3 ms·
Intel makes ten to hundreds of dollars for each x86 processor they sell. They would make pennies to dollars manufacturing chips for other companies. If Intel ma
by endorphone 8y ago
Intel makes ten to hundreds of dollars for each x86 processor they sell. They would make pennies to dollars manufacturing chips for other companies. If Intel made their own mobile chips they would have to similarly dramatically reduce their enormous margins.
In any discussion about Intel this is the point that really reigns supreme -- Intel was in the enviable state where their primary concern was always putting their own profits at risk. In the long term of course they should to move to new, growing markets (e.g. mobile), but from a closer term perspective they knew that such products, if not seriously crippled, would start chipping into their higher-end processors.
Hence why their mobile processor offerings were built on laughably dated processes, using very obsolete designs. If Intel made them better they knew that someone would figure out a way to drop 32 of them on a motherboard with a shared memory controller, etc.
- tsenkov 8y ago> Hence why their mobile processor offerings were built on laughably dated processes, using very obsolete designs. If Intel made them better they knew that someone would figure out a way to drop 32 of them on a motherboard with a shared memory controller, etc. Interesting... Would you care to share a reference for this? Thanks.
- detaro 8y ago> Hence why their mobile processor offerings were built on laughably dated processes, using very obsolete designs. I thought the various Airmont-based chips were made on the same 14nm process as everything else they made at the time?
- endorphone 8y agoAirmont came after Intel gave up on mobile, and they targeted the premium market (e.g. Microsoft Surface), thinking they could eek out a niche there with their compromised solutions.
- detaro 8y agoOh, right. Apparently they still made phone SoCs with it, but the vast majority of the push was earlier.
- oblio 8y agoWell, according to the Innovator's Dilemma, if you're Intel now you throw 1-2 of those billions of dollars of yours into a totally separate startup that you fully own. That startup is free to make ARM chips or whatever the markets wants. It's better long term if you cannibalize yourself than if other companies do it.
- perl4ever 8y agoIf you do that, as a public company, don't investors come along and say "hey, you really need to spin that off"? I mean, I see there are quite a few companies that just seem to have a grab-bag of random stuff they make, as though they were a mutual fund of different tangentially related businesses. And it certainly occurs that people decide they are more valuable broken up. From the larger perspective of society in general, why should a company be eternal; why does it need to always have a way to pivot?