Intel Data Center up 11%, PC down 1%, so glad I stopped working on the PC

Windows XP in 2001 was the last time I worked on PC operating systems.  I started working on the PC in 1987 on the Mac products at Apple.  After 14 years I was tired of PC operating systems.  In 2002 I switched over the Server operating systems, then management tools before exiting Microsoft.  Now I focus more on Mobile and Cloud.

Intel announced its numbers and Data Center Group is up 11% and the PC group is down 1%

• PC Client Group revenue of $7.9 billion, down 1 percent year-over-year
• Data Center Group revenue of $3.1 billion, up 11 percent year-over-year

Intel Ships Brawny Processors to scale up

Intel has released the Xeon Processor E7-8800/4800/28000 v2 family.

 

What comes to mind is Urs Hoelzle’s call to action that not all services can be provided by whimpy energy efficient low clock rate cores.  There is a need for brawny cores.

Brawny cores still beat wimpy cores, most of the time

Urs Hölzle

Google

Slower but energy efficient “wimpy” cores only win for general workloads if

their single-core speed is reasonably close to that of mid-range “brawny”

cores.

At Google, we’ve been long-term proponents of multicore architectures and throughput-oriented

computing. In warehouse-scale systems1 throughput is more important than single-threaded peak

performance, because no single processor can handle the full workload. In addition, maximizing singlethreaded

performance costs power through larger die areas (for example, for larger reorder buffers or

branch predictors) and higher clock frequencies. Multicore architectures are great for warehouse-scale

systems because they provide ample parallelism in the request stream as well as data parallelism for search

or analysis over petabyte data sets.

The Register has a detailed article.

Better late than never: Monster 15-core Xeon chips let loose by Intel

New mission-critical CPUs are mission-critical to Chipzilla's critical money-making mission

By Rik Myslewski, 18th February 2014

Is data center growth slowing? Intel says its enterprise server chips slowed

It can be hard to figure out the growth of the data center industry.  One data point is Intel’s sales of its data center server chips.

ZDNet’s Larry Dignan digs into this aspect.

Regarding the data center, Smith said on a conference call:

If you look at the trends in the fourth quarter, I think the trends actually reinforce the growth rate among cloud, high performance computing, networking, storage. They all came in consistent with what we thought. As we entered Q4, we saw that we had more inventory out in the world than we knew when we started the quarter so that had to be burned off. And then secondly, we saw a tapering off in order patterns across certain customers. We think that was driven by the government shutdown and the uncertainty around the debt ceiling. Because when you look at the customers and the segments it's pretty clearly in those segments. We had a range around growth rates for 2014 and the investor meeting we said 10 to 15%. Based on a slower growth in enterprise in Q4 and maybe a slower recovery in enterprise over the course of 2014, I'd say we're now at the lower end of that range. So we're more at the 10% range than the 15% part.

Calxeda's Tough Battle was not ARM, but Intel's investment in a Fabric to reinvent servers

There is sadness in Calxeda’s lack of funding to continue its efforts on ARM servers.

Calxeda Closes Its Office: The Sad Story Of One Of The Most Innovative Companies In Years

But, over a year ago, I started to doubt whether Calxeda would survive.  I would chat with some server hardware folks and one of the ideas we would discuss is out of the 8+ companies out there with ARM chips there would eventually be only three who survive, and whether Calxeda would be one of them was not clear.  We had more faith in Samsung to be a player than many of the others.

Almost everyone focuses on ARM as if the ARM chip has magical powers that can beat the x86 chip once someone ships an ARM chip for servers.  ARM is just a chip.  x86 is a chip.  I decided to look for a recent paper that compares ARM vs. x86 and found this paper.

A Detailed Analysis of Contemporary ARM and x86 Architectures
Emily Blem, Jaikrishnan Menon, and Karthikeyan Sankaralingam
University of Wisconsin - Madison

The results show. (note: ISA is Instruction Set Architecture)

We find that ARM and x86 processors are simply engineering
design points optimized for different levels of performance, and
there is nothing fundamentally more energy efficient in one ISA
class or the other. The ISA being RISC or CISC seems irrelevant

So if ARM vs. x86 is irrelevant what was the battle to fight?  It is about creating a new Fabric for Servers.  Read the press statement from Calxeda.  Their first two paragraphs say Fabric.

Over the last few years, Calxeda has been a driving force in the industry for low power server processors and fabric-based computing.

The concept of a fabric of ARM-based servers challenging the industry giants was not on anyone¹s radar screen when we started this journey.

In April 2012 Intel announced it had licensed Cray’s supercomputing fabric.

Intel Acquires Industry-Leading, High-Performance Computing Interconnect Technology and Expertise

SANTA CLARA, Calif., April 24, 2012 – Intel Corporation today announced it has entered into a definitive agreement with Cray Inc. to acquire certain assets related to its high-performance computing (HPC) interconnect program. With the agreement, Intel gains access to Cray’s world-class interconnect personnel and intellectual property.

The Cray interconnect team is responsible for the award-winning Gemini interconnect as well as the upcoming Aries interconnect, designed to work in Cray’s next-generation  supercomputer, codenamed “Cascade,” which will integrate Intel® Xeon® processors. The transaction is expected to close before the end of the current quarter, subject to customary closing conditions being met.

Intel announced the C2000 Atom to go against ARM.  In this blog post I referenced posts on Barron’s blog by analyst who discussed the ARM vs. Atom.

There are probably many other small things that made it difficult for Calxeda.  It’s hard to be a disruptive force especially in Intel’s turf.

Being hyper competitive probably leads to being Insular, Intel admits it is Insular

There are many who pride themselves on being competitive.  So competitive they are regularly saying in their mind and to others how much better they are than the rest.  This superior attitude then leads you to think others are dumb.  They don’t get it.  Your way is better than others.

This could be described by Type A vs. Type B behaviors.

I have many times told the story one of the things I realized being surrounded by many Type A people in major corporations is that one way to look at people who are Type A is they are much more insecure than Type B, and happen to be really good at a few things.  So good at these few things that they these things become a top priority in their work and lives, they then tell others how good they are at these things.  Some may be impressed.  Many times though as time goes on, 5, 10, 15, 20 years, it looks kind of silly.

An example is Intel’s new CEO admitting the company had become Insular.  The world does not revolve around x86 processors.  In the Intel view, they are dominant of the x86 processor and they beat everyone else.  Meanwhile, many others have moved on to smartphones and tablets where the x86 processor is irrelevant. 

“We’d become insular,” Krzanich said. “We’d become focused on what was our best product versus where the market wanted to move.”

...

“I was personally embarrassed that we seemed to have lost our way,” said Bryan, who lives in Oregon and works from Intel's Jones Farm campus in Hillsboro. He acknowledged that Intel had flat-out missed the consumer appeal of the iPad and other tablets, which now run primarily on designs from rival ARM Holdings.

That “put us in a hole,” Bryant said. “We’re paying a price for that right now.”

I can imagine there were dozens if not hundreds of people since the launch of the iPhone and iPad at Intel who were trying to tell others to wake up and embrace the mobile market.  “We are we have the Intel Atom.”  No that is a dumbed down x86.  The market wants a powerful mobile chip.  “We have the Intel Atom v2, then version 3.”  Meanwhile Qualcomm ships a Snapdragon 800.

One way to view Intel is to think of them is not as a processor company, but as the dominant x86 processor semiconductor manufacturing company.  No one builds x86 processors better than Intel.  Who cares?  Qualcomm, Apple, Samsung, Marvell, and many others are running many times faster than Intel building ARM processors to create the mobile experience.  Intel has become Insular to the mobile change.

We all have many more ARM processors in our lives than x86.

This problem is not unique to Intel.  I can name many more dominant companies that show the Insular, Type A I am better than you weak Type B people behavior.  Type A people because they are so competitive they will do anything to get to the top which means the Insular views grow faster.  

One thing I learned is waiting for change is more frustrating than just moving on.  Some who are Insular will show a steady decline, than no different than that hype competitive person is point the blame on other things, and not on themselves that they focused on something that most of us don’t care about.

in·su·lar

ˈins(y)ələr/

adjective

adjective: insular

1. 1.

   ignorant of or uninterested in cultures, ideas, or peoples outside one's own experience.

   "a stubbornly insular farming people"

   synonyms:

   narrow-minded, small-minded, inward-looking, parochial, provincial,small-town, shortsighted, hidebound, blinkered; More

   antonyms:

   broad-minded, tolerant

   • lacking contact with other people.

     "people living restricted and sometimes insular existences"

     synonyms:

     isolated, inaccessible, cutoff, segregated, detached, solitary, lonely,hermitic More

     antonyms:

     cosmopolitan