Intel has a Pretty Big Problem..

RSR · Wednesday at 09:00

humbug said:
These are the people who matter most, and its not looking good.

These people are starting to wonder if Intel will even be around in 5 years....

When you say these people matter the most, do you mean DC's?

If so I can provide some insight, as I work in that industry and I am currently in the process of designing and building out a whole new DC which Dell / Intel have been selected for and we are not talking about a few hundred servers here overall, it's on the order of magnitude more. While I can't speak as a whole I can speak from personal experience designing these places. While AMD has seen an uptick in use, it's still by a long shot mostly Intel and that's dealing with workloads from AI through to Virtualisation. It's also not easy to change a vendor, as you may need to change a lot of other servers out to match and then you have a period of validation testing before setting them live.

TrixP10 · Wednesday at 09:45

RSR said:
When you say these people matter the most, do you mean DC's?

If so I can provide some insight, as I work in that industry and I am currently in the process of designing and building out a whole new DC which Dell / Intel have been selected for and we are not talking about a few hundred servers here overall, it's on the order of magnitude more. While I can't speak as a whole I can speak from personal experience designing these places. While AMD has seen an uptick in use, it's still by a long shot mostly Intel and that's dealing with workloads from AI through to Virtualisation. It's also not easy to change a vendor, as you may need to change a lot of other servers out to match and then you have a period of validation testing before setting them live.

Dell / Intel - say no more

It's also not easy to change a vendo because of 'contra revenue', kick backs, 'Intel retention programme' and mind set to name but a few. Yes, it takes time (for the money to run out) lol

RSR · Wednesday at 09:52

TrixP10 said:
It's also not easy to change a vendo because of 'contra revenue', kick backs, 'Intel retention programme' and mind set to name but a few. Yes, it takes time (for the money to run out) lol

No, I'll give you a real-world example.

If you have a VMware cluster you can't run different CPU types otherwise you are unable to move VMs between hosts when they are up and running so that creates a whole number of issues and as I said, it's not a single host which needs to be changed its every host in that cluster.

Rroff · Wednesday at 10:02

adamsleath said:
there are various articles on actual failure rates:

As I've posted before - no one I know of who has data like that is seeing the kind of failure rates talked about in Wendell's video(s) - even those who are doing very similar stuff with Unreal Engine 5. Some are seeing higher than normal failure rates but it is still in the 3% kind of region not 50+%.

That doesn't mean there potentially isn't a bigger issue there building up for the future though which certain workloads may be accelerating but I'm still somewhat suspicious that the more extreme side of this may be mostly limited to certain batches of tray CPUs and maybe a small amount in retail. This is the problem with Intel being so hands off with the whole thing though, no one really knows.

Some of the data I've seen certain YouTubers coming up with it doesn't seem to be clear in the data if it is reports of 1 CPU crashing 1000 times or 1000 CPUs crashing once, etc. and they've just made assumptions.

TrixP10 · Wednesday at 10:17

RSR said:
No, I'll give you a real-world example.

If you have a VMware cluster you can't run different CPU types otherwise you are unable to move VMs between hosts when they are up and running so that creates a whole number of issues and as I said, it's not a single host which needs to be changed its every host in that cluster.

agreed, it takes time. but it will happen. some get upto speed quicker than others no doubt.

G J · Wednesday at 10:21

TrixP10 said:
Dell / Intel - say no more
It's also not easy to change a vendo because of 'contra revenue', kick backs, 'Intel retention programme' and mind set to name but a few. Yes, it takes time (for the money to run out) lol

Do you work in the industry as you seem to know all the in's and out's and one of the most active posters in this thread so what knowledge can you share that Intel personally effected you?

TrixP10 · Wednesday at 10:59

G J said:
Do you work in the industry as you seem to know all the in's and out's and one of the most active posters in this thread so what knowledge can you share that Intel personally effected you?

I used to work in the industry and have friends / colleagues that were directly affected by Intel's 'competitive business practices'.

Freddie1980 · Wednesday at 11:36

humbug said:
These people are starting to wonder if Intel will even be around in 5 years....

People were saying the same thing about AMD not to long ago but at least AMD could rely on it's graphics to stop them from going completely under. Intel's lack of genuine product diversity is really hurting them IMO, it's not like they've not had some cool ideas in the past but they've just never been able to follow through and push for market adoption. Intel has a lot of arrogance for a company who's stock price lags the S&P 500 that's mostly been driven by tech over the last 20 years.

humbug · Wednesday at 12:56

RSR said:
When you say these people matter the most, do you mean DC's?

If so I can provide some insight, as I work in that industry and I am currently in the process of designing and building out a whole new DC which Dell / Intel have been selected for and we are not talking about a few hundred servers here overall, it's on the order of magnitude more. While I can't speak as a whole I can speak from personal experience designing these places. While AMD has seen an uptick in use, it's still by a long shot mostly Intel and that's dealing with workloads from AI through to Virtualisation. It's also not easy to change a vendor, as you may need to change a lot of other servers out to match and then you have a period of validation testing before setting them live.

AMD's datcentre share stands at 33% as of Q4 2023, its likley to be 40% by the end of this year.

Now, with that in mind here is the situation.

Intel have 120,000 employees and $56 Billion in Debt.
Thier Datacentre revenue in the last results, Q2 2024 was $3 Billion, oporating income out of that was $300 Million, thier overall operating income for that quarter was $0.

AMD have 25,000 employees and about $0.3 Billion in Debt.
Thier Datacentre revenue in the last results, Q2 2024 was $2.8 Billion, oporating income out of that was $743 Million, thier overall operating income for that quarter was $345 Million, that's after buying out ZT Systems for cash and stock options, $4.9 Billion.

So with 33% market share in Datacentre AMD have 93% of Intel's revenue and more than 2.4X the opporating income. And they are still relentlessly growing against Intel.

You know what's between these numbers? Intel are giving thier stuff away in a bit to stay relevent.

Also, AMD are now going after Intel's Laptop market share.

Right now i would avoid Intel's stock.

RSR · Wednesday at 13:09

humbug said:
You know what's between these numbers? Intel are giving thier stuff away in a bit to stay relevent.

Yes, we can all read pretty presentations. I was just giving you a real-world example, also depending on the agreements with hardware refresh is normally done on a 3-5-year cycle in places I have worked.

humbug · Wednesday at 13:11

RSR said:
Yes, we can all read pretty presentations. I was just giving you a real-world example, also depending on the agreements with hardware refresh is normally done on a 3-5-year cycle in places I have worked.

If no one bought Intel's stuff they would be at 0% marketshare, even AMD sold something during the bad years.

adamsleath · Wednesday at 18:11

humbug said:
AMD's datcentre share stands at 33% as of Q4 2023, its likley to be 40% by the end of this year.

Now, with that in mind here is the situation.

Intel have 120,000 employees and $56 Billion in Debt.
Thier Datacentre revenue in the last results, Q2 2024 was $3 Billion, oporating income out of that was $300 Million, thier overall operating income for that quarter was $0.

AMD have 25,000 employees and about $0.3 Billion in Debt.
Thier Datacentre revenue in the last results, Q2 2024 was $2.8 Billion, oporating income out of that was $743 Million, thier overall operating income for that quarter was $345 Million, that's after buying out ZT Systems for cash and stock options, $4.9 Billion.

So with 33% market share in Datacentre AMD have 93% of Intel's revenue and more than 2.4X the opporating income. And they are still relentlessly growing against Intel.

You know what's between these numbers? Intel are giving thier stuff away in a bit to stay relevent.

Also, AMD are now going after Intel's Laptop market share.

Right now i would avoid Intel's stock.

right. so intel manages to employ many more people. ?

whatever investors pour money into will grow.

AMD for the most part of the past 2 odd decades have been scrounging out their existence with sub par products, but competitive in the graphics card arena. but theyve had their fan base of supporters. why is that? because outright monopolies aren't good for consumers perhaps?

in terms of performance. a 7700k or 8600k wiped the floor with ryzen 1st and second gens. it's only with the 5000 series they've basically caught up to where intel were in 2017.
now the rhetorics have changed for their fanbase. because they have upped their game in terms of fabrication . well kudos. intel responds.

Nemiyen · Wednesday at 18:35

RSR said:
No, I'll give you a real-world example.

If you have a VMware cluster you can't run different CPU types otherwise you are unable to move VMs between hosts when they are up and running so that creates a whole number of issues and as I said, it's not a single host which needs to be changed its every host in that cluster.

I've not used VMWare in ages but does it not include an option to run the CPU in "compatibility" mode like Hyper-V does?

Granted, this is crap and you wouldn't want to do this I guess but it's there if you need to.

Ideally, you would always use clusters of the exact same server spec so you'd have to run a full on AMD cluster or Intel cluster. Depending on the workload, downtime is required to move between clusters but with a SAN setup, it can be done in a single reboot timescale.

RSR · Wednesday at 18:51

Nemiyen said:
I've not used VMWare in ages but does it not include an option to run the CPU in "compatibility" mode like Hyper-V does?

Granted, this is crap and you wouldn't want to do this I guess but it's there if you need to.

Ideally, you would always use clusters of the exact same server spec so you'd have to run a full on AMD cluster or Intel cluster. Depending on the workload, downtime is required to move between clusters but with a SAN setup, it can be done in a single reboot timescale.

You have EVC mode, which allows operations between CPU generations but not different vendors. However, when you are dealing with 50K+ VMs, your infrastructure needs to "just work"

As I said in my original post, I am dealing with hardware on a large scale and not a few racks worth so there is a lot a design and verification work before any customer data goes live on those.

RSR · Wednesday at 18:56

Also to add to address the kick backs, while I can't detail specifics I will say a single virtualisation host normally comes in around the ~40K and some of the VDI / AI hosts are upwards of 100K per host

humbug · Wednesday at 20:15

RSR said:
Also to add to address the kick backs, while I can't detail specifics I will say a single virtualisation host normally comes in around the ~40K and some of the VDI / AI hosts are upwards of 100K per host

What do you mean kick backs?

RSR · Wednesday at 20:53

humbug said:
What do you mean kick backs?

It was in reply to @TrixP10 comment about kickbacks assume he meant heavy discounts / free items from his comments. There is an element of discount but that's purely due to the large quantities which are ordered, as with many items ordered in bulk.

humbug · Wednesday at 20:54

RSR said:
It was in reply to @TrixP10 comment about kickbacks assume he meant heavy discounts / free items from his comments. There is an element of discount but that's purely due to the large quantities which are ordered, as with many items ordered in bulk.

Ah ok, thx

jigger · Wednesday at 21:28

adamsleath said:
in terms of performance. a 7700k or 8600k wiped the floor with ryzen 1st and second gens.

This isn’t correct. Skylake was pretty soundly beaten by Zen. Outside of single core workloads Intel offered nothing.

jigger · Wednesday at 21:33

RSR said:
When you say these people matter the most, do you mean DC's?

If so I can provide some insight, as I work in that industry and I am currently in the process of designing and building out a whole new DC which Dell / Intel have been selected for and we are not talking about a few hundred servers here overall, it's on the order of magnitude more. While I can't speak as a whole I can speak from personal experience designing these places. While AMD has seen an uptick in use, it's still by a long shot mostly Intel and that's dealing with workloads from AI through to Virtualisation. It's also not easy to change a vendor, as you may need to change a lot of other servers out to match and then you have a period of validation testing before setting them live.

The problem with choosing Intel is it can leave the business at a disadvantage against a competitor using AMD.