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Intel is on life support. Can anything save it?

economist.com

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

#71

Post by cokeandpepsi »

GianFabien wrote: post #55
JonChesterfield wrote: post #10

> 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.

Pandering to the people who own the company seems normal

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

#72

Post by Alupis »

cyberax wrote: post #68
Alupis wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> AMD almost went bankrupt because of Intel's illegal behavior. Nope. AMD at the time had been outcompeted by Intel in most areas. They survived as a cheaper alternative for Intel.

Rewriting history does not change history.

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

#73

Post by lispisok »

Where does Intel go from here?

* They missed out the rise of mobile

* They missed out on the rise of GPU computing

* AMD has been making gains in the server cpu market

What do they have left other than consumer computer market where their main advantage is name recognition?

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

#74

Post by GianFabien »

kanbankaren wrote: post #44
jsheard wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Demand for x86 processors isn't going away any time soon either, and they're only one of only two companies with a license to make them. AMD is currently strong on the x86 front, but their production is constrained by the wafer allocations they can get at TSMC while those wafers would be more profitably spent on making GPUs instead.

Is there any industry where x86 is absolutely necessary? Assuming ARM or other architectures could achieve same performance/$ or watt?

Amazon and Google are using increasing amounts of ARM. Apple pivoted from x86 to ARM for their computers. Enterprise Windows and computer games are the areas still most reliant on x86.

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

#75

Post by lbcadden3 »

fefe23 wrote: 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.

Being worth less than your assets and liabilities is an extremely dangerous position to be in. The only reason they haven’t been bought and stripped for parts is the fact that the government probably would block it.

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

#76

Post by KK7NIL »

JonChesterfield wrote: post #51
KK7NIL wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Intel was never heavily involved in that, so idk why you think we'd be able to deduce that meaning from your previous comment.

Also, the military semiconductor supply chain is already protected and has serious export restrictions, you just don't hear about it often.

Don't forget that today's leading edge nodes are tomorrow's trailing edge, so you really can't escape the issue.

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

#77

Post by segasaturn »

mensetmanusman wrote: post #38

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

The people still invested in Intel are mostly in it for this reason. It feels like a doomsday cult to me, their best chance of getting the return on investment they want is an apocalyptic war between nuclear-armed superpowers.

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

#78

Post by kawogi »

kanbankaren wrote: post #44
jsheard wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Demand for x86 processors isn't going away any time soon either, and they're only one of only two companies with a license to make them. AMD is currently strong on the x86 front, but their production is constrained by the wafer allocations they can get at TSMC while those wafers would be more profitably spent on making GPUs instead.

Is there any industry where x86 is absolutely necessary? Assuming ARM or other architectures could achieve same performance/$ or watt?

At least everyone who's stuck with Windows and AAA-gaming. But we'll see for how long.

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

#80

Post by deisteve »

mensetmanusman wrote: post #69
deisteve wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 dominat…

TSMC is geographically perfectly suited to be the best semiconductor manufacturing center in the world. This is great for the free market, tsmc engineers make less than half what US software folks make. This is a win/win for the US if TSMC keeps puttering along as normal.

in a region with tsunamis and earthquakes and world's 2nd largest military looking to invade the island?

i think Samsung is in a far better environment.

if Warren Buffet dumps his TSMC shares then we can't ignore these real risks to it

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