massive intel lay off

[coppice]

If anyone buys ARM, ARM is dead.

Ok, lets say that is true and this would have happened at the turn of the century, Intel purchased Arm and Arm was dead.
Then what? What brand of microcontrollers would all those billions of mobile devices be running at 

MIPS most probably.

[Kjelt]

MIPS most probably.

Depends on your definition of mobile devices 

[Kilrah]

If anyone buys ARM, ARM is dead.

That's the point - anything coming out next would have been branded intel, which is of course what would have been good for intel

[coppice]

MIPS most probably.

Depends on your definition of mobile devices 

MIPS is used in the PSPs and other mobile platforms, and scales right down to the PIC32 MCUs. ARM grew up into the big league, and MIPS worked its way down from the big league to small cores. They both cover pretty much all the bases today, and they both have proven to be very energy efficient.

[uncle_bob]

If anyone buys ARM, ARM is dead.

That's the point - anything coming out next would have been branded intel, which is of course what would have been good for intel

Hi

Very doubtful. The real answer would have been a small group of guys starting "Son of ARM" and doing the same thing. The thing that makes ARM attractive in a mobile (or *lots* of other things) is the ability to graft it to your own silicon. You don't have to buy the whole chip from ARM (or Intel).

Bob

[botcrusher]

Personally, after thinking some more about all this, it may be possible that we are seeing fallout from Netburst and used C2D cores for like, 8 bucks.

I thought at all the computers I've recently seen, and the vast majority of them are Pentium 4s reaching the end of their lives, and a bunch of C2Ds mixed along with them.

These machines still work, but with their caps venting It is only a matter of time before they all go poof.

Call it optimism, but most people I've seen use their tablets to complement their desktop PC, where as I've seen fewer laptop users have tablets. (Is it possible tablets could be keeping desktops alive? )

[RGB255_0_0]

They made Sandybridge too good. Even enthusiasts with a 2500k@5GHz don't feel the need to upgrade except for PCIe 3.0. For gaming PCIe 2.0 vs 3.0 is a few percent.

For office use today, a Pentium Anniversary is more than adequate for almost everyone, when coupled with an SSD especially. A lacklustre terrible AMD doesn't help either

[Kjelt]

The whole pc industry (with the exception of SSD manufacuturers) have innovation gain problems,
not only Intel where Moores law is abandoned and their tick-tock has been replaced with a tick-tock-yawn cycle,
Look at it:
DDR3 vs DDR4 RAM only a few % gain, no big deal, no need to upgrade at all, only lower power.
HDD: prices ($/GB) have been fixed for a long time already and progress is slow, last two years they have grown from 6TB drives to 8TB, if they would have had the same growth as in the 90s there would have been 36TB drives by now for $100 max.
Things are slowing down and the developments are targeted at lower power same performance instead of more performance. Perhaps when multi processor software development breaks through we can see some next steps (multiple processors on a motherboard), but for now it is pretty static.

[AntiProtonBoy]

Multicore processors are an evolution of this idea. It is easier to make a multicore processor where each processor need only communicate with a single shared bus, clocked at a much lower rate, rather than one larger, more powerful single core CPU.

But most programs don't parallel too well.  Video encoding and decoding are one of the most parallel programming tasks most computers will encounter, whereas something like web browsing and games are typically limited in how many cores can be used simultaneously. So a 64-core CPU wouldn't necessarily be much good.

The solution to that issue is not parallelism, but concurrency. It's important make a distinction between the two. Parallel execution implies breaking down a large problem into smaller kernel programs that do exactly the same thing on a data set or domain. Whereas concurrent execution implies a bunch of (sometimes unrelated) programs running side-by-side, and communicate between them asynchronously. Not all algorithms will lend itself to parallelism, but many classic algorithms can be certainly executed concurrently.

Now the problem is synchronisation between cores and the data they share. It's huge mindfuck and it is very difficult to get it right. Most of the time, deterministic mutation of data is thrown out the window with concurrent systems. However, there is a pretty neat and beautiful solution to this, called the Actor programming model. Erlang was one of the first programming languages to make use of this concept on thousand core machines with a lot of success.

[tszaboo]

IBM is all but dead as we knew it, I don't think anything can really save it.

Yes, no more typewriters from them.
Businesses change. We get upset when someone leaves the electronics business because we stay.

[Synthetase]

They made Sandybridge too good. Even enthusiasts with a 2500k@5GHz don't feel the need to upgrade except for PCIe 3.0. For gaming PCIe 2.0 vs 3.0 is a few percent.

Heh. I still run a 2500k. Bought it in 2011, no need to upgrade. Well, maybe when Half-Life 3 is released...

[Stray Electron]

IBM is another big tech company that has exited chip making and is also issuing layoff notices. At least Intel still choose to refer to those people as people as opposed to IBM which calls them the more impersonal term "resources" and layoffs as "resource actions".

    Welcome to Corporate America where employees are seen as "resources" instead of people and are disposed of just as quickly as a used piece of furniture. Take tip here from someone that's been through this and survived it. Get an education and make yourself invaluable within the company and keep updating your education and skill set all of your working career.  In the face of global economic competition, no company is going to be able to keep marginally skilled or or non-income producing workers, even if they wanted to.

   If this is happened to skilled and educated workers in this county, well, you can just imagine what's going to happen to all those UN-skilled burger flippers at McDonalds that are demanding $15 per hour!

[Tinkerer]

They made Sandybridge too good. Even enthusiasts with a 2500k@5GHz don't feel the need to upgrade except for PCIe 3.0. For gaming PCIe 2.0 vs 3.0 is a few percent.

Heh. I still run a 2500k. Bought it in 2011, no need to upgrade. Well, maybe when Half-Life 3 is released...

And yes, I too need a powerful computer for ever increasing demands of newer games. In fact I expect the market for gaming PCs to still be around a long time.(although I expect a crash in the gaming market at some point) Aside from games though, various other heavy tasks are also things I need power for.

[RGB255_0_0]

We may see a slight spike in Skylake and enthusiast desktop lines when the VR makers get their act together; but even then a PS4 MkII can do so much cheaper (but console is all about compromise).

I doubt Half-Life 3 will ever be released; Valve make far too much money from Steam and hat sales to really care about ever making a game again.

http://i2.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/original/000/370/662/36c.jpg

[CatalinaWOW]

   If this is happened to skilled and educated workers in this county, well, you can just imagine what's going to happen to all those UN-skilled burger flippers at McDonalds that are demanding $15 per hour!

Burger flippers are better off in some ways.  You can't send a flipped burger through the internet.  The future looks tough for skilled mind workers who live in high cost areas.  Businesses and customers send their money to the best value area which is usually someplace with low costs, and populated by people who either grew up dirt poor, or at least whose parents did, so they are quite happy with something those in mature economies disdain.

If you live in one of those high cost areas and want to keep a job look for things that can't be transported easily.  Auto repair.  Home building.  Infrastructure work.  Military or police work.  Service jobs.  While there are places that will hang on for a while due to the synergy of having lots of high tech people in a small area, it is a temporary happy place. 

The inner optimist in me points out that this will all level out over time, and talent and hard work will be rewarded  worldwide.  But is will be tough living through the transitional period.

[Tomorokoshi]

Call it optimism, but most people I've seen use their tablets to complement their desktop PC, where as I've seen fewer laptop users have tablets. (Is it possible tablets could be keeping desktops alive? )

I've been to meetings where people bring their laptop, iPad, and iPhone! And they use all of them!

[rdl]

I used to think gaming could keep PCs going, but not any more. That market has shifted to consoles and game developers seem to be less and less inclined to spend money making the PC versions of their games any better than they have to.

[retrolefty]

On quick research this appears to be a 10% employee cut back or so. How does that rank with other 'massive' lay offs of major corporations?

[wkb]

eh, think about all the govt/american industrial usage.

no one is ever gonna trust anything built in china

Depends on your vriewpoint.  There are people out there who throw NSA-backdoored kit in the same basket as PRC-Army backdoored kit.

[uncle_bob]

On quick research this appears to be a 10% employee cut back or so. How does that rank with other 'massive' lay offs of major corporations?

Hi

On a percentage basis? It's just "yet another tech layoff". Nothing out of the ordinary in that respect. Been happening pretty much forever and ever.

As a layoff at Intel? It's a pretty big deal. They normally don't do business this way. It marks at least a bump in the road for them. It may be a turning point. Check back in 4 years and that part will be more clear.

As a hit to the whole tech industry? This alone is a drop in the bucket. There is way more "churn" in a typical month that this layoff represents in a year.

Bob

[Mechanical Menace]

I used to think gaming could keep PCs going, but not any more. That market has shifted to consoles and game developers seem to be less and less inclined to spend money making the PC versions of their games any better than they have to.

It's been said PC gaming has been dying since I moved away from Amigas and Ataris to IBM compatibles. Steam's still going strong, some MMOs still have more active players than there are PSN and Xbox Live accounts combined, Minecraft is still selling more PC than console or pocket editions...

But outside of the console makers many in games are pretty much convinced this is the last real console generation and that only PCs and maybe (and only maybe) Nintendo will be left as smart TVs become more powerful and consoles become more and more like a locked down PC. Pretty soon you're going to have to choose between a PS4 or PS4.5, Xbox One or upgradeable Xbox One and a half...

But meh, I think both these predictions are as much BS as they always have been. More casual gamers may have moved from their browsers and consoles to their phones but I think there will always be enough "hardcore gamers" to keep the PC master race and console fanboys arguments relevant. And a lot of us will still own at least one console and PC and just join the arguments for a laugh

[dannyf]

Look at renesas synergy s7 and think about the trajectory for products like that.

[coppice]

Look at renesas synergy s7 and think about the trajectory for products like that.

Its another family of MCUs with an M4 core. Slightly oddball, as most people trying to get to 240MHz go with the M7 core, but nothing very special. They might struggle to get traction with a brand new line, as so many people think Renesas isn't going to be in business for very long.

It might help if you said what you find interesting?

[uncle_bob]

Hi

The gotcha with ARM is this:

Say I'm a large user of CPU's. (Fill in the name of any major tablet or phone outfit here). Rather than buying CPU chips from (say) Intel (with an ARM in them), I go out and buy a small design house. Those 30 to 300 people drop an ARM plus a few odd parts into a chip design. They cut out all of the stuff that my tablet or phone has no use for. I then don't have the die taken up by things I don't use. I don't have power going into sub sections that are not helping out. I contract directly with a fab to get them made.

The net result is that ARM is not tightly involved in the process. They supply the designs for this and that. They charge licensing on a per feature basis (sort of). They aren't quite a "take it or leave it" marketing outfit. I certainly don't see anything even close to the Intel marketing machine behind ARM. That's a lot of people they don't employ. If the people selling ARM based chips want to stay in business, they need to and indeed do spend big bucks on marketing.

Net result, the "big guy" gets a really good deal from an ARM based design ....

Bob

[Kjelt]

Hi
The gotcha with ARM is this:
Say I'm a large user of CPU's. (Fill in the name of any major tablet or phone outfit here). Rather than buying CPU chips from (say) Intel (with an ARM in them), I go out and buy a small design house. Those 30 to 300 people drop an ARM plus a few odd parts into a chip design. They cut out all of the stuff that my tablet or phone has no use for.

Sorry but to my knowledge the ARM core is just an important part of a uC but the peripherals are very important and difficult also. And they are often proprietary designs.
Therefore you will only see huge firms implementing and building ARM cores to a commercial "cheap" microcontroller product, like NXP, ST, Broadcom to name just a few.
And even these huge firms screw up sometimes (I2C peripheral with ST for example).
Not a small design house with 300 people, I wonder if these even exist and what kind of peripherals they would use?
Perhaps if you take an FPGA or something like that, but those are incredible expensive building blocks, a totally different market segment as the standard ARM core uC's.