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What surprises me is $721m seems like a lot for a product no one buys. Also surprised it's not worth employing 100 people bringing in $7m/yr/head. I would emplo

• jasode 9y ago
  >Also surprised it's not worth employing 100 people bringing in $7m/yr/head. $721m divided by 97 would be applicable if the entire IoT group consisted of those 97 people but it's not. I can see that the article makes it confusing and some might interpret it as if Intel is laying off all the IoT employees. (I don't know how many total Intel IoT employees there are since Intel doesn't seem to not have publicized that headcount.) My guess is that since Intel recently discontinued x86-based IoT boards (Joule, Galileo, and Edison), many of the layoffs are directly connected to that. Intel is still in the IoT game but pursuing other strategies to compete with the low-power-more-efficient ARM-based IoT market.
• gruturo 9y ago
  $721m revenue is not $721m profit. The division may have been operating at a loss. Big shipments may have been provided to retailers and booked as revenue, just waiting to return unsold or massively discounted.
• baybal2 9y ago
  Not a big sum for a semi business. There are quite a few semiconductor companies of less than 100 people and billion buck sized revenues
  • baybal2 9y ago
    one waffer for less than a 100 waffers tapeout will cost at around 9k if we talk about 14nm. it is very likely that they were actually making losses
    • throwawaybbq1 9y ago
      How many useful die per wafer? Is there a ballpark yield for 14nm? I too suspect this was not a profit-in-the-now division. They were probably playing a long-term game. I think they ceded the game to someone else .. but who?
      • baybal2 9y ago
        >How many useful die per wafer? Is there a ballpark yield for 14nm? ~550/580