anon (anon.delete@this.anon.com) on February 1, 2013 6:57 pm wrote:
> Richard Cownie (tich.delete@this.pobox.com) on February 1, 2013 10:11 am wrote:
> > anon (anon.delete@this.anon.com) on February 1, 2013 9:36 am wrote:
> >
> > > Well I believe it is you who do not understand. Their dominance is in manufacturing.
> > > They achieved that dominance in logic mfg with their x86 market, certainly. From there,
> > > they have been able to plunder much of the RISC and Unix server markets, which were
> > > absolutely not x86 dominated, and are actually notoriously adverse to change.
> >
> > Well, not *that* adverse to change.
>
> But apparently you think the Android market is :)

Not at all. I think the Android-based device market is absolutely open to change,
to whatever is either a) "good enough and cheaper" *or* b) "the same price but much better". I think Intel wouldn't like approach a), because losing high-margin x86
business and gaining low-margin Android business would hurt them. And it's not
clear that they can deliver b) - as others have commented, now that the Android
software has matured, it delivers a pretty good experience on a dual-core 1.5GHz ARM,
together with all-day battery life, and the people who want a premium product
are mostly buying Apple and Samsung, neither of which would want to deal with Intel
in a way which yielded big profits to Intel.
>
> In fact RISC/UNIX servers are *far* more resistant than the Android market.
>
> > The "RISC market" that Intel plundered from
> > 1995 on didn't even exist in 1985. Change doesn't happen overnight, but it
> > certainly does happen over 5-10 years. And the increasing use of open-source
> > software has made it much easier to switch to a different ISA.
> >
> > And for the relative importance of manufacturing vs design, you could look at
> > iAPX432 or i860 or Itanium, all products which had access to Intel's
> > manufacturing but either vanished without trace, or limped along without
> > ever establishing dominance.
>
> None of them had the correct volume/profit ratios, it's not a real mystery. It's not
> a magical "intel manufacturing advantage steamrolls everything" effect. It is "intel
> has been the best at competing in, and has the best manufacturing technology to suit
> large volumes". Besides, they were also significantly competing against Intel x86.

They didn't have the correct volume/profit ratio because the designs sucked. As does
Atom, with a similar result at the moment. iAPX432, and later Itanium, were supposed
to end up on everyone's desktops. They just didn't make it.


> Yes, I keep repeating myself. If the market changes and smartphone becomes significantly
> high volume and high revenue to matter for Intel, then they will be competitive there and
> entry to ARM market really is not as big a problem as you're trying to make out.

Yes, you do keep repeating yourself. You have a ridiculous level of faith in
Intel's ability to pull a world-beating product out of their sleeve just when
they need it. If you'd ever tried writing vector routines for the i860, as I have,
you would probably be more aware that their products are of *ahem* variable
quality, and their success outside x86 is not a foregone conclusion.