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Intel grew revenues in Q2 2020, but key manufacturing upgrade delayed

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Re: Intel grew revenues in Q2 2020, but key manufacturing upgrade delayed

#31

Post by smabie »

chrisseaton wrote: post #27
grizzles wrote: post #17

Intel is a company that's living on it's distribution legacy. Ask yourself - why do regular people still buy Intel PCs? Because they are easy to buy. A great non Intel hardware and software laptop+aio by AMD or someone else would be a mortal wound on $INTC.

> Ask yourself - why do regular people still buy Intel PCs? Regular people don’t buy PCs at all and haven’t for a couple of decades.

Regular people didn't but PCs in 2000 that's just not true. I think most consumers buy laptops nowadays, but that shift started happening around 2005ish, not 2000.

Re: Intel grew revenues in Q2 2020, but key manufacturing upgrade delayed

#32

Post by galeos »

ksec wrote: post #5

20% YoY Revenue increase, 43% YoY Growth in Datacenter Segment. 76% Growth in Non-Volatile Memory solution, another 7% YoY growth in Client Side computing. This is truly amazing results. I get stabbed over at Anandtech every time I made an argument for Intel as an AMD investor. The Internet is full of Intel bashing comments but reality is Intel has been making record revenue quarter after quarter. For the not so good…

This obviously puts more wind in AMD's sails. That said, Intel's Datacenter growth is very impressive.

I have been an AMD investor since pre-Zen launch and I think it is fair to say that EPYC sales feel like they haven't reached the levels some have hoped for quite yet. If AMD continue to widen the gap between EPYC and Xeon, I suspect we may look back on this inertia as a bit of a 'roadrunner effect' and in a year or two's time get a shocking quarter where AMD suddenly starts taking surprisingly large bites out of Intel's datacenter market share.

Also on the GPU side of things, it is rumored that Nvidia has struggled to get capacity at TSMC and is having to use Samsung's, supposedly inferior, 8nm process for its forthcoming Ampere cards, at least until their 7nm capacity comes online at TSMC. Not sure how much truth there is to this, but highlights the capacity issues that may currently be in play.

Re: Intel grew revenues in Q2 2020, but key manufacturing upgrade delayed

#33

Post by stormbeard »

snovv_crash wrote: post #18
jjoonathan wrote: post #4

Have any insider accounts of the 10nm debacle emerged, or is it still too soon?

This is 3rd hand, but I heard that the 14nm was rushed with a crazy schedule, and as a result the greybeards who actually knew everything all left. Intel is having to rebuild all that institutional knowledge from scratch again.

Any idea where most of them went?

Re: Intel grew revenues in Q2 2020, but key manufacturing upgrade delayed

#34

Post by coayer »

_1100 wrote: post #10
bhouston wrote: post #7

At some point Intel should just dump their own process nodes and go with TSMC. This is getting ridiculous.

As much as I enjoy seeing Intel falter for all of the anti-competitive practices it has employed in the past... I think them moving to outsourced foundries would be a huge move in the wrong direction for fab consolidation.

I feel the same about Samsung's Exynos mobile SoCs. While they are definitely worse than Qualcomm's, if they went away Qualcomm would be the only chip maker for Android flagships (excluding Huawei, but without Google play services they don't really count).

Re: Intel grew revenues in Q2 2020, but key manufacturing upgrade delayed

#35

Post by beezle »

ksec wrote: post #5

20% YoY Revenue increase, 43% YoY Growth in Datacenter Segment. 76% Growth in Non-Volatile Memory solution, another 7% YoY growth in Client Side computing. This is truly amazing results. I get stabbed over at Anandtech every time I made an argument for Intel as an AMD investor. The Internet is full of Intel bashing comments but reality is Intel has been making record revenue quarter after quarter. For the not so good…

INTC investors are quite unhappy tonight. Down 11.25% at 54.20. Anyone expecting the Robbin Hooders to understand comparative lithography, well... there's a bridge still available in NY.

Maybe INTC will still make a lot of money but there's a "nanometer gap", damnit!

Re: Intel grew revenues in Q2 2020, but key manufacturing upgrade delayed

#36

Post by OldHand2018 »

paranoidrobot wrote: post #26
ogre_codes wrote: post #22

Apple's timing here is spot on. If Intel was firing on all cylinders, it would be a lot harder for them to pull off a processor change.

If all Apple cared about was faster chips, they could easily call up AMD and move their platform there. It'd be a lot less work for them. Moving to their own ARM chips lets them gain tighter control over the platform, and not be beholden to Intel or AMDs roadmap or desire to implement specific features Apple wants.

> If all Apple cared about was faster chips

Everybody _wants_ faster chips, but for most people, the chip is in idle state 99% of the time. Outside of the data center and serious gamers, chip speed has been fairly irrelevant for years.

Re: Intel grew revenues in Q2 2020, but key manufacturing upgrade delayed

#37

Post by sct202 »

rgbrenner wrote: post #15
bhouston wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why hasn't Intel given up on their internal process nodes? Their advantage is clearly not in owning their process nodes at this point. Dump them and adopt TSMC.

Who would they order from? Keep in mind they are slightly behind Samsung in ic volume. Samsung is #1 and Intel #2. Almost double the volume of TSMC. It takes a few years to build a new plant. Literally impossible without a very long term plan... and when it’s over they lose control of their destiny. They can beg TSMC for more chips if they want to meet their sales targets, but maybe they’ll sell to Apple or Nvidia in…

Where are you getting that number for Intel? Everything I see has Samsung, TMSC, then Micron as the top in terms of wafer production. Intel is like 1/3 of TMSC which is still alot. https://www.eetindia.co.in/over-half-of-global-wafer-capacit...

Re: Intel grew revenues in Q2 2020, but key manufacturing upgrade delayed

#38

Post by bob1029 »

bhouston wrote: post #7

At some point Intel should just dump their own process nodes and go with TSMC. This is getting ridiculous.

Seems like even if they went with TSMC, they are a little bit late to the party. AMD has been optimizing against TSMC's nodes for years.

AMD is also an organization that has been operating with the 3rd party foundry model for 10+ years. How long would it take for Intel to undergo an org-chart/culture transition into a similar model? I have to believe this would be a fairly disruptive time for such a large organization.

Not saying Intel can't pull it off, but it seems like their strategy will have to exist on a >5 year timeline at this point.

Re: Intel grew revenues in Q2 2020, but key manufacturing upgrade delayed

#39

Post by billyhoffman »

grizzles wrote: post #17

Intel is a company that's living on it's distribution legacy. Ask yourself - why do regular people still buy Intel PCs? Because they are easy to buy. A great non Intel hardware and software laptop+aio by AMD or someone else would be a mortal wound on $INTC.

This is a 2000s view of Intel that is not accurate in 2020. Look at the numbers.

- 7% growth for consumer (the “Intel PCs” you mention)

- 43% growth for data centers

- 70%+ growth in nonvolatile storage (SSDs)... much of which goes into high end servers in data centers

Will there be more data centers And cloud offerings in 3 years, or less? Many More!

Will there be more or less PC sales in 3 years. For Intel it’s less or the same (Apple is 8-10% of the market that is disappearing and PC growth is flat to slightly up. So 3 years out it will be roughly the same)

Also keep in mind the margin on Xeons vs The laptop chips That go in a $599 plastic Dell.

Intel as a “PC” company is dying. Intel as a data center provider (SSDs and heavy processors) is ascendant

Re: Intel grew revenues in Q2 2020, but key manufacturing upgrade delayed

#40

Post by JoshTko »

Intel's 10% stock drop is all about losing investor confidence. They've been given a pass for delaying 10nm for years in part because there was no competition and assurances that it was a one-off thing and they have learned their lesson. This delay threatens that narrative and instead suggest that Intel hasn't learned from their 10nm debacle.
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