this post was submitted on 28 Oct 2023
260 points (98.1% liked)

Technology

60052 readers
2892 users here now

This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.


Our Rules


  1. Follow the lemmy.world rules.
  2. Only tech related content.
  3. Be excellent to each another!
  4. Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
  5. Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
  6. Politics threads may be removed.
  7. No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
  8. Only approved bots from the list below, to ask if your bot can be added please contact us.
  9. Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed

Approved Bots


founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
 

Intel doesn’t think that Arm CPUs will make a dent in the laptop market::"They've been relegated to pretty insignificant roles in the PC business."

top 50 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] GenderNeutralBro@lemmy.sdf.org 53 points 1 year ago (5 children)

Nobody tell Intel about Apple Silicon! Or that Apple's sales are increasing while they rest of the industry is in a slump.

[–] Trippin@feddit.nl 5 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Do you have numbers? Cause I'm thinking at at 8.6% worldwide, it's not really a big chunk of the pie. Especially as the article states, it's declining compared to the year before.

[–] GenderNeutralBro@lemmy.sdf.org 8 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

The article you linked pretty much sums it up.

Apple’s Mac market share increased to 8.6%, reporting year-over-year shipment growth of 10.3%, the only major manufacturer to do so.

The year-over-year Mac shipment growth comes even as the broader market and competitors notch sharp declines in shipments, and as the Intel transition wraps up.

Lenovo, HQ, Dell and Acer all had year-over-year drops in shipments, according to IDC data.

load more comments (4 replies)
[–] simple@lemm.ee 50 points 1 year ago (17 children)

Of course intel would be the last company to admit x86 is dying. It just doesn't make sense to keep doubling down on it anymore, Apple has proven ARM is more power efficient and in many cases more powerful than x86. I wanted to buy a new laptop this year but it makes no sense to do so considering Windows ARM machines are right around the corner and will triple battery life and increase performance.

[–] MrSpArkle@lemmy.ca 26 points 1 year ago

Intel is a licensed ARM manufacturer. They’re just doing PR but are capable of playing both sides.

[–] morrowind@lemmy.ml 14 points 1 year ago (2 children)

This seems to be doggedly persistent rumor. Apple's M chips are better due to better engineering and vertical integration.

There is no inherent benefit to the underlying isa

[–] vzq@lemmy.blahaj.zone 5 points 1 year ago

Is it me or is this even worse news for Intel?

The new guys have better engineering that the guys they have been doing it since the dawn of the semiconductor age.

Pack it in.

[–] simple@lemm.ee 5 points 1 year ago (1 children)

ARM has a more efficient instruction set, uses less power, and generates less heat while matching performance. Not really a rumor.

[–] morrowind@lemmy.ml 14 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Source?

Here's mine

It's down to the engineering. Saying ARM has a more efficient instruction set is like saying C has more efficient syntax than python. Especially these days with pipelining 'n stuff, it all becomes very similar under the hood.

load more comments (1 replies)
load more comments (15 replies)
[–] art@lemmy.world 49 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Intel is finally innovating because of increased pressure. Don't let the Pat Gelsinger's calm tone fool you, he knows exactly what the competition is bringing. Apple has proven what Linux users have known for a few years, the CPU architecture is not as directly tied to the software as it once was. It doesn't matter if it's x86, ARM, or RISC-V. As long as we have native builds (or a powerful compatibility layer) it's going to be business as usual.

[–] kalleboo@lemmy.world 16 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

the CPU architecture is not as directly tied to the software as it once was

Yeah it used to be that emulating anything all would be slow as balls. These days, as long as you have a native browser you're halfway there, then 90% of native software will emulate without the user noticing since it doesn't need much power at all, and you just need to entice stuff that really needs power (Photoshop etc), half of which is already ARM-ready since it supports Macs.

The big wrench in switching to ARM will be games. Game developers are very stubborn, see how all games stopped working on Mac when Apple dropped 32-bit support, even though no Macs have been 32-bit for a decade.

[–] Powerpoint@lemmy.ca 9 points 1 year ago

The game support was pretty much crap even before then and a lot of the blame lies on Apple.

[–] Railison@aussie.zone 47 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Let’s file this in the cabinet of company quotes that come back to haunt them

[–] sanqueue@lemmy.world 15 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Blockbuster also didn't think Netflix would make a dent in the entertainment industry. Guess where they are now? 😂

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] mlg@lemmy.world 46 points 1 year ago (4 children)

Even AMD showed just how power hungry and thermal inefficient intel generally is

As Arm develops more every year, laptop OEMs will eventually switch just because of the insane power and thermal benefit.

I hope RISC-V gets its chance to shine too

[–] ichbinjasokreativ@lemmy.world 21 points 1 year ago (4 children)

Current gen AMD laptop CPUs rival apple silicon in performance and power consumption on mobile. x86 is nowhere near as close to dying as people think.

[–] JK_Flip_Flop@lemmy.world 10 points 1 year ago (3 children)

Aye exactly, Apple's marketing, which is often basically lying, has a lot to answer for in the prevelence of this idea. They'd have you believe that they're making chips with 14 billion percent more performance per watt and class beating performance. Whereas in reality they're very much going toe to toe with AMD and other high end ARM chip vendors

load more comments (3 replies)
load more comments (3 replies)
[–] Never_Sm1le@lemdro.id 10 points 1 year ago (3 children)

No laptop manufacturers would switch to arm until a good x86 compatibility comes along. People would make huge fuss if they can't use their favorite apps or if those apps don't run decently

[–] kelargo@lemmy.world 4 points 1 year ago (4 children)

Chromebook eco system might have a word with you.

[–] Natanael@slrpnk.net 4 points 1 year ago (2 children)

There's already CPUs with extra instructions specifically designed for efficient emulation of other instruction sets. This includes ARM CPUs with x86 emulation at near native speed.

load more comments (2 replies)
load more comments (1 replies)
[–] vzq@lemmy.blahaj.zone 8 points 1 year ago

RISCV is going to be huge, but it will take at least another decade for performance version to catch up with Intel and ARM. Hopefully by that time we know how to deal with architecture changes in consumer gear because of the ARM switch and can just painlessly move over.

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] nossaquesapao@lemmy.eco.br 31 points 1 year ago

Underestimating the competition is often a path to failure

[–] onlinepersona@programming.dev 27 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

Will Intel exist in 2026? NVIDIA and AMD are making ARM chips for 2025, China is investing heavily in RISC-V, and AMD already released a CPU that rivals Apple's M2 which is x86. Who knows how things will turn out once they release an ARM chip.

Things are shaping up to become an NVIDIA vs AMD arms race with some Chinese company becoming a dark horse and announcing a RISC-V chip in 2-3 years.

There was a company that announced a major technological advancement in chip fabrication in the US, but I can't remember who or what it was. My maggot brain thinks something with light-based chips or something? I dunno... that might also be something to look out for

Edit: it was intel: Intel Demos 8-Core, 528-Thread PIUMA Chip with 1 TB/s Silicon Photonics

[–] BetaDoggo_@lemmy.world 11 points 1 year ago (4 children)

It will take at least another 10 years to get a majority of the market off of x86 with the 20+ years of legacy software bound to it. Not to mention all of the current gen x86 CPUs that will still be usable 10 years from now.

[–] PopOfAfrica@lemmy.world 16 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Honestly, we just need some sort of compatibility layer. Direct porting isn't completely required yet.

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] Patch@feddit.uk 9 points 1 year ago (2 children)

You don't really need the majority of the market to have moved before things start to get tricky for Intel. They're a very much non-diversified company; the entire house is bet on x86. They've only just started dabbling in discrete GPUs, despite having made integrated GPU SOCs for years. Other than a bit of contract fabbing, almost every penny they make is from x86.

If ARM starts to make inroads into the laptop/desktop space and RISC-V starts to take a chunk of the server market, the bottom could fall out of Intel's business model fast.

[–] MaxVoltage@lemmy.world 4 points 1 year ago

if i overclock a 486 into the 10ghz range it will be stronger and warmer

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] onlinepersona@programming.dev 6 points 1 year ago (2 children)

I'm not sure about that. If for example the EU says "for the environment, you may not use chips that use X watts/Ghz" or something, x86 might be out of the game pretty quickly. Also, becoming market leader doesn't mean old hardware, it's the new hardware. I bet by 2030, the majority of chipsets sold will be either ARM or RISC-V. AMD did make an ARM rival with the 7840U, but with their entry in to ARM in 2025, it's not preposterous to believe the ARM ecosystem will pick up steam.

Also, recompiling opensource stuff for ARM is probably not going to be a huge issue. clang and gcc already support ARM as a compilation target, and unless there's x86 specific code in python or ruby interpreters, UI frameworks like Qt and GTK, they should be able to be compiled without much issue. If proprietary code can't keep up or won't keep up, the most likely outcome will be x86 emulators or the dumping of money into QEMU or stuff like Rosetta for windows.

Anyway, I'm talking out of my ass here as I don't write C/C++ and don't have to deal with cross-compilation, nor do I have any experience in hardware. It's all just a feeling.

[–] marius851000@lemmy.mariusdavid.fr 7 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

FYI, arm can already handle most Open Source Software with no problem as far compiling them is concerned. In particular, Qt and GTK does work, and cross compiling too is very easy. Not that it's necessary anyway (aside of probably faster compilation unless you have really good ARM CPU). In particular, QEMU have qemu-user (if you didn't know), which basically Rosetta for Linux, but with a good performance hit when testing cross-compiled code.

Edit: In my opinion, what will switch the faster to a non-x86 on a large scale (for computers, not counting phones, tablet and microcontroller, not using them anyway) are servers. A lot of them use standard open source software, so switching might be pretty easy if the package manager abstract it (like... All of those I know).

I mean, certain cloud provider are starting to offer renting such servers (and not speaking of all those hacker who host server on raspi (and then those who use standard linux on mobile phone too))

load more comments (2 replies)
load more comments (1 replies)
[–] Buffalox@lemmy.world 5 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

I think it's safe to say Apple has proved that wrong three times.
When they switched from Motorola to Power, then from Power to Intel, and latest from Intel to Arm.
If necessary software will be quickly modified, or it will run well enough on compatibility layers.

The switch can happen very fast for new hardware. The old systems may stay around for a while, but the previous CPU architecture can be fazed out very quickly in new systems. Apple has proven that.

load more comments (2 replies)
[–] MaxVoltage@lemmy.world 6 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

i think its neet how geopolitically this is all connected to the taiwan issue and only when the mainland can make chips as good as NvDia in taiwain will they be able to economically handle the invasion

if they invade today gpus and cpus prices explode into dumbdum levels for a few years bro it wouod suck for the whole world

[–] vzq@lemmy.blahaj.zone 27 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Intel is doing all the things dying companies do.

I hope I’m wrong about this, but I don’t think I am.

[–] fat_stig@lemmy.world 4 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Under previous non-technical CEOs Intel lost it's focus on innovation leadership and became a commodity supplier, losing ground to AMD and NVIDIA. Pat Gelsinger is different, he's an engineer, he led the 486 program, he is committed to regaining technical leadership and compete with TSMC as a foundry player. The Intel 4 node is now in mass production, Intel 3, 20A and 18A will follow in the next 2 years. New foundry capacity is being added in every factory, and new sites are being developed, 10's of billions of investment, None-core business units are being divested. 15th generation processors with be AI native, the plan is that in the same way as Centrino kick started WiFi, AI support on the desktop will be a game changer.

Are these things that dying companies do?

[–] vzq@lemmy.blahaj.zone 6 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Spend money they don’t have in a last ditch attempt to hit the right buzz words and turn things around for real this time? Yes. That’s exactly what they do.

But then again, so do companies that have just hit a minor slump.

Let’s hope they manage to fix things. I don’t like TSMCs monopoly position right now.

[–] some_guy@lemmy.sdf.org 15 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Posturing. It's already obvious that Arm is kicking ass. It may not take over, but it's more than made a dent.

[–] Natanael@slrpnk.net 10 points 1 year ago (1 children)

And if it won't be ARM, it might be RISC-V

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] MystikIncarnate@lemmy.ca 13 points 1 year ago

A brief history lesson relating to Intel and ARM.... Intel made ARM processors. They were not great. Of course, this was many many years ago, but even compared to others of the same from the same generation and year range, they were kind of poo.

The product was Intel Xscale. Manufactured starting in 2002, and only lasted about 3-4 years before being dropped. Right before there was a big smartphone boom. The processors found their way into the smartphone predecessor, the PDA. Notably, I purchased one device with this type of processor right before the whole thing collapsed.... A Dell Axiom x51v. It ran Windows Mobile, which later turned into Microsoft's attempt to compete with the likes of Google and Apple in the smartphone space, and it's obvious how that worked out for them.

Intel is saying this because they have to believe it's true. They've abandoned all ARM development and seem to have no intention of picking it up again. They failed in the ARM space, creating fairly poor versions of the chips that they did produce, and they seem to have no intention of repeating that failure.

Mark my words, Intel will likely go all in on RISC-V if anything. They'll continue to build x86, they have way too much invested in that space and it's one of few that they've actually had significant success in, but when it comes to mobile/RISC, ARM isn't something that they will be picking up again.

So bluntly, this is true... For Intel. They must believe it because they have given themselves no alternative.

[–] sndrtj@feddit.nl 12 points 1 year ago

As a owner of an ARM laptop: wtf are they smoking?

[–] Mio@feddit.nu 11 points 1 year ago (1 children)

They already have with Apple M1 Macs

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] banneryear1868@lemmy.world 11 points 1 year ago (3 children)

ARM just makes sense for portable devices for obvious reasons, x86 isn't dying though. For the average person who needs a laptop to do some professional-managerial work ARM is perfect.

[–] flying_sheep@lemmy.ml 5 points 1 year ago (4 children)

What are those reasons that you think are so obvious? I have no idea what you could be referring to 😅

[–] banneryear1868@lemmy.world 5 points 1 year ago (2 children)

ARM is more efficient and as a "system on chip" reduces the need for as many other components on the boards, phones for example. Unless you're doing heavy cpu or gpu intensive tasks there's a bunch of upsides and no downsides to ARM.

load more comments (2 replies)
load more comments (3 replies)
load more comments (2 replies)
[–] gnuplusmatt@startrek.website 10 points 1 year ago (1 children)

whatever the new architecture ends up being, at some point we will see x86 relegated to a daughter board in the machine while we transition, or x86 will live in a datacenter and you'll buy time on a "cloud pc" like what microsoft will already sell you in azure

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] mothattack@lemmy.ml 6 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Non x86 has been tried at least twice before on windows and failed. While this is certainly the best attempt yet, there is no guarantee of success. Sure would be nice however to get more competition.

[–] vzq@lemmy.blahaj.zone 12 points 1 year ago (2 children)

The main difference is that Alpha and Itanium came from the high end, where they struggled with low quantities, horrible yields and poor economies of scale.

ARM comes in from the low end, and suddenly the shoe is the other foot. There are more ARM processors in use right now than the number of x86 processors that were ever made in the entire history of computing. They are cheap, they are power efficient, they are everything the market screams for.

The writing is on the wall if Intel doesn’t get its ass in gear and gets substantially better very quickly. Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but best case they will remain the king of a shrinking, increasingly irrelevant market until they are acquired.

load more comments (2 replies)
[–] autotldr@lemmings.world 5 points 1 year ago

This is the best summary I could come up with:


But Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger doesn't seem worried about it yet, as he said on the company's most recent earnings call (via Seeking Alpha).

"Arm and Windows client alternatives, generally, they've been relegated to pretty insignificant roles in the PC business," said Gelsinger.

Ideally, Arm-based PCs promise performance on par with x86 chips from Intel and AMD, but with dramatically better power efficiency that allows for long-lasting battery life and fanless PC designs.

Qualcomm's latest Snapdragon chip for PCs, the 8cx Gen 3 (also called the Microsoft SQ3), appears in two consumer Windows devices.

Even if Gelsinger is wrong, he's trying to spin the rise of Arm PCs as a potentially positive thing, saying that Intel would be happy to manufacture these chips for its competitors.

Right now, TSMC has an effective monopoly on cutting-edge chip manufacturing, making high-end silicon for Qualcomm, Nvidia, AMD, Apple, and (tellingly) Intel itself.


The original article contains 521 words, the summary contains 149 words. Saved 71%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!

load more comments
view more: next ›