Intel’s post covid future isn’t looking bright. Lack of orders for PC processors is a factor and their AI offerings need to improve. They are making efforts to improve their AI and server offerings.
I’ve lived through a lot of changes with chip manufacturers that started like this. There will be changes in product lines with new ones coming on and some being discontinued.
The point is I have seen no sign that the Fedora project is making plans for what comes next. Sure Intel might pull it together and their x86-64 line for PCs might keep going for a while, but that’s not certain. No product line or manufacturer goes on forever and technology substitution always happens.
If there is some planning going on with regard to this it needs to be more visible and participation solicited. I doubt that Redhat or Fedora plan to give up on workstation.
Yes there are some other providers of x86-64, but their situation needs to be evaluated in detail before counting on them for long term.
Alternatively workstation could be moved away from being primarily x86-64 to another platform.
In any case planning needs to be underway that involves the whole Linux community. I would think that Redhat and Fedora would be leading in that effort. Yes I know that planning this kind of major change is scary, but this must be dealt with. I’ve seen companies fail because they weren’t able or willing confront such changes.
Fedora already has “somethings”, first of our packages aarch64, secondly thanks to Asahi Project, we have better x64 emulator (still needs improvement but they do evolve pretty well) For GPU/CPU/Socs/sbc perspective, hardware manufacturers ARE needs to contribute to kernel or some volunteer person(s) needs to write driver to kernel. I also used aarch64 board/systems etc. It works fine (of course proper hardware) But improvement still needs to come. When you “no sign” that’s just wrong, you need to do you research better. Plus we always welcome new contributor and If there is anyone or you wants to help us on arm side sure feel free to join.
It’s possible that AMD could become the major supplier. However from the view point of a PC manufacturer you never want to get stuck with a single supplier. Having more that one supplier is essential to maintaining price (competitive quoting) and protection in case of disaster (earthquakes, floods, tornadoes, etc). They don’t want their production to go down because a manufacturer can’t supply for weeks, months, etc.
I don’t know of any PC manufacturers that are using aarch64 nor am I aware of any aarch64 chip suppliers that are supplying large quantities reliably over the long term.
Sure the points you pring up and these are solvable, but I think a lot of time and effort are needed. If this is to be real several essential participants need to get started on their planing and implementation.
While Intel may be hurting in the gaming and enthusiast markets, they still have a very strong presence in home retail and commercial spaces with vendors like Dell, HP, Lenovo, etc. still selling mostly Intel offerings with some (but growing) AMD-based products.
Enterprise servers still have a huge amount of inertia when it comes to Xeon processors over AMD EPYC. For workloads that need tons of cores, sure EPYC will take the cake when it comes to x86 servers; but, if you look at enterprises with longer standing infrastructure and onerous per-core licensing models, Xeons have been more prevalent and live migrating to EPYC hasn’t been a real option.
Yes, Intel in general is hurting, but AMD won’t replace them overnight. ARM has definitely been growing big time in the cloud space, but still has major hurdles in the enterprise (again, lots of legacy infrastructure and software that isn’t available or validated for ARM).
When I worked for Intel I became aware of termination of more than 1000 managers, some of which had faithfully served Intel for at least 25 years and termination of close to 10000 rank and file workers. To add insult to injury, they had to compete with outsiders for available jobs.
Intel’s penchant for tossing employees of ALL disciplines like yesterday’s garbage has existed since the late '90s. In today’s world, social media and the Internet quickly expose such activity so Intel is restricted to hiring those who do not bother to research its track record, are desperate to get back to work or the naive who believe that layoffs won’t affect them.
It is my opinion that workers from those demographics may not be motivated to do their best. No one will miss Intel and in the future the demise of windoze will go largely unnoticed.
Welll … it would not be the first time I have seen a processor/CPU manufacturer go bye-bye (SUN SPARC (Ross/TI/Hitachi), Zilog (Z80), Motorola (MC68xx), DEC, HP)… the worst part of these kinds of things is that as competing suppliers diminish, the more the cost of the remaining increases AND innovation stagnates. I am a fan of both iNtel and AMD and frankly it would be a real shame to see either go away.