. Yes less focus on their GPUs...not much profit there for them thuse...their focus is in data centers. Will they ever be as big as nVidia? I doubt it. But...between those two cousins...the leader of nVidia..and the leader of AMD...that family will dominate. Yesterday they just announced a record breaking quarter.

Intel...hah, talk about on their back foot...they're half over the ropes...back first! Laying off over 15% of workers, another back quarterly report, all this with "free money from the gov..err...from our taxes". AMD is taking steady bites of the desktop market away from Intel. Intels Ultra is a small life jacket they manage to cling to...for now.....but AMD also just released their latest Ryzen AI series which will...yeah...gobble up more desktop share. The future of Taiwan (not looking very bright right now with China and N.K. doing a bit more than just sabre rattling)....meaning, if TSMC will be around/able to still service the globe....may also be a possible good thing for Intel.

D&H had a good webinar on Windows versions and their hardware requirements...we used to just focus on the CPU, RAM, HD, and sometimes...video. Now there's the NPU to factor in..depending on which version of Windows you'll be getting...as far as AI options.
 
The Intel 13-14thgen failure saga has been clear and apparent in our shop. I've had no less than 10 bad CPU's come through for repair and replacement... it's unheard of. A total failure by Intel. I've stopped recommending new builds with those chips all together, well before Intel even admitted there was an issue. I have sincere doubts that they're going to fix them through firmware, though they may be able to slow their demise by knee-capping their voltage/clocks/performance/etc.

Their new chips, while I haven't directly used one, look pretty lackluster... and already have reported instability issues... meh, hard pass.
All that being said, I'm looking forward to Intel's offerings in about 12-16mo - and have bought a few thousand dollars in their stock, at a near-record low, due to the upcoming changes.
New Intel fab, new ASML machines will be churning out new chips with:
1.6 nanometer tech
Double-sided wafers
Backside Power delivery divorced from circuitry, allowing up to 40% more transistors
New FET designs, moving away from FinFET

So, things are looking up, but not at the moment. Right now, AMD is killing it, IMO.

Here's a great overview of what Intel has coming down the pipe:

 
We do need that for our country...some independence for our chips....I do cross my fingers in hope for Intel.
Yep, and Intel is hemorrhaging cash largely because they sunk so much into the new fabs, but then made the silly mistake of not selling excess capacity to 3rd parties.

Running your own fab means becoming TSMC's competition, and that's exactly what the world needs literally ANYONE to do. It can be Intel, or someone else... but that silicon contract manufacturing monster needs a counterpoint that is somewhere in North America, or Europe.

And get out of here on that long game BS... seriously.

The long game is coming to fruition NOW because it was apparent things were going this way when the GPU prices spiked for Cryptocurrencies. That event illustrated the global shortage for parallel computing power, and there will be more use cases for this execution mode over time, not less.
 
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And get out of here on that long game BS... seriously.
Nope, not at all, I'm sticking to it.

"The Market" wants to see AMD catch up to nVidia now. You see samples of that just watching the stock market. They won't. But they will slowly....and steadily...capture a larger portion of the AI market. Will they ever match or surpass nVidia in the AI market? No. But...they will slowly and steadily carve out a much bigger piece of that AI pie for themselves....they will not be content with a sliver sized piece of that pie.

nVidia rode the wave of their existing GPU dominance when covid hit at data centers exploded in usage from the "work from home" demand. I remember when I was heavy into gaming, I always leaned towards nVidia over ATI...gave ATI a shot a few times, but did better with nVidia. Ever since their very first TNT card that I replaced my Voodoo 3Dfx cards with...I was in love with them. And when I get CAD workstations/laptops for clients, it's nVidia Quadro cards in them, not FireGLs. nVidia has a quasi monopoly there that they rode the wave on. But they can focus on GPUs and NPUs since their focus is really on the AI front now.

AMD has their focus split...on two fronts. Taking bigger bites of the CPU market from Intel, and...the AI front. AMD has pulled out of the high end GPU market, focusing instead on mid range GPU. So they put more focus on CPU and AI. If you take a look at their profits from those 3 markets....GPU was a single digit value.....and server/data center chips is a HUGE portion of their massive profit.

Lisa Su....prez of AMD....and Jensen Huang..prez of nVidia....their intense cousin rivalry will keep them both the leaders of this game.
 
I hope they unify the product lines at some point, we've got enough SKUs to kill an elephant here, and getting a functional machine together is hard enough.

This is my main takeaway - and just in time for the boatload of new machines we'll all sell in the next year because of the Win10 EOL.
 
Intels finances exposed...they're bleeding...very...very badly.
Yesterday our government (if you can call the current administration that)...actually strongly prodded Intel to consider dividing up and merging with AMD or Marvell.
 
The DOW kicked out Intel earlier this week....

And now, AMD surpasses Intel for data center revenue...

...the fuse is burning...might not be a very long fuse....
 
This is what killed Intel: https://www.calcalistech.com/ctechnews/article/bypn9cdrc

Nothing else matters... article has it nailed... same thing with Cisco, IBM, and Boeing.

Instead of taking their cash and investing it in new things to grow the business, they "bought" some of it back. Stock exists to provide capital for growth, it's not a loan... you don't EVER win by "buying" it back.

Imagine where Intel would be, if that $108 BILLION was used to grow FABs? Develop an ARM capable core?

Expand their GPUs? Develop a counterweight API to CUDA?

Intel is now looking to venture capital / private investment to be saved... what a mess.
 

And yet another example of why the concept of "shareholder value" being the be all and end all of the worth of a business is an abject failure.

Stakeholder value, that includes not only shareholders but employees and communities in which business is conducted for two starters, need to matter just as much as stock price.

You take care of the people that generate your ideas, products, and profits and the places they live in and shareholder value will follow. Trying to prop up shareholder value while shafting those same people and places, well . . .
 
Exactly what we DON'T need....a chinese banking group bought a tonna shares of Intel stock.

 
Exactly what we DON'T need....a chinese banking group bought a tonna shares of Intel stock.

If our government was interested in controlling foreign investment, even from openly hostile nations, we'd have done so much more to prevent all of this by now.

In their defense it's a solid buy, Intel isn't going down, it won't be allowed to fail via one means or another so they will get their return. It just means yet again China is ahead because when we grow, they grow more... and they do so because we allow them to buy us when we're weak.

Though if I'm honest, I'm far more worried about Blackrock's influence than I am the Chinese at this point. Tariffs play right into all the wrong hands here, the next four years will be interesting.

Note, the most recent Ryzen offerings even have my hostile carcass looking twice. The Ryzen 5 9600X and the Ryzen 7 9700X landing at 65W TDP indicates a resolution of one of my primary gripes... the heat they spew. Both CPUs match the TDP of the Intel Core i5-13600 I was looking at to start with, so curse you all... now I have more homework to do. I will probably compress into the best deal I can swing over the Black Friday insanity, I have two desktops to refresh for two of my boys.
 
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Yeah Blackrock is a bad thing in itself....bad bad bad.

But to have the chinese have that much stake in our critical tech...not good at all. They are not our friends...they are literally out to take us over...and in it for the long game.
 
Yeah Blackrock is a bad thing in itself....bad bad bad.

But to have the chinese have that much stake in our critical tech...not good at all. They are not our friends...they are literally out to take us over...and in it for the long game.
1 Trillion in trade surplus says they've won, it's over.

No amount of tariffs or other brutal and old school economic protectionism will stop that. (Trump ideas bad, proven bad, been there done that, won't work, history doesn't lie)

I don't see the will to literally force divestment of, and halt future purchases of stock and other properties of strategic value from foreign actors, because that would upend the only bits of our economy that are still working. We're talking about tanking real estate and almost all of Wall Street just THINKING about this stuff publicly much less implementing any policy changes. Such a crash would be wonderful for my kids, but it would be catastrophic for my wife and I, as well as anyone between us (mid 40s), and retirement. Heck it's bad for anyone actively retired too, assuming they don't own their homes outright.

I'm an engineer, that means I solve problems... and darn it the math on this mess doesn't work out anyway that looks good. Need someone a TON SMARTER than I am to find a way, if it even exists. The US can no longer afford to be a super power from what I'm seeing. China has us militarily too. Oh I know our F-22 is better than their wish version, but they can make more of theirs for less, and we aren't making anymore than what we have. The Germans fell in WWII with better tech, because they didn't have enough of it. We too face the same issue. A horde of 80% as good as devices will overrun a few better ones, that's just the way things work.
 
Uh, Sumitomo Mitusi is a Japanese banking giant. That's obvious just from the name, and can be easily confirmed via a 2-second web search.

Since they serve the multinational corporation sector there are, of course, investments in China, but that doesn't change the fact that they are NOT a Chinese entity.

smbc.co.jp/global
 
1 Trillion in trade surplus says they've won, it's over.

No amount of tariffs or other brutal and old school economic protectionism will stop that. (Trump ideas bad, proven bad, been there done that, won't work, history doesn't lie)
IMO we still have to try, yes it is a very very steep and high climb up that mountain (cliff)...and we were starting to inch forward a bit. America needs to protect critical business and infrastructure...especially from those clearly intent on taking us over.

And get our military might back. Yes while we have superior tech, I agree sheer numbers can overwhelm..just look at Germany vs Russia in WWII....Russia managed to built enough tanks to cover the state of Texas! Germany simply could not stand up the wave of T's.
 
IMO we still have to try, yes it is a very very steep and high climb up that mountain (cliff)...and we were starting to inch forward a bit. America needs to protect critical business and infrastructure...especially from those clearly intent on taking us over.

And get our military might back. Yes while we have superior tech, I agree sheer numbers can overwhelm..just look at Germany vs Russia in WWII....Russia managed to built enough tanks to cover the state of Texas! Germany simply could not stand up the wave of T's.

The T-43 production lines running during the Siege of Leningrad alone is the stuff of legend.

I know we haven't lost that particular fight yet, but it doesn't really matter much if we can't get the silicon we need to develop the next generation of weaponry, nor the expertise to build new chips! Look at what we've done with education? We're NOT MAKING ENOUGH ENGINEERS OF ANY KIND! Much less the scientists we need...

Anyone in the 18-24 age range is hopelessly boned... school costs too much, living costs too much... they can't even afford to THINK about having kids. Meanwhile, people in my age bracket don't have the resources to retire, so that's yet another time bomb. We're so many layers of screwed, meanwhile we have a wealth distribution curve that is WORSE than France's was before they all decided to follow our example and lop off some royal heads!

Edit, I assume Britechguy is up there pointing out that Sumitomo is Japanese. (I can't read it because I have him blocked, it's clear that something about him makes me quite unhinged so... it's better this stays this way) Which is a good call out, because I missed that too on first pass. We need Intel's fabrication to be viable going forward, we must provide a TSMC alternative.
 
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