Thread regarding Intel Corp. layoffs

I believe Niobium material from Brazil will be used in the processors manucfatoring. It will contribute to make this kind of law feasible for Industry. Do u agree??

Moore's Law was never a real law--it was his best guess of how the semiconductor industry would advance given the physics of silicon and the incremental developments using silicon. It has probably hit the wall.

I was fortunate to work at Intel when Gordon Moore was still president. The top brass had a policy of having lunch, at least once, with every employee who worked at Intel in the greater Silicon Valley area (they had many locations). My turn came and I was invited. There were about 12-15 of us grunts and then Moore and some other V.P. (Noyce was travelling somewhere!). We all sat stiffly around a huge corporate meeting table as assorted sandwiches were delivered. Coffee, tea, were warming in carafes on the sideboard.

Gordon Moore went around the table, asking us to introduce ourselves, our department, and what we were doing at Intel. Then a general discussion went on as we munched decorously on our sandwiches. Moore told us to just go ahead and pour ourselves seconds/thirds of coffee. However, no one had the nerve to get up and do so. When his cup was down, he calmly got up, picked up the carafe of coffee and walked around the table pouring to everyone who wanted more.

That's the kind of man he is. Unfortunately, about a year later an announcement was made that due to a huge influx of new hires, the lunches with the president and V.P. had to be discontinued because there were not enough days in the year to accomplish this. Instead, the lunches would continue, but with lower level management at the division levels. I learned a lot in my 8 years at Intel, and have great respect for their management style. They ask a lot, but they also give a lot.

Hear it from the man himself:

http://spectrum.ieee.org/computing/hardware/gordon-moore-the-man-whose-name-means-progress

What would you do if you were BK? You would milk the cow until the end comes.

Inept?

@Iyhi1PS-1mvw you'd think a company with Intel's huge kitty of cash and technology leadership they'd have multiple efforts underwear in preparation for the end of the road, but if you look there simply isn't any at all, what does that say about the leadership from the top and the bottom?

Google is your friend.

http://www.nature.com/news/the-chips-are-down-for-moore-s-law-1.19338

You're welcome.

Posters like this ( @wjw @iho @1edc @1vyi ) are the reason why I joined Intel in the first place. Peeps with brains, they (execs) are doing everything to change this though

I would say that at last three generations of x86 were pretty much yawn events and nobody really could care what was being sold at the local bestbuy for BTS or Holidays. You bought if you really needed a laptop or desktop but TVs, phones and just about every other gizmo was more interesting purchase.

On the other hand I would say the last three generations of smatphones from Apple and Samsung were anything but that and they were enabled on the back of more advance silicon, so Moore is alive for everything but x86 client. Even the bargain phones from Xiaomi and Huawei are improving by leaps and bounds on successive more advance silicon, so for them all Moore is providing huge value growing their business. As Nvidia or AMD if the next generation silicon is enabling exciting new products, seems x86 is the only one s---ing air.

I would say the ability to jam a billion or more transistors that sip a few microwatts on standby and a few milliwatts when computing are still chips chasing a solution but when they find it they will sell another billion or Moore, but it won't be silicon running in Intel factories as it will sell for well south of 10 bucks and Intel simply doesn't know how to enable design and manufacturing while making profits at that price point.

Now will intel die like kodak is an interesting question

1) If 10nm comes in 2017 maybe not as they will launch a few low volume mobile and hopefully in 2018 get the process in control and launch more client and sever that will be real improvements over Kaby and Coffee

2) If 10nm comes in 2018 instead.. then all bets are off. The stress of bringing the products to market will for surely result in complete management overturn. Intel's cultural won't survive that IMHO. Also ARM solutions that are now being nurtured will have reached critical mass, so delayed 10nm to 2018 will setup Intel for a Kodak/DEC moment

During the semiconductor devices growth heydey (i.e. doubling circuit density ever 18 months and introducing the new product to market), Moore's "Law" was a methodology used to introduce new technology with the assumption consumers would be demanding. This did work for a while because the physics was much more forgiving. Moore's law failed to maintain pace at 22 nm and has reached an impasse at 14 nm. The tooling, especially for lithography, is not sophisticated enough to resolve the patterning issues at this device size. In addition besides a dead end at the equipment end, there are many issues with materials, dielectrics, defects, leakage. Which appears to be much greater than we can handle with the latest technology. Therefore, advancement aka Moore's Law has ceased to exist and is no longer a consideration in Intel strategy.

Moore's Law at intel used to bring a lot to the table decades ago.

Every generation saw new x86 CPU that added performance with less power. The company would sell more and more too thus more fabs. Remember everytime you shrink the chip, of course the engineers dream up lots of use for new transistors. but in the end there was growth.

These days Moore's Law and growth is DEAD at intel.

1) Volumes of x86 are dropping thus unless yields go down, they need fewer wafers

2) Nobody cares really to upgrade their PCs, they buy news ones for the most when the old breaks. Just look at your piece of garbage provided by Intel how old is it and do you really need a better one.

3) Even if they next generation is better between 1) and 2) growht is dead at intel.

Now if you look at Google, FB, Amazon, Apple and everyone else BUT the PC x86 makers they are having a party like drunken sailors. They are still seeing the the advantage of Moore's Law, each new generation means better lower cost modems, aps processors and value in the phone etc.

Look at Samsung and TSMC and the chinese fabs, they are all growing on the back of that, while Intel shrinks.

So silicon isn't dead, just that the way Intel uses silicon for x86 is dying

They've hit the limits physics wise. At least with silicon. There are probably other materials or even biological things to explore.