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

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

#241

Post by seunosewa » Fri, Apr 28, 2023, 5:27 PM UTC

rektide wrote: post #169

windowsrookie wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At the beginning of the chip shortage, Intel's CPU just weren't very good. AMD was beating them at performance and efficiency. Intel has caught up now, but their chips still use significantly more power than the current AMD chips. Intel spent a lot of time and money developing their new Arc GPUs. They were delayed and they missed the crypto boom. Drivers and GPU performance were disappointing even after delaying the…

To their credit, the gpu drivers have continued getting much much better, much faster. Intel has long understood the value of drivers, has been one of the primary contributors & drivers of really good open source (albeit with some frustrating areas of sore neglect, like GMA500/Poulso) (But also rip the incredible http://01.org those folks were amazing at finding high value open source work to do!). Im glad to see mak…

AI has kickstarted a new GPU craze. Hope they catch this one.

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

#242

Post by rqtwteye » Fri, Apr 28, 2023, 5:27 PM UTC

mike_hearn wrote: post #183

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?

"Easy to say but what would that future be?"

I thought figuring this out is why the big shots get their 50,000,000 dollar paychecks :-)

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

#243

Post by MuffinFlavored » Fri, Apr 28, 2023, 5:40 PM UTC

bcrosby95 wrote: post #221

MuffinFlavored wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're not wrong, but I think this misses the point. Even retail knew they were estimated to post a loss. I'm guessing something in the earnings report was "less bad than expected" in order for the stock to be up 5% today?

Think of it like sports. You don't want to go where the ball is right now. You want to go where you think it will be in the future . I don't usually do sports analogies, but my kid recently started playing soccer and I've been trying to get her to intercept rather than chase people. Heh.

Pretty good analogy.

I think one of the biggest concerns right now (maybe always?) in the stock market is "things will stop being gangbusters, the economy will slow, growth will slow, and the ball with stop being projected to be in front of you/forward at any scale/pace"?

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

#244

Post by qbasic_forever » Fri, Apr 28, 2023, 5:41 PM UTC

mywittyname wrote: post #237

qbasic_forever wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah I lived in Columbus and other parts of Ohio for 15 years or so and it strikes me as bizarre to try to bring industry back. Rubber, steel, automotive, etc. industries were absolutely massive in the 50's, 60's, 70's. But the corporate raiders of the 80s destroyed and sold off all the factories to replace them with cheaper offshore labor. The cost of living in Ohio only continued to go up and most cities in the sta…

> most cities in the state are filled with suburbs full of homes now approaching $500k or more. I still get Zillow emails from my time living in the state. $500k is in the rearview mirror. A lot of new developments in the "nicer" suburbs are hitting the $1MM mark. $500k buys you a new home in the far, far suburbs. $250k gets you a 800 sqft 40s-50s ranch in a "crestfallen" neighborhood (and the price history on Zillow…

Yeah I lived there when 60k could get you a home and 100k was, "woah there Mr. Mansion-haver" money. My mind boggles at spending 500k there now and barely getting a couple bedrooms. Nowhere in Ohio should it cost that much to have a home.

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

#245

Post by eitally » Fri, Apr 28, 2023, 5:50 PM UTC

AtlasBarfed wrote: post #216

matheusmoreira wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Of course they care. If they care they sure don't act like it. Microsoft is clearly squeezing Windows users for whatever revenue is left. Nothing else explains the user hostility, backwards compatibility breaks and unending advertising and data collection.

This is the real consequence of Intel being run by MBA sociopaths for two decades now. Intel (and AMD) needs a good consumer OS to keep it relevant in the next decades. It's what keeps the DEVELOPERS DEVELOPERS DEVELOPERS on x86, and therefore use x86 server architectures. Either that, or it is a commodity ARM business. Microsoft has never been up to the task of a good consumer OS. Intel always should have had multip…

This is largely why they hired Alyssa Fitzpatrick from Microsoft, and where the "Intel Accelerated[1]" software partnerships program came from. I don't know if it will work or not, but it's a start.

[1] https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/events/accelerated.h...

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

#246

Post by MuffinFlavored » Fri, Apr 28, 2023, 5:52 PM UTC

kube-system wrote: post #210

MuffinFlavored wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're not wrong, but I think this misses the point. Even retail knew they were estimated to post a loss. I'm guessing something in the earnings report was "less bad than expected" in order for the stock to be up 5% today?

Yes, the market will often move in the direction of the delta between expectations and actual results. People often assume it "should" move in the direction of the overall sentiment (good earnings = up, bad earnings = down), but that is not at all true because earnings reports are a retroactive view of information people have already been trading on.

Well, in this case, isn't it still that simple?

Actual results came in better than expectations (hence the "delta" you are referring to)

What metric did Intel beat on?

This quarter EPS/revenue/some metric/growth? Or guidance for upcoming quarter less bad than expected?

All it takes is one or two "good" things and everything else with "in line as bad as expected", as you know.

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

#247

Post by philistine » Fri, Apr 28, 2023, 5:53 PM UTC

rektide wrote: post #169

windowsrookie wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At the beginning of the chip shortage, Intel's CPU just weren't very good. AMD was beating them at performance and efficiency. Intel has caught up now, but their chips still use significantly more power than the current AMD chips. Intel spent a lot of time and money developing their new Arc GPUs. They were delayed and they missed the crypto boom. Drivers and GPU performance were disappointing even after delaying the…

To their credit, the gpu drivers have continued getting much much better, much faster. Intel has long understood the value of drivers, has been one of the primary contributors & drivers of really good open source (albeit with some frustrating areas of sore neglect, like GMA500/Poulso) (But also rip the incredible http://01.org those folks were amazing at finding high value open source work to do!). Im glad to see mak…

One could conceivably assume that they're talking to Sony and Microsoft about putting their GPUs in their next consoles. I'm not sure Microsoft would bite for compatibility reasons but Sony seems ready to make another blunder.

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

#248

Post by giantrobot » Fri, Apr 28, 2023, 5:57 PM UTC

causi wrote: post #170

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…

Personally I think Intel lost the plot around the time they killed Atom. Atom launched as a garbage product, then they spent a decade refining it into an incredible combination of price, performance, and power consumption. Then they killed it and replaced it with processors that offered barely 10% better performance per watt at five times the MSRP and they wonder why the Intel tablet market is dead. It's dead because…

I think Intel's tablet ambitions and their larger Atom ambitions died because they tied them to Microsoft.

The Atom could have been bundled as an easy to integrate SoC for things like set top boxes, routers, and smart devices running Linux/Android The sort of uses that go for MediaTek or AllWinner ARM SoCs. Intel had all the peripheral IPs to make competitive offerings.

Instead they put the Windows millstone around the Atoms' neck and the chip sucked. Intel based tablets sucked because Windows was a dog shit OS for low end devices. The few Atom based Android tablets that got made were pretty decent devices.

I've got a bunch of Bay Trail devices lying around. The ones I've put Linux on end up being very useful little devices that run very well. My Windows Bay Trail tablets are just e-waste at this point. They're difficult to use at best and typically just slow pieces of crap.

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

#249

Post by philistine » Fri, Apr 28, 2023, 6:00 PM UTC

heavyset_go wrote: post #68

sokoloff wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can buy an M1 8/256 Air at $800 right now. I'd expect to get 5 years out of it minimum (we're buying one shortly to replace a mid-2013 Air). That's less than $15/month if it gets thrown in a bin in 5 years. It's under $20/mo if we bin it in 3.5 years. https://www.bestbuy.com/site/macbook-air-13-3-laptop-apple-m... I feel like the Chromebook on the lower end is great for a lot of uses/people and the Air is an easi…

You could buy a laptop with 16GB to 32GB of memory and more than double the storage space for $800, and you can buy laptops that you can actually upgrade the hardware on. You can also spend less and get a similarly spec'd laptop. I just picked up a new laptop with 16GB/1TB and 8 cores for $500 and upgraded it to 64GB of memory for $100. I bought a low end Mac in 2015 with the same 8GB/256GB specs, 8GB wasn't enough e…

What about the most important laptop spec: the case. Is your 500$ laptop using a metal case, or are you stuck in plastic city?

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

#250

Post by sidewndr46 » Fri, Apr 28, 2023, 6:02 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…

ARC GPUs are basically dead on launch. It's not competitive in any way and fundamentally broken upon release. Intel integrated graphics works because it's a value-add to an expensive component already necessary for many computing products.

ARC GPUs is basically Intel expecting the market to be the beta tester for a very expensive & inferior product.