[dbatten]

For those who (like me) didn't get the "toothpaste company" reference - it seems to be a reference to Intel trying to squeeze every last bit of performance out of an old architecture (as one would squeeze every bit of toothpaste out of a tube), rather than innovating with new architectures and technologies.

It's hard to figure out exactly where the toothpaste reference originated, but at least one source makes it sound like it was a mis-translation of materials published by AMD. See https://www.hardwaretimes.com/amd-takes-a-jab-at-intel-we-do...

[mizzack]

It has a bit of a double meaning.

Starting with the Ivy Bridge (3rd) generation, Intel switched to using thermal paste between the core and heat spreader instead of solder on socketed desktop processors. Presumably this was done as a cost savings measure.

This caused a marked increase in core temperatures and thermal throttling. Enthusiasts discovered that you could remove, or "delid", the heat spreader and replace the "toothpaste" with higher quality paste or liquid metal to drastically improve temperatures (15-20c) and improve overclocking headroom.

Edit: This event is commonly reflected on to showcase Intel's greed at a time where they dominated the market. It wasn't until the i9-9900k that Intel went back to soldering heatspreaders for consumer CPUs, at which point they were forced to because they were being challenged by AMD.

[bserge]

Cost saving would've been to get rid of the IHS entirely. Their mobile chips work fine without them, I don't really understand why they're a thing for desktop processors.

AMD uses them too, so there must be a reason... is it because they're afraid of improper installation breaking them? That's on the user.

The weight of the desktop heatsinks? Small changes to latch design should suffice. Or you can have a metal spacer around the chip with the die exposed, kinda like GPUs do.

I've replaced many laptop chips and even ran some on desktops with no issues.

[tambourine_man]

I think the parent meant an anecdote I've heard many times, in slightly different ways. It goes like this: a major toothpaste company was having a meeting, trying to increase sales. Many solutions were tried: new flavors, advertising, none had much effect.

On a whim, a director asks the guy serving coffee:

  - Jack, what would you do to increase sales?
  - Have you tried increasing the hole on the toothpaste?

There might be some truth to this, toothpaste tubes used to be metal in the 60s and you were supposed to punch a hole on the front of it with the back of the cover cap. That hole got a lot smaller than the ≈1cm wide in the plastic ones of today. It was also much easier to squeeze the very last gram by folding it.

[cge]

I had also heard a point for toothpaste involving the marketing: toothpaste advertisements, and all marketing imagery of toothpaste on a toothbrush, almost always show absurdly larger amounts of toothpaste than is effective or appropriate to use brushing teeth, trying to increase consumption by increasing waste.

[dimitrios1]

It's amazing how backwards we went from a sustainability perspective when you consider likely no one had this issue front and center as they did in the early industrial days.

We used reusable metals and glasses much more. Now everything is plastic.

[LambdaComplex]

> toothpaste tubes used to be metal in the 60s and you were supposed to punch a hole on the front of it with the back of the cover cap

I'm definitely too young to remember anything from the 1960s, but you can still buy tomato paste in tubes like that. Neat.

[chriscjcj]

Reminds me of the Alka-Seltzer campaign "plop plop fizz fizz." One tablet was enough, but there wasn't any harm in consuming two. So they just told people to take two tablets. https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/double-bubble/