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Intel plans thousands of job cuts in face of PC slowdown

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Re: Intel plans thousands of job cuts in face of PC slowdown

#311

Post by kccqzy »

AnimalMuppet wrote: post #151
piggybox wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's reported Steve Jobs did ask Intel to provide CPU for the first gen of iPhone, but the offer price was too low so Intel would lose money. If you were the CEO of Intel, how would you explain it to the board that "we should make this deal with Apple even with loss, because I think iPhone will be the next big thing"?

Did Intel counter-offer? I mean, if someone offers you a bad deal, your options are not restricted to "yes" and "no".

Likely they did but Apple didn't want to pay more. Apple generally is not known to be flexible when it comes to business deals with suppliers.

This is reported in a profile of Otellini:

> "We ended up not winning it or passing on it, depending on how you want to view it. And the world would have been a lot different if we'd done it," Otellini told me in a two-hour conversation during his last month at Intel. "The thing you have to remember is that this was before the iPhone was introduced and no one knew what the iPhone would do... At the end of the day, there was a chip that they were interested in that they wanted to pay a certain price for and not a nickel more and that price was below our forecasted cost. I couldn't see it. It wasn't one of these things you can make up on volume. And in hindsight, the forecasted cost was wrong and the volume was 100x what anyone thought."

https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2013/05/paul-...

Re: Intel plans thousands of job cuts in face of PC slowdown

#312

Post by scarface74 »

tehnub wrote: post #120
gspencley wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know a lot of the details, but everything I've heard over the last couple of years indicated that AMD was absolutely crushing Intel. A recent laptop I purchased, as well as the last desktop I put together (~2 years ago) each have Ryzen chips. I forget the details but in addition to performance issues, didn't Intel CPUs also have some major security vulnerabilities? And was it that they were related to instruc…

I don't have any data, but from word of mouth and variously seeing posts and videos online, 12th gen Intel CPUs seem pretty popular for gaming builds. They're winning in benchmarks against 50 series AMD (as they should, being newer), but are also cheaper. I'll be curious to see how 13th gen Intel vs. 70 series AMD plays out. There are always complicating factors, such as motherboards for 70 series AMD being quite pri…

The PC gaming market is tiny in the grand scheme of things.

Re: Intel plans thousands of job cuts in face of PC slowdown

#313

Post by alfor »

Hire Jim Keller back and build the next thing instead of milking the same customers.

The company developing a competent alternative to the M1/M2 or nvidia GPU is going to have a good business.

Seems to me that Intel is alway in this cycle of greatness and then crash while sitting on their laurels. It seem they need to have a fire under their buts to make the right decisions.

Re: Intel plans thousands of job cuts in face of PC slowdown

#314

Post by AaronFriel »

tehnub wrote: post #120
gspencley wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know a lot of the details, but everything I've heard over the last couple of years indicated that AMD was absolutely crushing Intel. A recent laptop I purchased, as well as the last desktop I put together (~2 years ago) each have Ryzen chips. I forget the details but in addition to performance issues, didn't Intel CPUs also have some major security vulnerabilities? And was it that they were related to instruc…

I don't have any data, but from word of mouth and variously seeing posts and videos online, 12th gen Intel CPUs seem pretty popular for gaming builds. They're winning in benchmarks against 50 series AMD (as they should, being newer), but are also cheaper. I'll be curious to see how 13th gen Intel vs. 70 series AMD plays out. There are always complicating factors, such as motherboards for 70 series AMD being quite pri…

Intel repeated their Prescott (Pentium 4/Pentium D) strategy of completely removing power limitations on their team to beat AMD.

As a result, the Intel processors have TDPs and real world power usages >2.5x that of a comparable Ryzen. Sure, they're winning, but at what cost? The 12900K at 240 watts pulls almost the same power as a 280W 64-core Threadripper.

AMD is responding in kind, with new top-end processors pulling 170W, or higher with their built-in overclocking that pushes the chip to even higher power draws as long as cooling permits. This looks to put them back into the lead, but it's just not a sustainable strategy.

Re: Intel plans thousands of job cuts in face of PC slowdown

#315

Post by thentherewere2 »

scarface74 wrote: post #306
twobitshifter wrote: post #279

Intel just received money from the US government and they swiftly started laying off American workers. The money is supposed to be for the new Ohio plant and 3000 jobs, but now we’re losing thousands of jobs up front?

20% is in sales and marketing. How would you feel if taxpayer money was going yo marketing? Hopefully the money is going toward equipment and research. Maybe they don’t need the people.

what about the other 80%? presumably the comment holds for that?

Re: Intel plans thousands of job cuts in face of PC slowdown

#316

Post by scarface74 »

petra wrote: post #259
hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #32

I think this is the first major layoff announcement at a big, established tech firm I've heard this year that is anywhere near this size. I mean, there have been loads of "couple hundred" employee layoffs, and certainly a lot of hiring slowdown/freezes, but again, haven't seen anything else near this big, and the layoffs previously seem to have been concentrated in unprofitable VC-funded companies. I know Tesla laid…

I've read that currently the semi industry is in the negative part of a cycle.

What positive side of a cycle will cause a resurgence in personal computers in the age of mobile? Servers are increasingly using custom purpose built chips. Intel would be better off being a fab.

Re: Intel plans thousands of job cuts in face of PC slowdown

#317

Post by pclmulqdq »

thentherewere2 wrote: post #315
scarface74 wrote: post #306

Earlier quoted context omitted.

20% is in sales and marketing. How would you feel if taxpayer money was going yo marketing? Hopefully the money is going toward equipment and research. Maybe they don’t need the people.

what about the other 80%? presumably the comment holds for that?

20% of sales and marketing is getting cut. Some other departments may also see losses.

Re: Intel plans thousands of job cuts in face of PC slowdown

#318

Post by scarface74 »

briandear wrote: post #178
hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #32

I think this is the first major layoff announcement at a big, established tech firm I've heard this year that is anywhere near this size. I mean, there have been loads of "couple hundred" employee layoffs, and certainly a lot of hiring slowdown/freezes, but again, haven't seen anything else near this big, and the layoffs previously seem to have been concentrated in unprofitable VC-funded companies. I know Tesla laid…

Oracle is/was laying off thousands as of August. Within the past 12 months: Peloton laid off over 4000. Snap 1280 (which is 20% of the company,) Shopify 1000 (10%.) Groupon laid off 15%. Salesforce, 1000. Microsoft 1800. Carvana (while not "big established" it's still a lot of people) laid off 2500. Tencent laying off 5500. Alibaba: 9500, ByteDance: 1000, Zillow 2300. This definitely isn't really the first major layo…

None of the tech companies you mentioned besides Microsoft and Alibaba are BigTech. Most of them were bad business that VCs were able to pawn off during the bubble market to the public markets. They were more or less a Ponzi scheme.

Re: Intel plans thousands of job cuts in face of PC slowdown

#319

Post by [deleted] »

scarface74 wrote: post #306
twobitshifter wrote: post #279

Intel just received money from the US government and they swiftly started laying off American workers. The money is supposed to be for the new Ohio plant and 3000 jobs, but now we’re losing thousands of jobs up front?

20% is in sales and marketing. How would you feel if taxpayer money was going yo marketing? Hopefully the money is going toward equipment and research. Maybe they don’t need the people.

[deleted]

Re: Intel plans thousands of job cuts in face of PC slowdown

#320

Post by scarface74 »

jjtheblunt wrote: post #222
AshamedCaptain wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People need to remember that desktop/laptop ARMs outside of Apple have kind of royally sucked... E.g. when the first Surface Pro ARM was released (the X, 2020ish), it was ridiculously more expensive, less performing and had less battery life (!) than the cheaper Intel options https://www.notebookcheck.net/Microsoft-Surface-Pro-X-Review... The previous Surface non-Pro ARM attempts (RT, 2012ish) were even crappier (Teg…

> People need to remember that desktop/laptop ARMs outside of Apple have kind of royally sucked... I've got an SQ1 and Apple M2 and they're both truly excellent. (disclaimer: I worked years in engineering in both Qualcomm and Apple)

Got some benchmarks?
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