8 year upgrade cycles future? Intel running on fumes.

[Hugo Drax]

With Intel pretty much running on fumes, and each new cycle only offering a 5 percent performance increase, it seems waiting 8 years makes sense for buisness and most home users.

Most CPUs now are so powerful that they site idle with cores parked for the majority of users today, and with the small performance jumps now Intel is gonna be painted in a corner.

Also you have the laws of physics. Intel does not seem to have much more room left to shrink/improve the architecture anymore.

I say 3 more generations tops?

 

[BUnit1701]

Unless OEM's start offering 8 year warranties (which would be slitting their own wrists) businesses are going to stick to the ~3 year cycle, and as we all know they are the ones who drive most of the revenue/sales.

 

[ShintaiDK]

Performance/watt is the key. And yes the desktop is dead.

Servers love it. Mobile love it. Massive improvements in both.

The only thing that can stop the show is if they hit a barrier in terms of cost/shrinking/changing electrical properties.

I cant see any problem for Intel the next 10 years.

 

[Yuriman]

For desktop PCs, maybe, but I know more and more people who are giving their desktops away and just using mobile devices. Laptop/tablet batteries don't last 8 years, and every year they're getting smaller and lighter.

 

[positivedoppler]

Unless OEM's start offering 8 year warranties (which would be slitting their own wrists) businesses are going to stick to the ~3 year cycle, and as we all know they are the ones who drive most of the revenue/sales.

We have a 5 year cycle. Can't say which company I worked (it is one of the largest employer in the us)for but a few years ago we went for 3 years to 5 years tech refresh. Even now, majority of the engineer refused the upgrade because the negligible gain for day to day email, web, Microsoft stuff ran just fine on the old core duo. It was more trouble moving all our stuff onto a new computer. Finally SSHD tempted more people to upgrade, but that had nothing to do with the cpu

 

[Madpacket]

On the desktop this is true although the mobile and server space are still growing. We've hit diminished returns for a number of reasons that I'm sure many of us could write volumes about on the reasons why.

8 years is a long cycle for the other components that make up a computer so I don't think its realistic. It has less to do with computing power and more about the longevity of components and new connector types like USB 3.1 or NVME, power consumption, especially at idle is another good reason to cycle sooner.

What's housed on these new motherboards is a better reason to upgrade than over small gains in performance.

This is why people are spouting "The Desktop is Dead". It's not, there are just many new markets and only so many consumers to sell to.

 

[positivedoppler]

8 years is plenty with the move to little thin clients. Some of computers (more like big bricks that does the computing on a server, newer one we have are thin clients)has been around for over 10 years and they still work just fine. Why not, all the computing is done on a server

 

[MongGrel]

Performance/watt is the key. And yes the desktop is dead.

People have been saying that for well over a decade.

Where else would gamers slap their big GPUs in ?

 

[positivedoppler]

The excessive battery life for business is complete nonesense. I have a docking station at work and another ac adapter set in my laptop bag and another at home. Longest regular flight is 5 hours coast to coast and me and nobody else is working nonestop the entire flight. Longest routine meeting I set into is 4 hours. Usually, it's bad business manner to have your laptop out distracted while a meeting is going on. So mo, businesses rarely have a need for longer than 5 hour battery life,, that's for home users who wants to watch 8 hours of movie while not plugged in

 

[cbn]

Performance/watt is the key. And yes the desktop is dead.

The new desktop is called "the console" and I would like to see Intel move into that area rather than reserving large iGPUs purely for workstations (including mobile ones).

So...

quad core GT4e = workstation SKUs

dual core GT4e (made from quad core GT4e dies) = console replacement SKUs

P.S. Going a step further, I would like to see the console SKU performance optimized for Linux (maybe even centered around a BGA 5" x 5" reference board). This, in part, so Intel can get another software ecosystem (outside of Android and Windows) into critical mass phase.

 

[Charmonium]

For desktop PCs, maybe, but I know more and more people who are giving their desktops away and just using mobile devices. Laptop/tablet batteries don't last 8 years, and every year they're getting smaller and lighter.

This. Very few people actually NEED a desktop computer. The vast majority only use it for social media and web browsing anyway. The only real difference for most people is that historically, it was a pain in the ass to hook a phone up to a monitor. But with now functionality like Miracast, you can have a movie on your phone or tablet and watch it on a compatible HDTV. Same with web surfing. Add bluetooth keyboard support and there's no real difference - for most people that is.

I think people will still have laptops for a handful of special applications but there won't be many reasons to upgrade unless you're using a machine for work. The only real exception is the gaming market. That seems to be the only area where applications can take full advantage of a desktop with a dedicated GPU.

 

[Hugo Drax]

Unless OEM's start offering 8 year warranties (which would be slitting their own wrists) businesses are going to stick to the ~3 year cycle, and as we all know they are the ones who drive most of the revenue/sales.

Or they just keep the desktop past 3 years and swap out when they fail. Computers now have very long mtbf times.

 

[Hugo Drax]

People have been saying that for well over a decade.

Where else would gamers slap their big GPUs in ?

You need to go back. People used to say PC computers were toys and the 3270 mainframe environment will never die.

Computer desktops could be the 21st century version of the 3270 terminal tied to a IBM 3081 system.

 

[positivedoppler]

The future of home computing I believe is thin clients. One powerful server PC with a bunch of cheap thin client laptops. There will be a large powerful home server (acting like an appliance) with multiple mobile devices(thin clients) connected to it for processing power. More and more companies are moving to Citrix where everything we do is done via a virtual desktop and I have no doubt one day our personal home computing will follow the same trend.

 

[frozentundra123456]

Intel running on fumes? Seriously? How many billion profit did they make last year?

 

[Hugo Drax]

Intel running on fumes? Seriously? How many billion profit did they make last year?

How much profits did Polaroid,Kodak,lehmans,gm did in the mid 1990?

Stop thinking one quarter at a time and think 10 years down the line.

 

[Charmonium]

Intel running on fumes? Seriously? How many billion profit did they make last year?

It's all about growth. The only real growth right now is in the portables area and AFAIK, Intel hasn't made any significant inroads in that area.

There's nothing wrong with being in a mature industry. You can still make money. But you want growth because that's what supports your stock price. Look at the p/e multiples for a company like Amazon or Netflix. They get multiples hundreds of times their earnings per share because of growth. Once that stops, down goes your share price. Even look at Apple. You'd think that would be a huge growth company but it's not. P/E is higher than normal but still only in the 20's - and they're in a growth market. Intel isn't. They're left being dependent upon the upgrade cycle which is gradually getting longer and longer.

 

[ninaholic37]

I'm not worried. I don't work for Intel and can find used computers any time.

 

[RussianSensation]

Performance/watt is the key. And yes the desktop is dead.

Servers love it. Mobile love it. Massive improvements in both.

Don't make stuff up. My Feb 2013 IVB i7-3635QM is a quad-core i7 with HT and has a maximum boost of 3.2Ghz on 4 cores. Its replacement, a $378 OEM chip, is an i7-6820HQ that boosts to 3.2Ghz on 4 cores. That means there is still no viable upgrade path as a 20% boost in nearly 3 years is a joke. The only incentives for upgrading is to get a PCIe SSD and a faster GPU or a higher resolution display than 1080P. CPU speed isn't a factor.

Per AT:
Ivy Bridge to Haswell: Average ~11.2% Up
Haswell to Broadwell: Average ~3.3% Up
Broadwell to Skylake (DDR4): Average ~2.7% Up
==> 1.112 x 1.033 x 1.027 = Barely an 18% increase in IPC.

I doubt that i7-6820HQ will manage to even get 8 points in Cinebench R11.5 64Bit. The only way to even get 30%+ performance increase is if you get a 8-10 lbs gaming laptop where the cooling system is sufficient to overclock the Skylake i7 but overclocking isn't an option on most 4.5-5.5 lbs laptops; OR spend big bucks for the $600-1000 mobile CPU options. That means by February 2016, there will only be a 20% increase in performance at the similar price level vs. say an i7 3635QM, which is far from MASSIVE as you put it. For other gamers who have an even faster i7 than 3635QM, Skylake mobile CPUs are a joke of an upgrade unless one has $ to burn or needs every ounce of performance for 980M SLI laptop.

At this pace, it'll take 4-5 years before it's worth upgrading on the mobile CPU side from a Core i7 IVB/Haswell 45-47W CPU.

Businesses might be on a 2-3 year cadence but most consumers aren't, unless they are gamers. If we include Apple's laptops, I wouldn't be surprised if most Mac owners are on a 5+ year upgrade cycle. Even a basic Core i3 laptop with a modern Samsung 850 512GB-1TB SSD is more than enough for most stuff people use their laptop for (students, business professionals, etc.). I bet a lot of new laptop purchases are coming from natural consumer evolution cycle (i.e., a human eventually turns 18 and needs to go to college/university, needs a laptop for work so they buy one). That means there will be demand for any generation of Intel's CPUs simply because of new generations of humans replacing older ones but the generation that has primarily finished undergraduate/masters today has little reason to get a new laptop. For companies that require workers to use a laptop at work in developed countries, these employees get their laptops for free which gives them less reason to buy their own laptop too.

Stop thinking one quarter at a time and think 10 years down the line.

In the last 3 years I haven't met anyone at work or outside of work over the age of 50 who bought a new laptop. From anecdotal evidence, most adults today are much more likely to get a new larger smartphone and/or a tablet. Some of my friends are still on 2008-2012 laptops and they have no interest in upgrading other than dropping in an SSD/up the RAM and upgrade to Windows 10. For those who require a laptop/desktop for work, the company provides it.

Even if Intel's CPUs increased in performance at 10-11% per annum, it would take an astounding ~7 years for the CPU speed to roughly double. For someone who is rendering, needs a lot of horsepower for professional applications, they are going X99 platform (or whatever the equivalent is), or Xeons and not focusing that much on laptops for horsepower. If time (as in tied to the speed or processing a CPU-related business task) = $$$ for a professional business, no quad-core i7 laptop is good enough. For everyone else who is a non-gamer, even if CPU speed increases 50-100% in the next 5-7 years, are they going to time that it took 3 seconds less to open Microsoft Suite?

The biggest reasons for upgrading a laptop are not CPU related - old laptop breaks/the battery is shot and it's not replaceable, faster storage (SSDs/PCIe), better screens, desire for lower weight and longer battery times, faster GPUs for gaming. I doubt most consumers care about small annual increases in CPU performance and Intel is no rush to sell a $250 6-core CPU either. On the gaming side, which is a big market and has seen a lot of growth in laptops in the last 5 years, the laptop gamer is likely to buy a new laptop let's say in 2-3 years for the increased GPU performance but with that comes a "free" CPU upgrade since gaming laptops have the latest Intel CPU architectures. But it doesn't mean their primary motivator for upgrading their laptop was for more CPU speed.

It's no wonder Intel's revenues and profits are skyrocketing since they are selling $230-350 i5/i7 CPUs with <130mm2 die sizes.

 

[Hugo Drax]

Wow,18 percent. That's worse than I envisioned. Yeah it's gonna get worse. How much more can you squeeze out of the new processors. Even Intel is doing another tick with Kabay lake.

We will hit a wall just like with air travel where we are not yet touching supersonic. The Concorde got scrapped and no replacement.

 

[myocardia]

How much profits did Polaroid,Kodak,lehmans,gm did in the mid 1990?

Stop thinking one quarter at a time and think 10 years down the line.

I can assure you that in 10 years, Xeon CPUs will still be, by far, Intel's largest profit product. Had any of the above-mentioned companies invented the Xeon, they would also still be in great financial shape.

 

[myocardia]

How much more can you squeeze out of the new processors. Even Intel is doing another tick with Kabay lake.

We will hit a wall just like with air travel where we are not yet touching supersonic. The Concorde got scrapped and no replacement.

Hugo, were you not aware that we have multiple different things that can be used to manufacture CPUs, besides silicon and copper? If there weren't, you would be correct, but there are. Intel will be moving to Germanium/Indium in the not-too-distant future.

After that, we all hope that they will have figured out quantum computing, but if not, they will at least be using whatever components that are required to continue to give us smaller and faster CPUs. They might not be almost free, like they are today, but they will exist.

 

[freeskier93]

Wow,18 percent. That's worse than I envisioned. Yeah it's gonna get worse. How much more can you squeeze out of the new processors. Even Intel is doing another tick with Kabay lake.

We will hit a wall just like with air travel where we are not yet touching supersonic. The Concorde got scrapped and no replacement.

Except the wall Intel is approaching is opaque, it's unknown if there's anything on the other side. With supersonic air travel the wall is transparent, we know we can go faster it's just an issue of cost and politics. We don't know yet if current processor technology is sustainable, coming up to the wall companies like Intel and AMD have to determine if it's worth trying to knock down or better to find a new path.

 

[Dufus]

Its replacement, a $378 OEM chip, is an i7-6820HQ that boost to 3.2Ghz on 4 cores.

It's strange that the i7-6700HQ is priced the same as the i7-6820HQ and i7-6820HK but has lower clocks and less cache. Perhaps it's for weak laptops that will struggle to hold top clocks, otherwise the unlocked i7-6820HK could be an interesting chip.

 

[ehume]

At two of the places I work, they changed their mid-2000's XP machines in 2014 -- one before the XP support cutoff; one after. The companies involved changed the machines only because support was cut off for the XP machines.

We're on Win 7 now. MS has announced they will cut off support for Win 7 in what -- 2025? So that's an 11-year update cycle. Will those machines be obsolete? No, for the work we do now (mostly medical data entry). I suspect retailers are down with my companies.