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Intel is reducing server chip pricing in attempt to stem the AMD tide

tomshardware.com

21–30 of 344 posts

Re: Intel is reducing server chip pricing in attempt to stem the AMD tide

#21
Intel needs better (especially with less energy consumption) chips not lower price. If Intel will lower the price they will have less cash for R&D and this is the trouble for intel now: not much competitive chips. And where are again at the beginning of the circle.

I hope they will make an internal review of their offices/laboratories/whatever, is not a price issue with the chips, is a performance and technical issue.

Re: Intel is reducing server chip pricing in attempt to stem the AMD tide

#22
post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Intel has $24.8 billion in cash. https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/INTC/intel/cash-on... Intel dropping their prices and thus revenue temporarily should not affect their ability to compete at all. They're not THAT badly mismanaged to the point they're out of cash.

Intel drank the management consultant kool-aid like many large pharmaceuticals corps, relying more on financial engineering than their research pipeline to compete. The flip side is that they have lots of money to splash around. Companies like Pfizer for example.

Did they? I thought they made a heavy bet that hasn’t paid off (and maybe never will).

Re: Intel is reducing server chip pricing in attempt to stem the AMD tide

#23
post #12

In anti-trust terms would this not be "dumping"

Or maybe you could call it "being forced to return to reasonable prices now that their monopoly suddenly has competition again"?

Well, at least that's what I remember comments on HN cheerfully proclaiming would happen back when Ryzen & Threadripper were launched.

Re: Intel is reducing server chip pricing in attempt to stem the AMD tide

#24
post #4

This will make it harder for them to invest in production technology, which will make it harder for them to catch up to TSMC. It might be the only move they can make, but that doesn't make it a great one.

This move is to attract AMD customers back to Intel, so while in the short term it could hurt revenue, longer term it may mean increased profits and therefore offer more room to invest. There's also the potential for increased sales at the lower pricing, which will still have a profit attached. So I doubt that overall this will have much impact on investment.

Is a discounted chip price going to sway people enough to offset the hotter core (therefore pricier in terms of power and cooling), and limited (in comparison to EPYC) IO?

Re: Intel is reducing server chip pricing in attempt to stem the AMD tide

#25
Intel is NOT competing against AMD only. In the past couple of years, we’ve seen a number of big tech companies developing their own chips. Focusing on AMD would be quite myopic from a strategic pov. This market is only getting more competitive. Either you compete on performance or price.

Re: Intel is reducing server chip pricing in attempt to stem the AMD tide

#26
post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is this not just the efficient-market at work? Simplistically: Intel's chips aren't as good as AMDs so it has to drop prices. And for future investment Intel still has ~ $24 billion cash on hand as of June 2021 [0] [0] https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/INTC/intel/cash-on...

> Simplistically: Intel's chips aren't as good as AMDs so it has to drop prices. Shouldn't you replace AMD with TSMC in that sentence, unless you meant design instead of chips? AMD doesn't manufacture chips.

It is true that the main reason why the AMD chips are better than the Intel chips is that the TSMC 7 nm manufacturing process is significantly better than the Intel process used for the Ice Lake Server chips.

Nevertheless, the AMD designers must be praised for making the right design choices year after year for the last half of decade, which were needed to fully exploit the characteristics of the modern CMOS processes.

On the other hand the Intel designers appear to have lived in a fantasy land, where they had absolutely no idea about how their future manufacturing processes will behave, even if in their case the required information should have come from another division of the same company, not from different foundry companies, like in the case of AMD.

Once again, Intel was not able to switch in time their style of design, to be in sync with the advance of CMOS technology.

During 2003 - 2008, Intel needed 5 years to follow AMD and switch to CPUs with integrated memory controllers and now, during 2016 - 2021, Intel required again 5 years to follow AMD in the transition to the use of multiple interconnected chiplets instead of large monolithic chips.

Re: Intel is reducing server chip pricing in attempt to stem the AMD tide

#27
post #20

They are also doubling down on fab tech to catch up with TSMC. Markets working as intended.

Well... I find that a bit of a stretch. I'd rather say we happen to be lucky.

What if TSMC was a company that was about as good as Intel on specs and price. Would the market be "working" then?

A new player might come along. That new player would need to have 20 billion dollars of money to play along though.

Re: Intel is reducing server chip pricing in attempt to stem the AMD tide

#28
post #25

Intel is NOT competing against AMD only. In the past couple of years, we’ve seen a number of big tech companies developing their own chips. Focusing on AMD would be quite myopic from a strategic pov. This market is only getting more competitive. Either you compete on performance or price.

> we’ve seen a number of big tech companies developing their own chips

Fortunately, only a handful of companies have the resources to do that.

Unfortunately for Intel, those handful of companies are the biggest and only customers for large scale server farms.

Re: Intel is reducing server chip pricing in attempt to stem the AMD tide

#30
post #25

Intel is NOT competing against AMD only. In the past couple of years, we’ve seen a number of big tech companies developing their own chips. Focusing on AMD would be quite myopic from a strategic pov. This market is only getting more competitive. Either you compete on performance or price.

These companies are already not paying anything close to the list price, though.
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