this is a tough video to make because
the popular cool thing to do right now
is to praise AMD and dunk on Intel and
for good reason I mean it does appear to
be that thanks to AMD we have
experienced more excitement in the last
three years than the prior decade but I
need to make it anyway
not because I'm trying to influence your
next purchasing decision you guys should
always buy the product not the cool
brand but rather because I'm worried
about Intel not Intel the company
they're doing fine they're making
billions of dollars but rather the
people at Intel and I need them to hear
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it can be really easy to forget that
branding aside a company isn't some kind
of hive mind entirely aligned to one
purpose and that it's easy for a handful
of people who are too disconnected from
the customer or too focused on
bean-counting to steer the ship in the
wrong direction in spite of the hard
work and best intentions of the vast
majority and the thing is while it Intel
does a lot of stuff wrong as someone who
has actually met many individuals over
there over the years I can say
confidently that Intel employees well
they might not have cute nicknames like
Googlers or Yahoo's but that company is
chock full of really awesome people who
care a lot like imagine the most
hard-core overclocking enthusiast you
know now imagine that he's got like an
awesome beard and he's jacked and he's
like carrying a surfboard I basically
met that guy at an OP date event one of
my other favorites is a gentleman who is
always inviting me to see the secret
room at trade shows all you guys have
ever seen of it is some laptop b-roll
but even though there's literally no ROI
for the company or really for me since I
can't report on it he's always sneaking
me away from the laptops to get a look
at what his team has been working on
behind the scenes for no reason other
than that he knows that I'm gonna share
his appreciation for it even XM tellers
seem to take a disproportionate amount
of pride in their work I've had it
happen on multiple times that I do a
retrospective on an old piece of
enthusiasts gear from Intel only to have
an ex engineer reach out and be like you
know what
hey I poured my soul into that thing and
I'm just really glad that you liked it
knowing these people I could say with
confidence that many if not most of
Intel's mistakes happen for reasons that
are closer to human flaws than they are
to pure evil and we all make mistakes
let's take their most recent
self-inflicted wound it's very clear
from the revenue growth and steady
profits over at Team Blue that the
business folks are in charge and
a very good job of delivering maximum
shareholder value or whatever it is that
they do but it's also clear that this
strategy wasn't one that rewarded
delivering exciting products to
enthusiasts and gamers Intel spent the
better part of a decade with no
competition in the cpu market and use
that opportunity to do what monopolies
do best get very very comfortable
delivering incremental generational
improvements targeting the widening
upgrade cycles of their corporate and
small and medium business customers even
something as simple as using proper
thermal interface material on their CPUs
didn't happen until AMD forced their
hand it's also clear that they were
focused on growing markets rather than
mature ones with R&D so laser focused on
mobile and data center products that
talking points about performance per
watt always seem to make their way into
the product sheets and reviewer guides
for like overclockable K series desktop
CPUs we're young Linus was looking at
them going sorry what performance per
watt who cares how fast does it go how
much does it overclock why is there a
GPU taking up valuable silicon on my CPU
where is my mainstream six core well the
sleeping giant awakened two years ago
and don't kid yourself
they have awakened and they will come
roaring back I've seen this movie a
couple of times now but some of the
rumors coming out have me worried that
until they're ready to make a legitimate
play for the performance crown again
Intel might do some desperate things
that will damage the things about them
that I still love even if I'm not a big
fan of their price to performance right
now so Intel employees in tellers blue
badges in no particular order here are
some things that I really don't want to
see go away good engineering in my
experience with our AMD based and via me
storage server
I learned that AMD has a whole server
slash data center platform out there
that as far as I can tell no one ever
thought to go hey what happens if I
light up all these PCIe lanes with data
and then actually load up the CPU at the
same time turns out that the data gets
retrieved so fast from that big flash
array that by the time the CPU comes
back
to get it it's gone raro Wendell made an
offhand comment to me that really stood
out while we were troubleshooting the
issue I said to him you know man I never
saw any these kinds of stupid issues
when we rolled our Intel all nvme
storage server and he goes yeah Intel's
got fewer PCIe lanes and they're a
generation behind but they put some
really good engineering into them I've
always kind of taken for granted that a
PCIe Lane is a PCIe Lane and it made me
hesitate to fully transition the
backbone of my company to new onyx
server until these wrinkles are sorted
out either by AMD or by the Linux
community through kernel patches and as
someone who has forgotten more about
both software and hardware than I will
ever know about either of them put
together when those words carry a lot of
weight with me go something by the way
level 1 tags great guy
then there's the talent pool of team
size Intel is a much much bigger company
than AMD and that can be a double-edged
sword
there massive R&D resources are how they
can be simultaneously competing
head-to-head with AMD also a
multi-billion dollar company on CPUs
Samsung on data center storage Broadcom
on network connectivity solutions and
soon to be Nvidia on GPUs and deep
learning all multi billion-dollar
companies but guys it's the attention to
detail that makes customers happy back
to my AMD server again I was blown away
that there is no official Windows 10
support on epic or an onboard RAID
controller on the epic platform there is
basically no material cost to adding
either these things so as far as I can
tell it just came down to R&D priorities
and not having enough to do everything
I mean Intel might try and nickel and
dime you on a license to unlock
motherboard capabilities like a special
RAID mode but I wouldn't even consider
the possibility that it wouldn't be
there the next big one is partnerships
Intel is always out there nurturing new
and emerging technologies whether it's
VR or wearables or global connectivity
solutions even if those initiatives
don't use any Intel silicon yet and the
time and effort that
they put in to working with other
industry leaders is a big part of why
they end up at the heart of so many
products I mean do you guys think it's
an accident that Intel design wins
outnumber AMD ones and laptops buy so
much even at a time when AMD genuinely
has a competitive laptop product like
their new 4th gen mobile horizon finish
goods manufacturers rely on silicon
makers like Intel AMD and NVIDIA for a
lot of guidance and engineering support
something that takes time and resources
if you want to do it right
industry consortiums are another prime
example of this named one and Intel is
probably a member and recently they even
gave Thunderbolt 3 to the USB
implementation forum to make its
features available cross-platform as us
before something everything in my list
had in common is trust and over the last
little while the cracks in that trust
have been starting to show meltdown
specter and since we're on the subject a
Thunderbolt 3 security flaw that
Microsoft has evidently been wary of for
years but while those problems have
catchy names and they do make for good
headlines there honestly unlikely to
cause real everyday problems and damage
to Intel's long-term reputation with the
average Joe my real concern there comes
from rumors about the upcoming 10th gen
consumer chips early reports seem to
indicate that Intel's geriatric 14
nanometer process with however many
pluses we're adding to the end of it
right now is going to be used to build
10 core chips that will run at 80 plus
degrees underwater out of the box
without any overclocking there is a
reason that in the absence of
competition Intel wasn't doing that
obviously so that gives me some worry
that a compromise has been made
somewhere like I said I've seen this
movie
last time Intel fell behind their
Pentium D processors ran hot and loud
and well to my knowledge the CPUs didn't
have a higher than acceptable failure
rate the motherboards oh man that was
hard that was hard to look at we would
pull those boards out even just
were three years down the road from the
system and the backs the backs of the
boards where the VRMs were soldered on
on the front they would be dark and
sometimes like warped like bowed from
the heat even if they were somehow still
running I'm not saying that's going to
happen validation techniques and CPU
power delivery technology have certainly
come a long way since the early 2000s
I'm just saying that pushing the
envelope in this way is a dangerous path
with the potential for unforeseen
consequences because here's the thing
when an enthusiast like like you asks me
for our recommendation these days you're
gonna hear a lot of AMD AMD AMD can I
say they're rocking it right now but
when someone who might come back to me
for help
asks for a recommendation they are more
likely to hear Intel I want to know for
sure
then everything from the CPU to memory
compatibility to the USB controller on
the motherboard to Wi-Fi is all just
gonna basically work I'm not saying the
upcoming 10th gen consumer chips are bad
or that they're gonna fail prematurely
not by a long shot I've still got that
trust I'm just saying
please tread carefully guys because the
better long-term play may be to just
take it on the chin for a couple of
years learn from it especially you
executives more rd2 enthusiasts stuff
please there's not a lot of us but we're
really noisy and then come back with
your performance leadership and your
reliability intact because it's not even
my word on the subject that matters
really it's the tier 1 system
integrators that are pumping out
millions of machines a year and I'm sure
those guys are watching all of this much
more closely than I am just like you
guys are watching closely to see how
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you guys enjoyed this video maybe you'll
enjoy a more critical letter to Intel
from back at Computex 2018 not sure if
anyone over there really you know took
it to heart but hey I'm gonna gonna keep
doing these every time I feel like
they're necessary