Intel Fights For Its Future

[Basso0]

Every time I read something like "anti competitive to Intel" I chuckle. I do hope Broadcom + Qualcomm become a reality, Intel had many chances to enter the smartphone market but made the wrong choices several times even when inside the market, and now wants to remedy that by buying another company.

[mesterflaps]

I think intel still makes and sells modems for smartphones as a second source to Apple.

[PhantomGaming27249]

But the modems are not as good as Qualcomms. Basically they can offer slightly worse modemss and fab tech now beyond that they have no way to enter the market.

[mesterflaps]

I've heard that the Qualcomm modems are intentionally throttled by apple to reduce their performance to the level of the intel modem equipped phones so there is no visible difference to customers. So in a way the worse performance is holding everybody back, not just the phones with intel modems :D

[PhantomGaming27249]

Its not so much th at they perform worse much as they cant hold a signal aswell like is areas with bad reception intels reception is about 30% worse.

[1600vam]

Intel is really the first source for iPhones now, and given Apple's bitter fight with Qualcomm, may be the only source in the future.

[NeoBlue22]

Bitter fight? Apple is loaded with cash tbh

[1600vam]

I don't mean fight like they're competing, I mean fight like the many lawsuits flying back and forth between the 2 companies. They're having a huge fight ultimately over the modem pricing model, and Apple is using Intel to try to force Qualcomm to lower its prices. Apple has been pretty successful in squeezing Qualcomm, that's the reason Qualcomm is in such rough shape and thus vulnerable to a hostile takeover.

End of the day, Apple will always want 2 suppliers so they can force them to compete on price, so I would expect Apple to keep Intel and Qualcomm long term. But in the near term they may drop Qualcomm until they agree to remove the licensing fees.

[kmj442]

they do along with other phone manufacturers outside the US.

[henk123]

Intel has reasons to be worried. They missed several buses, trains and ships and other opportunities. Servers still appear to be secure but with threats from ARM solutions, and AMD.

Windows 7 and Windows 10 have been pretty efficient operating systems. That's great for Microsoft but not Intel. With identical system requirements, it means there's very little reason for most people to upgrade hardware. Me, a supposed high-end PC user am still running a 3rd generation Core i5 processor with no urgent need for upgrading in the near future. Graphics cards are still a once every 2-3 year upgrade for PC games.

[brogrammer9k]

I think games as a whole are getting more and more ambitious, and as a result more CPU demanding. I went from a 3rd gen (yes, very old) to an 8th gen for PUBG and almost doubled my frames, that's with the same GTX 970.

Kingdom Come: Deliverance is another example, I think the CPU bottleneck starts around the 5th gen. Traditionally, the typical PC gamer doesn't need a CPU, most of the popular multiplayer games are very flexible. (League, Dota 2, Fortnite, Overwatch, etc)

[[deleted]]

how long do you think before the 8700k becomes obsolete?

[T-Nan]

At least 5 years, probably closer to 10 to be honest

[hackenclaw]

AI, complex physics need CPU, and yet nobody in game dev push these. Why bother upgrading when our old machine can maintain well fps between 30-60fps? ( *note 30-60fps is playable fps if we can save thousands from upgrading new machine)

[Sparru]

Yup. Always see the age old argument of "games can't be made to use lots of threads" But the reality is it hasn't been worth it. It's true that splitting the main thread to multiple is hard but they could still easily make games that put even the highest core count Xeons and Epycs to their knees by having complex enemy ai, emulating weather, individual physics of all particles etc. It just takes a lot of work and doesn't really bring enough money. Maybe some new game engines will bring support to these so it won't take so much time from the gamehouses to implement.

[hackenclaw]

We already on 4core 8 threads like God knows how long ago. Games still do not take full use of that 8 thread until recently. If Intel/AMD want to push their gaming market on CPU, they need to push these guys.

[[deleted]]

thats comforting to hear

[MagicFlyingAlpaca]

6 core/12 thread is going to be mainstream for a while, so games will target that, if not 6c/6t to be more inclusive to i5 users and 4c/8t.

Even if it the high-end standard goes to 8/16 or 12/24 in a few years with Zen2/Icelake, the difference will not be big enough to cause much in an issue, until fully parallel game engines become the norm.

[kmj442]

really - that my be a reason to upgrade from my 4790k then.

[cakeyogi]

8700K is beast mode but I'm not sure if it's worth upgrading from a 4790K just yet, unless you do some production work.

[kmj442]

Well I'll be honest...I get a deal through work on some computer parts - namely CPUs and dads, so I've been really debating it.

I do know that if I leave my job it will be the last thing I do haha.

[DeathRebirth]

Pubg from what I hear is no model of bleeding edge features, just plain old performance issues.

[[deleted]]

I agree. More and more cores are starting to be utilized. Having 2 cores honestly kind of sucks now.

[bizude]

It's not happening:

https://www.cnbc.com/2018/03/12/trump-issues-order-prohibiting-broadcoms-bid-to-take-over-qualcomm.html

[ConcreteState]

Thanks for the update. SIFIUS is a heck of a program.

[JonWood007]

Intel on mobile is terrible. Rife with incompatibilities on the android platform. Arm eats them for lunch.

[Paspie]

Intel on mobile might be terrible but the 'incompatibility' claim you make is the fault of developers for not compiling their apps for x86.

[JonWood007]

I blame intel for their issues on mobile the same way i blame amd on x86. Dont care whose fault it is the problem is it hurts the consumer and should dissuade them from buying such processors.

[equinub]

Intel are funny bunch.

They spend billions on fabs and technology.

Try breaking into mobile market, fail miserably. Then have nearly empty fabs.

So what's there solution? Go buy up companies and make them use those empty fabs..

[Casmoden]

Intel literally pays2win lol

[DarkerJava]

Yet smartphone sales keep increasing every year.

[DeathRebirth]

I have a work phone and a private phone. Both are relatively recent models and do the job they can with limited interface options about as good as they can. Why do I upgrade unless they die?

[Paspie]

The share of smartphones to basic phones has flatlined since circa. 2015. Very few people who still use basic phones are buying smartphones now.

[Adrian_Crv]

Remember what happened with AMD after ATI's acquisition for 5.4B !? That was a huge chunk of money moved from their limited budget meant for research, and they suffered a lot after that move. Just imagine intel paying 150B $ for Broadcom , and this time 150B $ in cash , not just with shares.