Gaming desktops (and by extension CPUs for gaming desktops) are growing quite quickly, so the very area where you say performance isn't improving/Intel sucks is one in which Intel is seeing quite a lot of success.
In areas where consumers actually care about performance, Intel is doing well. It's segments/sub-segments where performance/features don't matter where Intel/the rest of the industry is doing poorly.
Reality doesn't agree with your imagination:
Look at the trend in Mac sales over the last three years. It's been growing quite nicely.
Yeah, sure. Intel is doing well. Firing 12,000 employees "is doing well."
Yeah, Mac sales are also totally "growing quite nicely" as you put it:
http://www.cnbc.com/2015/10/09/apples-mac-sales-suffer-steep-drop-in-sales-wsj.html
http://www.computerworld.com/articl...e-smallest-ever-portion-of-total-revenue.html
You misread my comment. I said that in areas in which performance matters (gaming, servers, etc.) Intel is doing well. In areas in which consumers aren't necessarily hungry to keep upgrading (i.e. most PC owners), sales are sluggish.
Yeah, sure. Intel is doing well. Firing 12,000 employees "is doing well."
Yeah, Mac sales are also totally "growing quite nicely" as you put it:
http://www.cnbc.com/2015/10/09/apples-mac-sales-suffer-steep-drop-in-sales-wsj.html
http://www.computerworld.com/articl...e-smallest-ever-portion-of-total-revenue.html
/sarcasm off
Intel's got some pretty dire problems that need to be addressed. Mobile has lost over 2 Billion, with a capital B.
I didn't misread anything. It's a bit difficult to praise a girl's new pimple cream when she's currently dying of cancer. That's more or less what you just did.
Coincidentally, all these "innovations" have done is drive the consumer to more expensive devices that sacrifice performance for formfactor, i.e. nucs and ultrabooks.
No, "dying of cancer" is what AMD is doing. Intel has serious issues that it needs to work out, but the company is still raking in billions in profit and is working to address those issues.
Here's Intel's problem: it depends heavily on the PC market and no matter what products it tries to bring to bear here, the mainstream customers who drive most of the volume simply aren't upgrading as quickly as they used to, for a variety of reasons.
Those reasons, however, have essentially nothing to do with the quality/performance of Intel's CPUs. If it did, then this would actually be good for Intel and its investors because product problems, given enough time and money (and Intel has a lot of both), can be solved.
Intel can't do much more to fix the PC market, it is what it is. What Intel needs to be able to do is to grow other businesses to the point where their growth rates can collectively offset the structural decline in the PC market. And, of course, Intel needs to do what it can to both:
1. Maintain share within the PC market; and
2. Continue to make tomorrow's products better than today's so that when the time does come for Joe Doe to upgrade, there's something that he's interested in buying.
Intel is doing well with (1) and (2), but these are no substitutes for finding fundamentally new growth areas.
Intel's work to address the real problem is in its investments in Data Center (making sure its CPUs there are the best, investing in other platform level products to increase content/stickiness, investing in software/tools, etc.) and the Internet of Things.
It will take time for those businesses to become large enough to allow Intel to grow even when the PC market plunges, but if they play their cards right, it should be doable.
Coincidentally, all these "innovations" have done is drive the consumer to more expensive devices that sacrifice performance for formfactor, i.e. nucs and ultrabooks.
I would argue that they are doing a "good job" of number one because of no competition, and are in fact doing a lousy job of number two. And now that they have abandoned tic toc, the pace of improvements will be even slower.
And if one considers not just x86 devices, but the entire spectrum of computing devices, including phones and tablets, they have lost a huge amount of the market.
I think its more consumer demand drove the innovations.
Was it? Or is it intel trying to force the consumer into higher margin markets?
Along what vector do you believe the pace of improvements will be slower?
Agreed, they should have been in phones.
Cannonlake looks likely to address thisand ...wait for it.....mainstream hex core.
I know you and Shintai love HEDT, but come on, it has been almost 10 years, and what 4 die shrinks since we got an increased core count on the mainstream architecture.
10 years ago, Quads weren't a mainstream choice for consumers any more than Intel's current HEDT range is today.
Not exactly 10 years but almost as the first sub 100$ quad (99$...) was the Athlon X4 620 in september 2009, so quads were mainstream since at least 2008.
Thanks for confirming my post that 10 years ago, Quads weren't mainstream.
This topic is best explained by the economist, not the hardware enthusiast. If you find yourself trying to argue against what Arachnotronic is saying, you're wasting your time.
They can probably cut twice as much, easily. I am not sure why they need even 50000 people. I mean they mainly make CPUs, which improve incrementally. Process improvements are harder to come by with marginal gains on single threaded performance. Attempts to expand into mobile have flopped, and even if they succeeded, margins are pitiful compared to their bread and butter WinTel money. You don't need a lot of people to milk the cash cow and extract rent from the x86 monopoly, and make incremental improvements.
Thanks for confirming my post that 10 years ago, Quads weren't mainstream.
This topic is best explained by the economist, not the hardware enthusiast. If you find yourself trying to argue against what Arachnotronic is saying, you're wasting your time.