Intel posts largest loss in its history as sales plunge • Hacker News Board

Re: Intel posts largest loss in its history as sales plunge

#181

Post by BeetleB » Fri, Apr 28, 2023, 3:23 PM UTC

bane wrote: post #116

Intel and Google share surprisingly similar problems: an almost pathological inability to grow lines of business with new products because they kill them off too early. In Intel's case, it's even worse, they kill them off right before the market would have made them successful. They should own the "things with semiconductors" market, but instead financially engineered their way to focus only on higher profit core chi…

> Intel will contract TSMC to make their chips?

They've been using TSMC for various parts/chips for probably 5 years now.

Re: Intel posts largest loss in its history as sales plunge

#182

Post by cyanydeez » Fri, Apr 28, 2023, 3:24 PM UTC

bane wrote: post #116

Intel and Google share surprisingly similar problems: an almost pathological inability to grow lines of business with new products because they kill them off too early. In Intel's case, it's even worse, they kill them off right before the market would have made them successful. They should own the "things with semiconductors" market, but instead financially engineered their way to focus only on higher profit core chi…

I believe this is handwaving for Intel.

Intel lost money because computing started moving towards GPU architecture and AMD has both beat them in low power CPU and offer cheap GPU.

That's all. They were too late to GPU sales.

Re: Intel posts largest loss in its history as sales plunge

#183

Post by mike_hearn » Fri, Apr 28, 2023, 3:25 PM UTC

rqtwteye wrote: post #114

Andy Grove writes in his book about inflection points. They should probably move beyond the cozy x86 and Windows business and look into the future.

Easy to say but what would that future be? The only thing that could replace Windows is Linux. Intel funds Linux but there are fundamental issues there that stop it taking over. They could try and develop their own OS and PCs, a sort of reverse Apple, but do they have the money, staff and ideas for it?

Re: Intel posts largest loss in its history as sales plunge

#184

Post by 64operator » Fri, Apr 28, 2023, 3:26 PM UTC

With the stunning 1-2% year on year gains in speed, when you're not losing 10-20% of your performance for mitigations, who sees a compelling reason to upgrade their computer? Laptop, workstation, or server?

Re: Intel posts largest loss in its history as sales plunge

#185

Post by 1024core » Fri, Apr 28, 2023, 3:26 PM UTC

And the stock is up.... SMH. Can never figure out Wall St.

Re: Intel posts largest loss in its history as sales plunge

#186

Post by [deleted] » Fri, Apr 28, 2023, 3:27 PM UTC

rektide wrote: post #158

formerly_proven wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Intel got out of memory when that became a complete commodity, similarly Intel sold their NAND business (now called Solidigm) a while ago to Hynix, because similarly NAND and SSDs are now commodities (in the sense of highly standardized, interchangeable product made by a large number of competing companies). It does make sense if you only wish to keep things where your company has unique advantages and doesn't need t…

It's extra bitter to see Intel exit NAND because they largely invented & drove NVMe. The p3700 was the first mainstream NVMe drive, July 2014, & is still a beast, still pleasantly fast with stable & high iops, albeit lacking in raw bandwidth. The before times were so awful. A sea of proprietary interfaces, dubious drivers. Intel identified a huge weak point in the ecosystem & created radical change where it was neede…

[deleted]

Re: Intel posts largest loss in its history as sales plunge

#187

Post by JoeAltmaier » Fri, Apr 28, 2023, 3:27 PM UTC

It's not actually vital for Intel as a company to survive? As long as the foundaries and designs survive. Somebody else will take the business away from them.

Re: Intel posts largest loss in its history as sales plunge

#188

Post by throwaway2037 » Fri, Apr 28, 2023, 3:27 PM UTC

irisgrunn wrote: post #176

bane wrote: post #116

Intel and Google share surprisingly similar problems: an almost pathological inability to grow lines of business with new products because they kill them off too early. In Intel's case, it's even worse, they kill them off right before the market would have made them successful. They should own the "things with semiconductors" market, but instead financially engineered their way to focus only on higher profit core chi…

This is incredibly similar to what's happening (has happened) to Philips.

Can you explain more? I also sense the Philips is a fading giant, but I struggle to a put a finger on it. Part of it might be that it is constantly spinning out divisions into separate companies.

Re: Intel posts largest loss in its history as sales plunge

#189

Post by mike_hearn » Fri, Apr 28, 2023, 3:28 PM UTC

0zemp2c wrote: post #141

itsoktocry wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> losing market share every year for a decade (Microsoft doesn't even seem to care afaict) Of course they care. Windows, at one point, had 95% market share. Do you believe that to be sustainable? Do we want that? No, in both cases. They are still dominant in desktop computing. > offers 10x the performance the average person will need Why is buying something 10x more powerful than you'd need at 2x the price "good valu…

> Of course they care. for the last ten years Microsoft has pushed all of its effort into Azure, which is coincidentally based on Linux (!) accept it, they gave up on Windows. Windows 11 is my proof...a lame re-skinning which can't even displace Windows 10 > You should have a look at Windows' desktop market share and get back to us. They still own the space. no one under 25 uses Windows! Go look at any college classr…

Azure hypervisor runs on a custom build of Windows.

Re: Intel posts largest loss in its history as sales plunge

#190

Post by BeetleB » Fri, Apr 28, 2023, 3:30 PM UTC

qbasic_forever wrote: post #143

Workaccount2 wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unlike foxconn, the federal government has a huge interest in that fab being built.

Like I said, I'll believe it when I see it. At the end of the day capitalism rules supreme and trumps jingoistic nationalism. If it's cheaper for Apple and others to build chips overseas then all your devices will continue to have chips made there. I don't see any fundamental change to make labor in America competitive with overseas labor costs. Intel can build as many fancy fabs as they want in Ohio but they will be…

People in this thread are a bit clueless on the economics of it.

Many of Intel's existing fabs are in the US, and they've never really stopped building them here - particularly in Oregon and Arizona, and they continue to build there. The only difference is that now they're building on yet another site. The bulk of their fab process R&D is in the US, and they perfect the flow for a given process here and their international fabs then follow suit.

Why do they continue to build in the US? The CEO answered this over and over during his campaign for the CHIPS act: Running fabs is significantly more expensive than labor costs. They don't really save that much by building abroad.

When it comes to cheaper things like packaging, the labor costs do matter, and so they do that abroad.

So no, Ohio won't be foxconned. If Intel doesn't do well, Ohio will be dead, but they're not going to build elsewhere to save on costs. There isn't much to save.