Intel Sees Irrelevance in Its Future, Turns to Legal Threats Instead of Technology
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We've been seeing the end of the Intel processor era coming for a while. A long time, actually. Once Intel went with Itanium and AMD ended up owning Intel's own space, then when AMD decided that the AMD64 architecture, on which Intel depends, wasn't the future and dropped its own architecture in favour of ARM the writing was clearly on the wall - IA32 and AMD64 technology path is doomed and RISC is where the future is headed.
With Windows 10 quickly coming for ARM products, the time to live on AMD64 is getting shorter by the day. Even Oracle just decided to go ahead with Intel-alternative Sparc that everyone thought must have come to its end.
With little technical or product left to hit the market with, Intel has decided to lash out with legal threats telling everyone (we all know they are talking to Microsoft) that emulators are not okay (um, what? the entire Intel product family is an AMD emulator!) and that they will sue anyone attempting to run Intel or AMD code on ARM processors (or anything else.) Um, how long has DOSBox been doing this and Intel didn't care?
Of course, this means that Intel risks killing its best friend, Windows, off by making it less and less competitive. Linux, having a nearly completely open source ecosystem, has no architectural lock in like closed source software does. The majority of software, and the vast majority of relevant software, on Linux and BSD platforms is open source and can (and is) compiled for any platform needed. Windows with a mostly closed ecosystem is left hoping that every vendor will take the time to recompile - a tall order when most have no idea what process architectures are, many don't have the code necessary any more to recompile their own systems and many depend on layers and layers of binary components that they do not control.
Not only is this a big processor fight, but one that makes a direct threat at Microsoft specifically and closed source in general. Open source just got a very interesting friend in Intel.
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Don't they realize there are alternatives to Intel (and better) and that we don't actually need them?
Time to stop using their products if they will be like this.
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If Windows suggests to their OEM partners to favour AMD more....ouch, Intel will lose hugely. Think of all those OEM servers and client devices.
Would AMD be capable of handling the demand or would it fold?
I don't think we'll see it with Server 16's lifetime but maybe the next version.
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With Fedora 26 having native ARM support this could mean the beginning of the end. As long as the new RHEL is based off at least 26, we might have native support in all 3 distros.
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@Breffni-Potter said in Intel Sees Irrelevance in Its Future, Turns to Legal Threats Instead of Technology:
If Windows suggests to their OEM partners to favour AMD more....ouch, Intel will lose hugely. Think of all those OEM servers and client devices.
Would AMD be capable of handling the demand or would it fold?
I don't think we'll see it with Server 16's lifetime but maybe the next version.
They will probably have to rethink their licensing structure. That would be brutal.
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I just had an awesome thought. Can you imagine servers being as powerful as x86 is now but with passive cooling and their own battery backups built in being commonplace?
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@stacksofplates said in Intel Sees Irrelevance in Its Future, Turns to Legal Threats Instead of Technology:
@Breffni-Potter said in Intel Sees Irrelevance in Its Future, Turns to Legal Threats Instead of Technology:
If Windows suggests to their OEM partners to favour AMD more....ouch, Intel will lose hugely. Think of all those OEM servers and client devices.
Would AMD be capable of handling the demand or would it fold?
I don't think we'll see it with Server 16's lifetime but maybe the next version.
They will probably have to rethink their licensing structure. That would be brutal.
Not really, They review their license model with each new edition, Server and Windows are huge products so they got plenty of teams to do it. I don't think it would be that big a stretch for the behemoth of Microsoft to change.
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@Breffni-Potter said in Intel Sees Irrelevance in Its Future, Turns to Legal Threats Instead of Technology:
@stacksofplates said in Intel Sees Irrelevance in Its Future, Turns to Legal Threats Instead of Technology:
@Breffni-Potter said in Intel Sees Irrelevance in Its Future, Turns to Legal Threats Instead of Technology:
If Windows suggests to their OEM partners to favour AMD more....ouch, Intel will lose hugely. Think of all those OEM servers and client devices.
Would AMD be capable of handling the demand or would it fold?
I don't think we'll see it with Server 16's lifetime but maybe the next version.
They will probably have to rethink their licensing structure. That would be brutal.
Not really, They review their license model with each new edition, Server and Windows are huge products so they got plenty of teams to do it. I don't think it would be that big a stretch for the behemoth of Microsoft to change.
Oh I meant it would be brutal for customers under the current licensing structure.
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@stacksofplates said
Oh I meant it would be brutal for customers under the current licensing structure.
Yeah but that's because its a very Intel friendly license model. If those two have a proper falling out, MS can make it more AMD friendly.
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@scottalanmiller if you're going to write an opinion piece don't mark it as news
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@Tim_G said in Intel Sees Irrelevance in Its Future, Turns to Legal Threats Instead of Technology:
Don't they realize there are alternatives to Intel (and better) and that we don't actually need them?
Time to stop using their products if they will be like this.
That's why they are being like this, because people are already stopping using their products.
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@Breffni-Potter said in Intel Sees Irrelevance in Its Future, Turns to Legal Threats Instead of Technology:
If Windows suggests to their OEM partners to favour AMD more....ouch, Intel will lose hugely. Think of all those OEM servers and client devices.
Would AMD be capable of handling the demand or would it fold?
I don't think we'll see it with Server 16's lifetime but maybe the next version.
AMD has handled it before no problem.
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@JaredBusch said in Intel Sees Irrelevance in Its Future, Turns to Legal Threats Instead of Technology:
@scottalanmiller if you're going to write an opinion piece don't mark it as news
It was reporting on an opinion piece, so news of their opinion.
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@scottalanmiller said in Intel Sees Irrelevance in Its Future, Turns to Legal Threats Instead of Technology:
@Breffni-Potter said in Intel Sees Irrelevance in Its Future, Turns to Legal Threats Instead of Technology:
If Windows suggests to their OEM partners to favour AMD more....ouch, Intel will lose hugely. Think of all those OEM servers and client devices.
Would AMD be capable of handling the demand or would it fold?
I don't think we'll see it with Server 16's lifetime but maybe the next version.
AMD has handled it before no problem.
Did they not fold badly years ago? They seemed to back out of the game and ceed a lot to Intel.
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@Breffni-Potter said in Intel Sees Irrelevance in Its Future, Turns to Legal Threats Instead of Technology:
@scottalanmiller said in Intel Sees Irrelevance in Its Future, Turns to Legal Threats Instead of Technology:
@Breffni-Potter said in Intel Sees Irrelevance in Its Future, Turns to Legal Threats Instead of Technology:
If Windows suggests to their OEM partners to favour AMD more....ouch, Intel will lose hugely. Think of all those OEM servers and client devices.
Would AMD be capable of handling the demand or would it fold?
I don't think we'll see it with Server 16's lifetime but maybe the next version.
AMD has handled it before no problem.
Did they not fold badly years ago? They seemed to back out of the game and ceed a lot to Intel.
AMD moved to ARM, the very thing that Intel is trying to defend against.
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@Breffni-Potter said in Intel Sees Irrelevance in Its Future, Turns to Legal Threats Instead of Technology:
Would AMD be capable of handling the demand or would it fold?
AMD would just hire out more and more fabrication facilities. If things get bad enough, Intel would probably be nothing more than another fab facility for other companies to use.
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@travisdh1 said in Intel Sees Irrelevance in Its Future, Turns to Legal Threats Instead of Technology:
@Breffni-Potter said in Intel Sees Irrelevance in Its Future, Turns to Legal Threats Instead of Technology:
Would AMD be capable of handling the demand or would it fold?
AMD would just hire out more and more fabrication facilities. If things get bad enough, Intel would probably be nothing more than another fab facility for other companies to use.
AMD is still a giant chip maker. They can definitely take on whatever is needed.
I'm surprised that everyone thinks that all this work is going to go to AMD, though. AMD is sure in the winner's seat here, but everyone is talking about Qualcomm as the biggest player in this space. ML is the first place where I've seen anyone mention AMD as getting the bulk of the new workload when Qualcomm is the one already taking it from Intel and AMD. NVidia is another big winner potentially there, and they have some insane fab capabilities, too. And Samsung, Apple and others are all in positions to leverage that overnight.
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@scottalanmiller said in Intel Sees Irrelevance in Its Future, Turns to Legal Threats Instead of Technology:
Did they not fold badly years ago? They seemed to back out of the game and ceed a lot to Intel.
Really I dont see that, there plans of ARM server processors seem very short-lived, the only thing that will seem to continue with ARM is the co-security processor they integrate with their x86-x64 CPUs, but thats it. I think its cortex a5 they integrate in each CPU as well.
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I dont understand why all the comments are filled with AMD, this topic has little to do with AMD.
When Windows 10 be able to run on ARM and not only from Qualcom, just like Android can run from:
Mediatek chips/RockChip/Xiaomi ...etc
thats when everything will change, the cost of those ARM chips can get low as 10$ per chip cause of the insane competition, and they include much more than traditional x86 CPU, and you really dont get innovation with 2 company monopoly, like AMD Ryzen is on par with intel performance but cheaper, and that is what after 5 years of AMD catching up.With ARM the whole playground will change, all my family and friends can live with ARM level of performance, my mom uses her smartphone for everything, she does not play games and stuff, so using that logic 1 or 2 in 10 people will only require the performance of x86 CPU, the rest will be served fine with ARM.
Plus ARM:
efficient
cheaper
will come with much more mobile options with plenty of battery
has integrated modem usually. -
I bet GPU based processing is going to skyrocket... maybe ARM will first spike a bit, but after that my money is on NVidia (or at least that style of processing units).
