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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

#71

Post by AnthonyMouse »

jeffbee wrote: post #59
AaronFriel wrote: post #11

I wonder to what extent a six month delay could influence hyperscaler decisions for compute purchasing. Every major cloud now offers AMD Epyc instances at a discount relative to Intel's 14nm(\+)* offerings. It seems unlikely Intel will be competitive until 2022. It seems unlikely any of the top three cloud providers would go all AMD for new instances but I could see the ratio shifting heavily in AMD's favor.

Nobody can flip their whole fleet suddenly -- the TCO-positive lifespan of a datacenter computer is way longer than most people assume -- but at least some of the hyperscalers operate a "machine of the day" process, where 100% of new machines are identical. In that sense, whoever gets the design win gets all of the orders.

But that just means it's on a delay. If AMD gets the design win in 2020 or 2021 then it means more trouble for Intel even if they're competitive again in 2022, because then they're the ones waiting on the next redesign.

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

#72

Post by trhway »

ponker wrote: post #58
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…

Revenue growth is great but enterprise tech companies can grow revenue long after they are as dead as a doornail. Lotus Notes (!) posted revenue growth in 2008 (!). Intel in some serious shit and the revenue numbers don’t change that.

>Lotus Notes (!) posted revenue growth in 2008 (!).

i worked with Lotus Notes in 1997, and even that 1997 version would be miles ahead of many enterprise software in 2008. A super-hyper-important project had finally [and quietly] failed at Sun around 2008 after several years of trying to build a functionality which was just a one item in the large list of 1997 Lotus Notes capabilities :)

Wrt. the original discussion - Intel - anekdotally i don't see any moves on our huge mostly C++ platform (with our customers running machines with hundreds cores and terabytes of memory) toward AMD, unfortunately. Giving the cost structure of software vs. hardware, our customers will run only what is certified by us, "minor" theoretical savings on AMD hardware be damned. I think that only when Intel will get really slower than AMD, then the enterprise glacier will start moving. If i were AMD, i'd not even bother with enterprise on-premise datacenter, and would focus instead on those few places where the future is - AWS and the likes. By the time Intel, if it happens at all, brings the price/performance and energy/performance (the metrics which are really important to cloud and not that to enterprise datacenter) back to competitive level, the cloud may be owned by AMD.

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

#73

Post by AnthonyMouse »

chrisseaton wrote: post #68
smabie wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> Regular people didn't but PCs in 2000 that's just not true. Sorry I've got no idea what this means.

You said regular people haven't bought PCs for a couple of decades. A couple of decades ago PCs were still too expensive for regular people to buy, they were mostly owned by businesses and the upper middle class.

Sales volume peaked somewhere in the mid 2000s. Since then the PC ownership rate hasn't really declined (it's still ~75%), but people haven't bought as many PCs because the rate of performance improvement has slowed so people haven't had as much of a need to replace their existing PCs.

I think the phone makers are trying to avoid that fate now by discontinuing software updates for older phones or making it expensive to replace failed batteries, but eventually one of them is going to defect and offer a phone with in-kernel drivers and a replaceable battery and then win half the market when customers get wise to not having to lay out hundreds of dollars every three years instead of every five or ten.

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

#75

Post by arcticbull »

trasz wrote: post #69
arcticbull wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They're clearly not reaping any reward from their process, TSMC has them beat hands down and they continue to show lack of forward progress towards smaller nodes. They have a much bigger IP portfolio than AMD, and frankly, it appears their foundries are a cost center/boat anchor rather than a profit driver for next-gen silicon. They don't have to give up their existing 14nm capacity, but next-generation processors co…

I'm not sure I agree. From what I remember manufacturing is a big part of Intel's profits. Sure, they might not have the best process, but they still have _a_ process, and customers are willing to pay for it.

I agree, there's no reason for intel to shut down their fab, but I don't know that they need to hold progress on their CPUs for like, 5 years now? They can continue to work on their process while fabbing next gen CPUs at TSMC IMO.

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

#76

Post by chrisseaton »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #73
chrisseaton wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Regular people didn't but PCs in 2000 that's just not true. Sorry I've got no idea what this means.

You said regular people haven't bought PCs for a couple of decades. A couple of decades ago PCs were still too expensive for regular people to buy, they were mostly owned by businesses and the upper middle class. Sales volume peaked somewhere in the mid 2000s. Since then the PC ownership rate hasn't really declined (it's still ~75%), but people haven't bought as many PCs because the rate of performance improvement ha…

75% of people own a PC?! Sorry I can’t agree with that. I can’t remember the last time I saw a PC in someone’s house. Maybe ten years ago or more. People have laptops and macs.

And conversely I don’t know anyone who didn’t own a PC in 2000. 2000 was the very height of the dotcom boom. The dotcom boom wasn’t fuelled by a tiny upper middle class - it was about everyone suddenly being online.

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

#77

Post by Torkel »

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…

As other commenters I'm reminded of the classic RIM roadrunner effect - the decapitated chicken that keeps running.

Another thought though: is it completely unthinkable for Intel to pull an AMD themselves and spin out their fabs and rely on whoever has the best fabs out there? I mean - if they are years late with something that is already outdated there are not too many downsides to it.. Next-gen process nodes are now so delayed that they might as well use the time until then to retarget their designs for TSMC/Samsung.

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

#78

Post by wmf »

chrisseaton wrote: post #76
AnthonyMouse wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You said regular people haven't bought PCs for a couple of decades. A couple of decades ago PCs were still too expensive for regular people to buy, they were mostly owned by businesses and the upper middle class. Sales volume peaked somewhere in the mid 2000s. Since then the PC ownership rate hasn't really declined (it's still ~75%), but people haven't bought as many PCs because the rate of performance improvement ha…

75% of people own a PC?! Sorry I can’t agree with that. I can’t remember the last time I saw a PC in someone’s house. Maybe ten years ago or more. People have laptops and macs. And conversely I don’t know anyone who didn’t own a PC in 2000. 2000 was the very height of the dotcom boom. The dotcom boom wasn’t fuelled by a tiny upper middle class - it was about everyone suddenly being online.

For the purpose of this thread, laptops and Macs are Intel PCs.

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

#79

Post by DSingularity »

paulpan wrote: post #63
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…

The 7nm may well likely snowball into a much bigger issue and put the company in jeopardy. E.g. allow competitors to surpass and erode the brand value/perception. This year is already proving to be a watershed one for Intel, largely due to AMD's continued resurgence and taking the performance crown in mobile (Renoir) and expected in desktop (Zen3). Apple announced their move away from Intel silicon and even AWS makin…

Intel sell the fans? Would google sell it’s search engine?

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

#80

Post by abacadaba »

DSingularity wrote: post #79
paulpan wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The 7nm may well likely snowball into a much bigger issue and put the company in jeopardy. E.g. allow competitors to surpass and erode the brand value/perception. This year is already proving to be a watershed one for Intel, largely due to AMD's continued resurgence and taking the performance crown in mobile (Renoir) and expected in desktop (Zen3). Apple announced their move away from Intel silicon and even AWS makin…

Intel sell the fans? Would google sell it’s search engine?

never say never
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