> firms from Microsoft to Facebook to Tesla have begun designing custom chips specialised for the sorts of number-crunching their businesses need. >That is unl

> firms from Microsoft to Facebook to Tesla have begun designing custom chips specialised for the sorts of number-crunching their businesses need. >That is unlikely to harm Intel directly, since such accelerator chips are complements to its server chips, not replacements. This is just straight down the line wrong. In the data centre there is just 'compute' it doesn't matter if it's a GPU or CPU doing the compute. What does matter is that if you're doing all your compute on a GPU or ASIC then the CPU you're buying can be a lightweight chip just to do a little control & synchronization. Intel doesn't make huge money on those chips. It's the massive 512core 100GHz monsters where it's making the most cash. So these custom solutions absolutely present a threat to Intel's server revenue. As well as that Tesla are going for ASIC in their car. Automotive was a key growth area for Intel which is one of the reason s it bought Altera and MobilEye. If they miss automotive (which they will given most big movers are on Nvidia platforms with ASICs coming after, and Intel is failing in their fab business). >he hopes to continue Mr Krzanich’s strategy of expanding the firm’s reach. Intel cannot execute on this until Intel's culture changes. The problem they have is they're trying to cost cut in legacy businesses whilst investing for growth in new businesses. Firstly this pisses off the legacy businesses like you wouldn't believe. Secondly, legacy business spends it's entire time dressing up in make-up and a new dress and screaming "Look at me! I'm a growth area!". And finally, the actual growth areas are hamstrung by inappropriate cost-saving, 1-size fits all management and spending 99% of their time trying to persuade the rest of the business they really are a growth area. Intel is just not set up to win new markets.