| ▲ | DiabloD3 6 hours ago |
| Intel isn't important though. |
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| ▲ | seabird 5 hours ago | parent | next [-] |
| It's always crazy running into people that are somehow unaware that Wintel has achieved worldwide domination of IT infrastructure (by number of users). This site is like a sealed terrarium of people using macOS on Apple ARM hardware blissfully unaware of the infinite black pit outside the glass. |
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| ▲ | stonogo 4 hours ago | parent [-] | | And yet Intel is the one taking a dump here, because it has no moat. People use Wintel because people use Wintel, the same way people bought Gros Michel bananas because people bought Gros Michel bananas. When they went away, people bought something else. |
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| ▲ | cco 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Intel is incredibly important for American sovereignty and that's why they are semi-nationalized. They are a Boeing now. A country must feed itself, power itself, and in 2026 it must be able to manufacture its own chips (from ore, to refining, to the foundry). |
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| ▲ | Shitty-kitty 5 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | There isn't a single country in the world that can make advanced chips on its own. It takes machines, raw materials an chemicals from over a dozen different countries. | | |
| ▲ | cco 4 hours ago | parent [-] | | You're absolutely right! And that is why the last couple of years has been fascinating to watch from a geopolitical and trade standpoint. Watching China push its weight around earlier in the year with REM and REE was crazy. The US, and the rest of the world for that matter, were brought to our knees. Germany's auto industry and weeks of chips left, the US started shipping F35's to allies _without_ radar. Truly astounding trade power to see. Made it very clear to every nation that you must have a sovereign story to tell about chip manufacturing. |
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| ▲ | melagonster 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | ASML: Am I joking to you? |
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| ▲ | anonymous908213 6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| It only runs, what, 90% of PCs, laptops, and servers in the world? |
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| ▲ | impulser_ 6 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | Maybe a decade ago, but they have lost market share every year since and currently sits around 60% and it still decreasing. | | |
| ▲ | Grombobulous an hour ago | parent [-] | | Still, a lot of that lost share went to AMD and that is ultimately a safe thing for Intel compared to losing share to alternative CPU platforms. More than just safe, mutually beneficial for both companies. Sure, losing Apple was a huge deal, but ultimately Apple still only has ~20% of the consumer PC market and far less in enterprise, and even less than that in more niche applications since their form factors are so limited, and 0% marketshare in data centers. I’m not sure how hard Intel is trying to get into the enterprise AI data center scene but Intel ARC cards are definitely floating around in the local LLM scene for their stellar value and I’d be surprised if Intel doesn’t see a massive opportunity to take advantage in that area. They are one of three companies who have reasonably modern GPU designs. |
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| ▲ | piyh 6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | The entire consumer laptop market is about four data centers | | |
| ▲ | anonymous908213 6 hours ago | parent [-] | | Which one would the world miss more if disappeared overnight? | | |
| ▲ | smileysteve 4 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | The average millennial and younger don't use a non work computer, and haven't had one for 10 years. | | |
| ▲ | ehnto 4 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | Not sure I would put the age cap at millennials, they very much had PCs and laptops at home, uni etc and lived before smartphones were a thing. | | |
| ▲ | vel0city 2 hours ago | parent [-] | | Key word there is had, while the comment you're replying to is speaking as to today minus ten years roughly. And yeah, as a millennial I know lots of people who had a shared desktop at home, probably had a laptop in college, used a work laptop, and hasn't had a personal computing device outside an iPad and iPhone for a decade or more. Outside of those who play PC games or other niche hobbies it's getting more and more rare, at least for the people I know. |
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| ▲ | somenameforme 28 minutes ago | parent | prev [-] | | This is often said, but incorrect. 81% of households have a desktop/laptop. [1] And the breakdown is basically a proxy for wealth. Only 56% of households with earnings of less $25,000 have a desktop/laptop whereas it's 96% for $150k+. For millennials (approximately - age range 35-44) the rate is 87%. [1] - https://www.census.gov/newsroom/press-releases/2024/computer... |
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| ▲ | cowlevel 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Depends which four data centers. AWS North Virginia would be missed more than all the world's laptops. | | |
| ▲ | codebje 4 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | Not by me; I couldn’t tell AWS NV was even missing without my laptop. | | |
| ▲ | cowlevel 4 hours ago | parent [-] | | You'd open your phone and nothing would work, not even the connection to the cellular network since your phone company has management components running on AWS. | | |
| ▲ | lelanthran an hour ago | parent | next [-] | | > You'd open your phone and nothing would work, not even the connection to the cellular network since your phone company has management components running on AWS. I'm pretty confident, sitting here on a different continent, that I wouldn't have that problem at all. | |
| ▲ | codebje 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | You might have that problem, but us-east-1 going dark is unlikely to impact my Australian carrier enough to knock cellular service out. But granted, I might notice something is up if I tried to use my phone for much. If us-east-1 vanished at the right time of day I might notice on my phone first, sure. |
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| ▲ | matkoniecz 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | All laptops vs 4 (presumably most impactful) data centers? I would expect that "all laptops dematerialize" would be worse. |
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| ▲ | esseph 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | Banks don't run on laptops, so probably that one | | |
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| ▲ | Vaushite 6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | PCs are like 5% of computing devices. Very important for business offices but not outside of that niche. And mass amounts of servers can be adapted to whatever is cheapest. Google wouldn't insist on AMD64 - they'd port to ARM if ARM was cheaper. And if you do want AMD64, AMD currently makes better AMD64 chips. | | |
| ▲ | matkoniecz 5 hours ago | parent [-] | | > Very important for business offices but not outside of that niche. you miss at least several other niches | | |
| ▲ | rightnutwingjob 3 hours ago | parent [-] | | Yep, like technicians. Especially technicians that work on, well, everything. Every industrial machine, robot, PLC, industrial vehicle, mining equipment, power plant, etc etc. |
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| ▲ | esseph 6 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | Nah they've been "out of fashion" for 5+ years, and in that time AMD took their datacenter crown, which was also encroached on by various ARM hyperscaler systems. |
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| ▲ | UncleOxidant 6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Any company with advanced fabs is important now. We've got shortages of CPUs, GPUs, RAM, etc. Many of these shortages will persist till 2030. |
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| ▲ | stevefan1999 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| A fraction of the entire world's servers are running Xeon and it is definitely important. And keep in mind that Intel literally still holds the rights to issue x86 licenses. |
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| ▲ | sipjca 6 hours ago | parent | prev [-] |
| id argue leading edge fab and packaging capacity is importantish |
