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Intel is on life support. Can anything save it?

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51–60 of 122 posts

Re: Intel is on life support. Can anything save it?

#51
post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Global foundries looks boring but competent. Seems a better bet to me.

GF sold its EUV machine several years ago when it decided to stop trying to compete at the leading edge of logic processes. So, they're not comparable to what TSMC, Intel and Samsung are doing.

They're not in a position to grind out the AI supercomputers of today's excitement. Those aren't the chips I'm worried about from a national security perspective.

It's the microcontrollers and FPGAs controlling weapons systems that really should be made within the country boundaries and that should be completely fine on GF's machinery.

Re: Intel is on life support. Can anything save it?

#52
post #16
post #6

If Intel is critical to the US industrial base, why aren't Nvidia and Apple stepping up to support Intel? What is the point of $3T national champions like Apple and Nvidia if they ship the industrial base overseas.

the goal of the Nvidia, etc., is to maximize ther profits, not to subsidize the incompetence of their competitors.

There’s something of a case for Nvidia to buy or merge with Intel before AMD does …

Re: Intel is on life support. Can anything save it?

#53
I'd love to have Intel's cash flow while being on "life support", thanks.

This was like the stupid ass DEC hostile giveaway to Compaq while DEC had almost 2 gigabucks+ a year in enterprise services revenue that was going to continue forever. A single year of services revenue was almost as large as the entire merger deal.

And then, as PCs crashed and burned, Compaq couldn't figure out what to do with all that cash, either!

Executive morons all around.

Re: Intel is on life support. Can anything save it?

#54
post #6

If Intel is critical to the US industrial base, why aren't Nvidia and Apple stepping up to support Intel? What is the point of $3T national champions like Apple and Nvidia if they ship the industrial base overseas.

That would be an argument for splitting Intel into two, the contract fab business and the design business. It's tough to make a partnership with Intel to fab your chip design if their other arm is competing with you on the same thing. Intel's process is tailored to their own designs which make it hard for outsiders to optimize. So, it's not only risky from a business perspective to make Intel your manufacturing partner, it's also more difficult than the alternatives.

Imho it's pretty likely that this will happen. Intel's IP will be sold off, while their manufacturing business remain, both due to the geopolitical situation and because although they have seen setbacks in recent years, they are still damn good at making chips.

Re: Intel is on life support. Can anything save it?

#55

> Intel has expertise and talented engineers. Intel certainly had those things. It has lots of interesting IP around processor design and tooling locked away in source control and so forth. I think it is critically important whether Intel has retained the engineers who knew how to build world class products. Nehalem was excellent and shipped in 2008 so I'm sure they had the skills back then. They used to have a reput…

It is the same old story. Once the bean counters take charge, pandering to Wall St becomes the one and only priority. Engineering is deemed an expense and thus has to be cut and cut. The old experienced engineers retire and the new generation of engineers gravitate to companies with more favorable culture.

McDonnell Douglas takeover Boeing is an example.

Re: Intel is on life support. Can anything save it?

#56
post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Intel is a tarnished brand, sullied by unfixable bugs, suicidal chips, security holes, poorly executed "next gen" ideas, and worse. The only thing they're capable of these days, seemingly, is re-releasing slightly optimized, nearly two decade-old architecture... The people who actually choose their CPU (gamers for the most part) have abandoned Intel in droves. Intel is floundering at an epic scale, and showing no end…

AMD almost went bankrupt until xbox and ps apus saved them. Intel just need a chance to reform

AMD almost went bankrupt because of Intel's illegal behavior.

Intel received a small slap on the wrist, shrugged it off, and then proceeded to do nothing with their illegally-won cleared playing field (making what is perhaps the single biggest business blunder in human history - they effectively were left with zero competition, and squandered the opportunity).

Meanwhile, AMD got scrappy and found a way to bounce back, and today is slowly swallowing Intel whole, one inch at a time.

Does Intel have two decades of runway to recover? I guess we're going to all find out together...

Re: Intel is on life support. Can anything save it?

#57

What can save it is a potential pointless war by China to destroy Taiwan.

Call me conspiratorial but feels like TSMC is the target for both China and US.

China needs TSMC to have economic and political leverage. US wants TSMC to become an American owned enterprise so it can prop up Intel.

South Korea or Samsung rather see TSMC burn to the ground giving it monopoly marketshare. It benefits if US and China destroys each other in the process.

There's like only 3 guys in town with TSMC dominating the market and it just happens to be in a very risky region.

Just like the pipelines that were blown up by Ukranians I can't help but feel we will be seeing similar sabotage to TSMC should a war occur.

Re: Intel is on life support. Can anything save it?

#59
post #53

I'd love to have Intel's cash flow while being on "life support", thanks. This was like the stupid ass DEC hostile giveaway to Compaq while DEC had almost 2 gigabucks+ a year in enterprise services revenue that was going to continue forever . A single year of services revenue was almost as large as the entire merger deal . And then, as PCs crashed and burned, Compaq couldn't figure out what to do with all that cash,…

So they bought HP.

Re: Intel is on life support. Can anything save it?

#60
post #14

> After two sets of disastrous quarterly earnings the company’s market value has shrivelled to $84bn, less than the value of its plants and equipment, from over $210bn in January. Holy smokes. I just looked at the INTC 5 year chart and it is, in fact, a bath of blood. I don't think it happens very often that the market cap of a company is less than the worth of its physical assets.

INTC is criminally oversold right now. I'm buying as much of it as I can at these prices.

I was contemplating the same thing. I get Intel isn't doing so well but I really can't imagine it just collapsing and dying. That said another possibility is just years of stagnation and low returns on your investment
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