Why do new Intel machines require the use of so much Optane memory (systems memory and hard drive memory) in all their new claim to fame advertisements?

Intel processors are actually no faster than last years versions (or year before last years versions).   Optane memory however can speed the entire system package up somewhat, so Intel now requires the extensive use of it.  

Optane memory is very expensive stuff, but if used consistently as recommended Optane memory speeds the whole system up to meet Intel's latest claims --- at the cost of much higher energy use for the Optane memory and a 3x cost multiplier just to buy the stuff.


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Also please remember, the Required INTEL Mitigations for Shadow, Meltdown and Spectre slow the new Intel machines down between 20-25% when doing real world work.    This is more of a slow down than Optane memory provides as a speed up, so Intel is net in the hole compared to two years ago.

Remember, Intel likes to cheat on benchmarks by not using any security Mitigations during testing (and always forgetting to share this little fact with readers).

And also remember that super inflated Intel price tag keeps on going up and up and up ......  and up.

https://www.tomshardware.com/news/intel-earnings-10nm-ice-lake,39178.html

Intel's desktop volumes dropped 13% Quarter-over-Quarter (QoQ) and 8% Year-over-Year (YoY).   Meanwhile, Intel notebook platform volumes dropped dramatically at 16% QoQ and 7% YoY, once again partially offset by a 9% and 13% gains in average selling price (ASP) due to abrupt "scarcity" price gouging by Intel at retail.

The data center group (DCG) also weathered a 17% QoQ and 8% YoY decline, with ASPs declining 4% on the quarter.

In that sense, the results and outlook presented today are just a continuation of the factors that started playing out last quarter, with tough year-on-year comparisons given the intense growth in competition last year.  Revenue came in at $16.1B, the same as last year. However, gross margin declined by 4.0 points to 56.6%, at the lower end of what Intel calls its historical range of 55%-65%, although the company is usually above 60%. Net income was $4.0B, down 11% from last year.

Intel revised its 2019 outlook to reflect a predicts a "mid single-digit" decline this year, with the non-volatile storage group (NSG), the memory making side of the company, experiencing a high-single digit loss this year. Meanwhile, Intel projects its PC-centric business will decline in the low single-digits.

So, all is not rosy in Intel Land ......





https://www.marketwatch.com/story/new-intel-ceo-rips-the-band-aid-off-2019-04-25

Intel INTC, -7.24%  reported first-quarter earnings and revenue Thursday that exceeded some estimates, even amid a steepening decline in its important data-center business. But that business and more memory-chip price declines led Swan — in his first earnings report since being named the permanent CEO — to lower Intel’s revenue guidance for the rest of the year by a whopping $2.5 billion.

“The decline in memory pricing has intensified, the data-center inventory and capacity digestion that we described in January is more pronounced than we expected, and China headwinds have increased, leading to a more cautious IT spending environment,” Swan said on the company’s call with analysts, followed by a statement of confidence that demand will improve in the second half, based on customer conversations.

Intel’s shares tumbled about 7% in after-hours trading.

 It is sloppy programming.

 One thing again is just the convenience compared to how long it takes to get Linux to do modern things like multi-PC networking compared to the immediate usage of Win10.

 It takes less than 3 seconds to unplug a USB drive.

 It takes hours to troubleshoot Linux, and as far as I know it claims its developed for a "Classic Desktop" experience, which makes sense and is perfect for anyone wanting to go that route.  But running VR, and running VR over linked PC's takes forever and is very unstable.  Someone wanting to do that in Win10 they can run VR in less time then it takes to plug the device in and additional hardware.

 Linux Mint has its place but if the complaint is me having to unplug a USB I can't really say its an inconvenience.  This is of course just comparing the time it takes to get linked VR running.  Unplug USB, or troubleshoot Linux, I would rather unplug a USB.

"How did VR creep into this discussion?   Specifically, what do you mean by the initials VR as several things use those initials."

 On October 20 2018 you made a post about VR in this thread.  Specifically SteamVR, VR is an abbreviation for Virtual Reality.  

 I am attempting to utilize the use of Virtual Reality as an example of a situation where Linux takes longer to implement than Win 10, even if we calculate the time it takes to remove a USB drive from a PC.  Poor programming yes, inconvenient compared to other software, no.

"And when did you ever install Linux Mint?   I missed that ......"

 Somewhere around Cassandra or Elyssa, I have mentioned in other threads that I have PC's sectioned off, I have 7 machines that run Linux Mint however in this particular thread I did not mention specifically "Linux Mint" I only stated that I do not use Win 10 on those seven.

 Just to avoid any confusion, I use zero PRO software, I do not use a corporate/business IT plan.  

TODAY'S NEWS   https://www.fool.com/investing/2019/04/26/why-intel-stock-is-taking-a-beating...

https://www.marketwatch.com/story/intels-stock-on-track-for-worst-day-in-more...




Why Intel Stock Is Taking a Beating Today
The chip giant's problems are getting worse.

Timothy Green (TMFBargainBin)
Apr 26, 2019 at 12:50PM

What happened to Intel to spark the rout???

Shares of Intel (NASDAQ:INTC) tumbled on Friday following a first-quarter report that beat expectations but featured a weak outlook for 2019. The data center business suffered a sales decline to start the year, and the company now sees that business declining for the full year as well. The stock was down about 10.1% at 12:10 p.m. EDT.

So what happened again ???
Intel reported first-quarter revenue of $16.06 billion, flat compared to the prior-year period and $70 million above the average analyst estimate. The client computing group grew by 4.5% to $8.59 billion, but the data center group slumped 6.3% to $4.90 billion. Nonvolatile memory was also a weak spot, with revenue down 12% to $915 million due to a difficult NAND pricing environment.

In the client computing group, unit volumes for notebooks and desktops declined by 7% and 8%, respectively, compared to the first quarter of last year. But a 13% increase in notebook average selling prices and an 7% increase in desktop average selling prices more than offset the lower unit volume.

In the data center group, unit volumes were down 8% year over year, with average selling prices up just 1%. Data center unit volumes tumbled 17% from the fourth quarter of 2018.

Non-GAAP earnings per share (EPS) came in at $0.89, up from $0.87 in the prior-year period and $0.02 higher than analysts were expecting.

Now what ???
While Intel's first quarter was a bit better than expected, the company slashed its outlook for the full year. Intel now sees revenue of $69 billion and non-GAAP EPS of $4.35, down from previous guidance calling for revenue of $71.5 billion and non-GAAP EPS of $4.60.

Intel is dealing with a range of issues that forced it to cut its outlook. CEO Robert Swan said during the earnings call that the decline in memory pricing has intensified, suggesting that the bottom is nowhere in sight. Swan also said that the ongoing data center inventory correction is more severe than expected, and that increasing China-related headwinds have led to a more cautious IT spending environment.

This guidance assumes that overall data-centric revenue will be down a low single-digit percentage in 2019, with revenue in the data center group down a mid-single-digit percentage. Intel also expects the NAND pricing environment to become more challenging. The company will also be facing increased competition from Advanced Micro Devices in both the PC and server markets as that company launches new products later this year.



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I have said for quite some time that Intel lies like breathing .......   this week was just another good example.  

Info released on the Commercial side indicated that Intel 10nm products won't be ready for main stream until late 2021 to 2022 when the new plant gets built, proven out,  and gets up and running with a decent yield.

Then JUST TODAY Intel PR on the Consumer side claims they have already shipped trial 10nm units, have already run their full trial runs (where, might I ask -- since the foundations for the new plant aren't even poured yet?) and Intel has already sent them off to their customers to design new units around.

As part of the company’s quarterly earnings release, Intel said we can expect computers with 10nm Intel “Ice Lake” chips to hit stores in time for the 2019 holiday season.

The first Ice Lake chips will likely be 15 watt, quad-core U-series processors aimed at laptops and mini PCs like the Intel NUC lineup.

I think Intel Consumer PR is intentionally deliberately getting "all confused" again.    If they are talking 10nm Canyon Lake, it FAILED MISERABLY this past fall, had less throughput than existing Intel14nm chipsets and had a sorry <10% yield on 100% broken CPUs with NO GPU in them that worked at all.  

And yes, nobody did anything with those Canyon Lake trial samples you sent out.

So, if you are saying you sent out some F marked Canyon Lake variants to actual customers that were sorted out of the mess (with no working graphics) I would simply say "Who would be stupid enough to pay a premium for an UNDERPERFORMING chipset that had no functional graphics?   One that costs a lot more and has poorer performance than your current 14nm product (and NO GRAPHICS)?"

So, we are back to lying like breathing again, huh Intel?    

Changing the name from Canyon Lake to Ice Lake doesn't fix anything,  it is still BROKEN ......

..... and if it fails again you will see yet another new name invented to be used for the next attempt at 10nm.


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https://www.marketwatch.com/story/intels-stock-on-track-for-worst-day-in-more...

Intel Corp.’s stock plummeted and closed for its worst day in more than three years Friday after the chip giant cut its outlook for the quarter and year to “cautious” levels late Thursday.

Intel INTC, +0.10%  shares had dropped nearly 11% Friday, threatening the stock’s worst one-day drop in more than a decade, but pared losses to narrowly avoid that fate, closing down 9% at $52.43, for its worst one-day percentage drop since Jan. 15, 2016, when the stock closed down 9.1%, according to FactSet data.

Jefferies analyst Mark Lipacis, who has given Intel an underperform rating and a $40 price target, said to expect more cuts, with the view that Intel’s problems are company specific rather than industrywide, and that Advanced Micro Devices Inc. AMD, +0.07%  will be there to pick up market share. AMD shares were up 0.1% Friday.

5nm is here now, shipping in bulk from TSMC and from Samsung in the form of memory products and smaller, simpler IC chipsets ..... and shipping in FPGA chipsets.

Wait a second, FPGAs are larger much more complex chipsets,  so how come they are shipping first?

FPGA stands for field-programmable gate array. At its core, an FPGA is a vast array of interconnected digital subcircuits that implement common fairly simple functions while also offering very high levels of flexibility.   It also is self diagnosing, as it is made up of many many many simple switch circuits that are programmed in patterns to make up the exact processor function you need at the moment.    Once programmed, a FPGA keeps that configuration until wiped and reprogrammed.

Both Intel and ARM will use FPGAs to test out new limping lithography systems as there is no failure to ship involved, bad gates simply result in a down-rating of the number of gates available in that individual processor.

All the chips get shipped, some are just have a lot fewer gates than others.

Thus, Intel advertises their Intel 10nm process as being in production,  and it is, in a limited fashion --- making some Intel FPGA chips that are "continually sorted" for bad gates by their very functionality.

 
https://www.tomshardware.com/news/amd-ryzen-3000-series-matisse-specs,38310.html

https://www.tomshardware.com/news/amd-third-gen-threadripper-roadmap,39254.html

https://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/cpu-buying-guide,5643.html

https://www.tomshardware.com/news/dell-amd-epyc-rome-server,39213.html

Something's up with AMD's latest just released roadmaps --- changes are showing up that are possibly being driven by TSMC's recent 6nm announcements and/or some new hard yield data on AMD 7nm chiplet production that are showing up some new post production trends to AMD management.  

AMD could also be reacting to a general market shift that may actually be going on --- simply put AMD doesn't really need to prime the pump any further, but instead AMD may need to implement what they are already committed to do, then get a firm grip on the saddle horn (holding on real tight) and then simply ride the tiger as it explodes underneath them ......

Lisa Su and her opening remarks on the 27th of this month will tell us which functional pathway AMD is gonna be taking, which could be in a range from "sandbagging again" to "slowly implementing" to "blowing our minds with unexpected rapid progress" all over again.

Tom's Hardware states:

Threadripper, Ryzen, and Epyc Rome all use the same 7nm compute chiplets, meaning the use of these chiplets will compete with each other for the best wafers and for the best sorted chiplets, of which there likely aren't that many totally 100% flawless all top of the line wafers jest slam full of first class chiplets -- simply because the 7nm node is still quite new.   Testing and sorting of the chiplets are all part of this equation as AMD needs to correctly state mhz and boost speeds on each type of chiplets that goes into their various chipsets.

The newer the node, the more defects, meaning more low-quality or defective chiplets. Rome will, of course, get the best of the bunch, while Threadripper will need to get the chiplets that clock high at decent voltages, leaving Ryzen with the worst chiplets. However, as Threadripper is a niche product and chiplet supply could be tight right at first so there might not be any room left for Threadripper to snag some of the best chips that would make more money if AMD sold them as server CPUs.

Motherboards are also a complicating factor. TR4, the Threadripper socket, hasn't seen an update since 2017 and still uses the X399 chipset. Granted, X399 boards can be quite good, but AMD will likely want to update it for Threadripper 3000. While we’ve seen leaks and news about 500-series boards for Ryzen, there hasn't been any news of a new chipset for Threadripper, making it unlikely the new Threadripper chips are on the near horizon. We may just need to wait for the next half-year horizon to roll around for Threadripper 3000.

OK, TSMC has just now stated that 6nm lithography is now out there now saying that all 7nm designs from all of their customers can now be run on 6nm lithography at no real added cost and that all the development tools are exact the same as 7nm+ and 7nm++ and 7nm+++ so no design work is wasted in the 6nm conversion.  

So, to TSMC 6nm is going to be the long lasting, large, persistent lithography node, not 7nm+++ --- so you can see that TSMC really wants to collect and accumulate all of their various 7nm customer's past ordered stuff and to run them in the future under the 6nm banner for ease of scheduling.    This will happen soon enough anyway due to pricing, but not overnight.

This is all being put out there now, brand new, like a month before the 2019 Computex show's go date and all the big AMD announcements that are already planned to be made by Lisa Su at Computex.

It is obvious that the TSMC 6nm change over has to be addressed at the Computex roll out by Lisa Su on the 27th of this month in some fashion as it affects all the previously laid out plans and road maps.

However, getting better isn't a bad thing.   It just requires Lisa Su to tee it up correctly and to describe it in a way that does not confuse the computer press and the AMD fanboy customers.

Tom's Hardware is also stressing an interesting point about Intel and their "always claimed higher clock speeds".  Intel only makes their exaggerated speed claims off of the best ONE (1) of their 4 or 6 or 8 cores and then by their own published sorting standard allows the rest of the compute cores to fall within a broader (lower) stated range of performance.  It has always been that way, this trick has never been a secret with Intel (they just never talked much about it).

AMD however makes their performance claims more accurately and AMD covers the entire processor and that carefully includes all the enclosed compute chiplets that make up the AMD processors.  

Both Intel and AMD have communications and power bridges in their products (the AMD 14nm center core is a good example of this) --- communications and power bridges that intentionally run at larger lithography as they are pushing the CPU power requirements down these same traces at the same time as they handle inner chip communications between the center communications core and the compute chiplets/cores.  

So, saying you are rating the compute cores/chiplets is somewhat more accurate, but the entire processor also includes AI blocks and Graphics blocks and some other items that are not strictly part of the compute rating per se.   Saying you are judging the entire CPU is also a more accurate way to say things.   But, note please, Intel doesn't do this at all ....... they just pay attention to the very fastest single core that they find inside a given processor.

Given the additional 15% compute speed and 20% energy performance boost the 6nm change over may eventually bring to the AMD party, Intel is likely going to start to choke a bit over their cute little "only 1 core is the fast one" marketing tricks.  Tom's Hardware is now carefully keeping independent real world performance / price ranking data on all Intel and AMD processors performance-wise using a range of standard benchmark tests on a sample set of processors to rank them correctly against each other.

We now note that Tom's is already reality ranking some Ryzen classes of much cheaper AMD processors as being functionally faster & better than some of Intel's older big expensive energy sucking Core i7 kahunas.   Tom's is also keeping track of the selling prices and tracking the various resulting "value per dollar" effects.  

Quite frankly, Intel sucks at "value per dollar" lately and that situation is getting worse, not better ....

https://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/cpu-buying-guide,5643.html

Toss into the mix the fact that ALL the AMD cores just naturally perform that fast, while the Intel processors have to run on the very most modern style of Intel motherboards in systems that are LOADED UP with several different layers of expensive Intel Optane memory types WITH  ALL OF IT BEING REQUIRED TO WORK TOGETHER to get to that good advertised Intel "processor" performance level .....  and that means you the consumer will have to pay all those hidden costs when you go get "Intel Inside" on your new machine purchase.  

..... and you always need to remember that your Intel processor is rated just off that ONE (1) very best core that it contains ..... and the entire shebang never actually runs as fast as that  ONE (1) very best core as all the cores count towards processor performance numbers.

..... it ain't the whole Intel processor, boys and girls ..... it never has been              

P.S.   please don't forget to calculate in your Intel mitigations for the Spectre, Meltdown and Spoiler vulnerabilities (20% off the top, minimum) .....

Now, as far as what is standard processor clock speed, what is "overclocked" and how much higher is it actually ..... these get off into marketing BS with Intel so deeply there is really no way to explain or to compare them.

This is why Tom's set up their own reporting and ranking system, one that is impartial and structured to show the comparative merits of a computer CPU system with all its multiple multiple cores that can actually run at different speeds under different thermal loads.

.......  and yes, a better CPU cooler and better memory does mean better and improved performance, generally speaking .......    as does running (or not running) your Meltdown/Spectre/Spoiler mitigations ...... or even which OS systems you run the test under ......



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https://www.tomshardware.com/news/dell-amd-epyc-rome-server,39213.html

Significant new SKU announcements from both of the Hewlett Packard and the Dell Server and Consumer sides ---- AMD will immediately take over 30% of HP's server output due to Intel failing to meet existing CPU Processor orders.  

HP and Dell Consumer (desktop, laptop and Chromebook) and the HP and Dell Server Areas are all showing multiple new AMD based units popping up within the last 2 weeks.    

On the same note, Dell will immediately TRIPLE the number of Server SKUs with EPYC Server processors inside them instead of having "Intel Xenon Inside".   This Dell change goes well beyond the 30% mentioned earlier.

This is a set of simple factual announcements coming out from HP and Dell less than a month ahead of the AMD Computex dog and pony show announcements from AMD.   HP is the world's largest supplier of PC products, and coupled with #3  Dell's new AMD product announcements  this may signify a large real shift in computing away from Intel and towards AMD.  

Lenovo at #2 has not been heard from yet, but Lenovo will be announcing something fairly soon it is believed.

Dell and HP are the most SIGNIFICANT USA finished box producers of consumer and server products ......  and for both of them to be showing such large pro-AMD movements on their own, independently, means that a large pro-AMD market shift really is likely taking place in the US market as we speak.