8 ms·

Intel stock dropping toward 50 year low amid restructuring news

81 points by highwaylights 2y ago

m3kw9 2y ago
AI to intel us like the iPhone moment for RIM, but they should survive this because their business is way more diverse
- nolok 2y ago
  I disagree. AI is a fad to Intel's business. It's not going to replace the core of what Xeon are used for, which is dumb data entry and processing, it's simply not efficient cost or energy wise. Intel is in actual trouble, but that's because they can't ration the supply of good x86 on one side because AMD leapfrogged them, and they can't limit high performance highly compatible to x86 anymore because not only did they kill their own x86 rebirth (atom) to save absurd margin, they also denied license to everyone who wanted in so they all went with arm. Intel is in trouble because if I want a laptop or desktop or server chip I have the choice between a powerful arm not from them or a powerful x86 not from them, or their chip that uses twice the energy of the competitor and now it turns out they melt themselves.
  - ddtaylor 2y ago
    I would also mention Intel seems to have had more performance problems mitigating spectre and meltdown, among others.
  - dreamcompiler 2y ago
    In addition Intel has never been able to build the ultra-small EUV geometries that TSMC can, and they got "Boeinged" by shifting from an engineer-driven culture to an MBA-driven culture. My heart will not bleed for their demise.
  - photon_rancher 2y ago
    Lol not competitive cost or efficiency wise is what people said about the iPhone compared to blackberry, and here we are - people bought them anyway. Not trying to argue with you just a funny parallel. I don't really have a horse in this race but it’s clear there’s a lot of uncertainty out there for intel right now.
dxbydt 2y ago
One of the cnbc guys compared this morning's disaster to an emergency surgery - "they will live, but what sort of a life will they have..."
cedws 2y ago
In my view Intel is going the way of IBM. It has sat on its market dominance for years, innovated very little, and resorted to cheap tricks/smoke and mirrors when they fell behind. Pat Gelsinger has had years to turn it around. The ship is either sinking too fast or he's not the right man for the job.
- Arrath 2y ago
  I wonder how seriously the 13th/14th generation defects are going to hurt them on top of these difficulties. Its bad timing all around.
  - throwaway81523 2y ago
    I remember the FDIV bug...
- rubiquity 2y ago
  He’s been CEO for 3 years and some change. Turning around the Titanic takes a ton of effort. I think they’re doing better. Intel Core (edit: Core Ultra) and Raptor Lake are great platforms, better than their AMD equivalents (and that hurts to say as an AMD fan).
  - nequo 2y ago
    What makes them better than AMD in your view?
    - nolok 2y ago
      Well the AMD one aren't as good at barbecuing food for one! (the "raptor lake" he quoted is actually the generation of Intel chip that is currently making the news for melting itself through insane power usage, only to barely keep up to AMD)
    - jauntywundrkind 2y ago
      AMD and Intel have flipped their approaches a bit. AMD has been working on the X2 chip to smartly integrate two cores, and Intel came along with Pentium-D which was basically just two Pentium dies next to each other. These days AMD has been playing that same tactic up in spades. Strix Point is a very very nice monolithic APU, but everywhere else they have an IO-Die and then a varying number of Core Complex Die. They're just dropping down variable numbers of cores. Intel by compare is building interesting bespoke chiplet configurations, is taking on X2 like challenges. And I believe in the eventual gains here. They have parcelled up responsibilities in a really interesting way with Meteor Lake, a CPU, and GPU, a SoC (with its own e-cores as well!), and a io chiplet. Intel's got tons of value add from this. Gobs of usb4 that AMD is nowhere near delivering, a massive image/video processor, the ability to easily drop in new cores or new gpu's as they increment. The modular design is ambitious and interesting. https://www.anandtech.com/show/20046/intel-unveils-meteor-lake-architecture-intel-4-heralds-the-disaggregated-future-of-mobile-cpus https://www.anandtech.com/show/20046/intel-unveils-meteor-la... And Intel seems well ahead in the packaging game. Rather than big interposer dies, Intel's using smaller sized & much finer EIMB bridges between chips. Which helps them save power as well as reducing size. They have Foveros for much more heterogenous chip stacking than what most are pulling off. Architecturally it feels like Intel's been very much refining & iterating across the multichip era for a long time, from the drastically underrated old Lakefield, to the very very highly integrated upcoming Lunar Lake. AMD is doing a great job making cores and gpu's, but Intel's been doing remarkably good, especially considering their 10nm+++ Intel 7 process, especially with the E-cores being a modest sized nicely performing core. I also want to complement Intel on their really interesting architecture innovations. But I have severe doubts that their various on-chip accelerators are going to reach critical adoption levels where the developers that matter are excited about spending time optimizing for these awesome luxuries. Like Ponte Vecchio, very interesting tech, and something the hyperscalers and supercomputer can be excited about, but it's hard to see a path towards long term success. I'd love to see Intel ship photonics-intergated solutions again. Their EIMB tech should complement that well, and that used to be a huge high value offering they had.
012673 2y ago
Help me to understand this title... it's closer to the lowest price in a decade... where did we get 50 year low?
- kseifried 2y ago
  Stock splits. https://www.intc.com/stock-info/stock-splits https://www.intc.com/stock-info/stock-splits They basically keep doubling the number of shares which halves the price.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- 012673 2y ago
  [flagged]
- sophacles 2y ago
  Well, any drop is the stock moving towards (as in in the direction of) its 50 year low....
ThrowawayTestr 2y ago
If Intel can actually get fabs built and operating in the states they'll be fine in the long term. US administration has made it clear domestic chip production is a matter of national security.
- mlsu 2y ago
  Jury is still out on whether they can do that though. Chip fab requires a skilled and specialized manufacturing workforce, which does not exist here in the US. They can build the fabs, but they will need to import the talent to run them. I'm not seeing the domestic pipeline. What is the pathway for a high school graduate today to work on the line at one of these chip fabs that are coming up? Would any bright young person choose to do that today?
  - ThrowawayTestr 2y ago
    It's a big "if"
  - hangonhn 2y ago
    > I'm not seeing the domestic pipeline. I hear a different by similar version of this same idea, which is that a lot of fab engineers and semiconductor engineers have retired. I wonder if the US lacks the ecosystem to churn out these engineers. I don't mean just the schools but also the non-leading edge foundries that aren't as sophisticated to help new college grads gain experience before they get employed at leading edge foundries.
    - Workaccount2 2y ago
      It kind of sucks, but software is just such a damn good deal that you kind of have to be dumb to go engineering and stay out of software. WFH and make $180k/yr with elite benefits or commute to a lab full of dangerous/hazardous stuff and make $100k with crap benefits?
  - wakawaka28 2y ago
    Was there such a pipeline in any country where a fab was built? Or did clever people just apply to the company and get trained on the job? This is not a new problem for the US or any other country. IMO people don't study manufacturing-adjacent stuff as much in the US because there is little manufacturing going on here.
Havoc 2y ago
Some wall street bet guy invested 700k into it morning of the drop. Good 100k down by lunch lol https://old.reddit.com/r/wallstreetbets/comments/1ehjuzj/i_bought_700k_worth_of_intel_stock_today/ https://old.reddit.com/r/wallstreetbets/comments/1ehjuzj/i_b...
- consumer451 2y ago
  I woke up this morning thinking about this kid's original post on this topic. I generally don't think about other people's investments, but this just sounded so bad. I was vicariously suffering through him ahead of time. I believe that he is a math major or something, everyone on WSB told him that this was a bad idea... there are so many reasons why he should have known better than to do this. Then, in 24 hours he loses 20%. Guh-adjacent.
  - spacemadness 2y ago
    I mean, they inherited money at a young age and now he has $600k or so to start life with. Who really cares? They’ll be absolutely fine.
    - consumer451 2y ago
      That's what was so disturbing to me about waking up thinking about this. Why did I care? But apparently, my brain cared. I guess it was an anomaly that needed solving?
      - consumer451 2y ago
        > Ok, I definitely picked the wrong day to buy (intel 700k yolo update) 700k down to 492K. They are taking it like a champ though. I hope that this issue is now resolved for my subconscious. https://old.reddit.com/r/wallstreetbets/comments/1eiktnw/ok_i_definitely_picked_the_wrong_day_to_buy_intel/ https://old.reddit.com/r/wallstreetbets/comments/1eiktnw/ok_...
    - thejazzman 2y ago
fnord77 2y ago
With the end of Moore's law, is it surprising the Intel's growth will dramatically slow down?
etempleton 2y ago
Intel’s future will be based on Intel 18a. Pat Gelsinger has said as much. If 18a is better than the competition, which it is projected to be, then their chips and their fab will be popular and Intel should recover well. If it is anything short of the best process Intel is in big trouble. I am personally bullish on Intel long term under the current leadership, but man are they taking a beating.
- TZubiri 2y ago
  Cheap stonks
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
- petre 2y ago
  Gelsinger had his shot. Multiple shots actually. If the stock doesn't recover it's time for him to step down, but that's all on the board to decide.
- zipityzi 2y ago
  Projected to be better by Intel and Intel alone. Intel has disclosed virtually no details of Intel 18A on any industry-standard metric: perf / W with an Arm core, transistor density; precise perf & density improvements over Intel 4, 3, and 20A. TSMC is far, far more transparent than Intel—which is backwards. Intel is who needs more customers. Intel's silence on 18A's specifics is not inspiring. Qualcomm resoundingly rejected Intel 18A, according to the Wall Street Journal, due to Intel missing multiple promised 18A milestones. >Qualcomm, which designs chips and outsources manufacturing, wanted to work with Intel, and assigned a team of engineers to work toward making mobile-phone chips at Intel’s factories. It was particularly interested in a cutting-edge chip-making technology that Intel hopes will be the most advanced in the world by late next year. >In early 2022, Intel’s foundry arm sent a delegation to Qualcomm’s San Diego headquarters, where they met with CEO Cristiano Amon. Then Intel missed a June performance milestone toward producing those chips commercially. It missed another in December. >Qualcomm executives concluded Intel would struggle making the kind of cellphone chips they wanted, even if it succeeded in making high-performance processors. Qualcomm told Intel it was pausing work while it waits for Intel to show progress, according to people involved in the discussions. Source: https://www.wsj.com/articles/intel-gelsinger-nvidia-turnaround-30febac6 https://www.wsj.com/articles/intel-gelsinger-nvidia-turnarou... // We have a long way to go. Intel only expects 18A high-volume manufacturing (HVM) in 2026, with "small amounts of 18A wafers [in 2025]". Source: https://www.tomshardware.com/tech-industry/manufacturing/intel-18a-based-cpus-will-ramp-to-high-volume-in-2026 https://www.tomshardware.com/tech-industry/manufacturing/int... // Without Qualcomm, Intel has only found one real customer after a half-decade of hype: UMC's design subsidiary Faraday is an "evaluation [sever] platform" with Arm Neoverse cores, while Microsoft is making a vague "custom" chip. Faraday won't even sell those CPUs (it's an ASIC firm primarily) and Microsoft couldn't be bothered to give a single word of detail of what they are producing. I'm not hopeful, yet, until someone actually ships a key product on Intel 18A.
jarbus 2y ago
Very curious to see if they call pull off their new fabs.
typedef_struct 2y ago
So glad we poured 8.5 billion into this sinking ship. Thanks Joe. https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases/2024/03/20/fact-sheet-president-biden-announces-up-to-8-5-billion-preliminary-agreement-with-intel-under-the-chips-science-act/ https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases...
- petre 2y ago
  What's the alternative, let the Chinese get ahead, them buy chips with backdoors from them? Or maybe let Taiwan do it and then get invaded? It was the right decision.
  - create-account 2y ago
    If you pour taxes on it, you should at least get a % of the stock
    - EasyMark 2y ago
      I definitely agree with this. They could be sold back later to go back into the treasury
  - zipityzi 2y ago
    I would've preferred the gov't handing Intel a check and expecting, in return, 1) ownership stake of Intel, including governance, for xx years 2) stock buyback ban 3) stock dividend ban 4) golden parachute ban 5) far more public disclosures of progress, setbacks, and other problems If Intel—who's spent BILLIONS on buybacks—can't find enough money from the debt or equity or private markets, then, yes, serious strings should be required. Currently, CHIPS only receives some profit sharing and that's it. There were way too many alternative ways to implement this and we're paying the price of picking a "winner" that is massively cocky and arrogant with abysmal results. Major mistake and unlikely to deliver because it got wads of cash with very few serious strings attached. Just exposed yesterday: >The company is permanently grounding the Intel Air Shuttle, which flies workers between its major sites in Hillsboro, Silicon Valley and Arizona. >The company stopped the flights last year then resumed flying in April. The shuttle was especially prized by Oregon employees, who sought to avoid the 30-mile drive across the metro area to Portland International Airport. >The decision to permanently ground the shuttle, just five months after reinstating it, suggests that Intel executives didn’t recognize the severity of their financial situation until very recently.
proneb1rd 2y ago
How can be it be a 50 year low lol
pushingice 2y ago
This is incorrect. Adjusted for corporate actions (splits/dividends) it's more like 2010 levels. https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/INTC/ https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/INTC/ (click "ALL")
ksec 2y ago
Which makes Intel a decent target for merger and acquisition. Qualcomm, Apple, Broadcom, Google, Amazon, Microsoft, Saudi Aramco, Facebook, TSMC, Samsung and Finally...... AMD.
- finaard 2y ago
  > and Finally...... AMD. I don't think AMD would get enough out of that to make it worth for them. And that's before you take into account that a condition of that merger would be spinning off the x86 CPU business to a separate entity to avoid a monopoly there. The big loss maker here is the fab business - and AMD realized a long time ago they're better off without their own fab (and got heavily criticized back then) - so why would consider investing a shitload of money for a bit of IP just for having to deal with spinning of fab business yet again?
PerennialStill 2y ago
Intel's got a bit of a headache with the disproportionate number of senior engineering positions, especially those Principal Engineer types and up. These folks are pretty much untouchable when it comes to reshuffling the company because firing them is a real pain - you need sign-offs from all over the place. Back in the day, these roles were for Intel's superstars, but now? It's more about who you know than what you know. So we've ended up with a bunch of people pulling in over $750k a year, and a lot of them aren't really bringing that much to the table. It's like having a sports team full of overpaid benchwarmers.

81 points by highwaylights 2y ago

m3kw9 2y ago

AI to intel us like the iPhone moment for RIM, but they should survive this because their business is way more diverse

nolok 2y ago
I disagree. AI is a fad to Intel's business. It's not going to replace the core of what Xeon are used for, which is dumb data entry and processing, it's simply not efficient cost or energy wise. Intel is in actual trouble, but that's because they can't ration the supply of good x86 on one side because AMD leapfrogged them, and they can't limit high performance highly compatible to x86 anymore because not only did they kill their own x86 rebirth (atom) to save absurd margin, they also denied license to everyone who wanted in so they all went with arm. Intel is in trouble because if I want a laptop or desktop or server chip I have the choice between a powerful arm not from them or a powerful x86 not from them, or their chip that uses twice the energy of the competitor and now it turns out they melt themselves.
- ddtaylor 2y ago
  I would also mention Intel seems to have had more performance problems mitigating spectre and meltdown, among others.
- dreamcompiler 2y ago
  In addition Intel has never been able to build the ultra-small EUV geometries that TSMC can, and they got "Boeinged" by shifting from an engineer-driven culture to an MBA-driven culture. My heart will not bleed for their demise.
- photon_rancher 2y ago
  Lol not competitive cost or efficiency wise is what people said about the iPhone compared to blackberry, and here we are - people bought them anyway. Not trying to argue with you just a funny parallel. I don't really have a horse in this race but it’s clear there’s a lot of uncertainty out there for intel right now.

dxbydt 2y ago

One of the cnbc guys compared this morning's disaster to an emergency surgery - "they will live, but what sort of a life will they have..."

cedws 2y ago

In my view Intel is going the way of IBM. It has sat on its market dominance for years, innovated very little, and resorted to cheap tricks/smoke and mirrors when they fell behind. Pat Gelsinger has had years to turn it around. The ship is either sinking too fast or he's not the right man for the job.

Arrath 2y ago
I wonder how seriously the 13th/14th generation defects are going to hurt them on top of these difficulties. Its bad timing all around.
- throwaway81523 2y ago
  I remember the FDIV bug...
rubiquity 2y ago
He’s been CEO for 3 years and some change. Turning around the Titanic takes a ton of effort. I think they’re doing better. Intel Core (edit: Core Ultra) and Raptor Lake are great platforms, better than their AMD equivalents (and that hurts to say as an AMD fan).
- nequo 2y ago
  What makes them better than AMD in your view?
  - nolok 2y ago
    Well the AMD one aren't as good at barbecuing food for one! (the "raptor lake" he quoted is actually the generation of Intel chip that is currently making the news for melting itself through insane power usage, only to barely keep up to AMD)
  - jauntywundrkind 2y ago
    AMD and Intel have flipped their approaches a bit. AMD has been working on the X2 chip to smartly integrate two cores, and Intel came along with Pentium-D which was basically just two Pentium dies next to each other. These days AMD has been playing that same tactic up in spades. Strix Point is a very very nice monolithic APU, but everywhere else they have an IO-Die and then a varying number of Core Complex Die. They're just dropping down variable numbers of cores. Intel by compare is building interesting bespoke chiplet configurations, is taking on X2 like challenges. And I believe in the eventual gains here. They have parcelled up responsibilities in a really interesting way with Meteor Lake, a CPU, and GPU, a SoC (with its own e-cores as well!), and a io chiplet. Intel's got tons of value add from this. Gobs of usb4 that AMD is nowhere near delivering, a massive image/video processor, the ability to easily drop in new cores or new gpu's as they increment. The modular design is ambitious and interesting. https://www.anandtech.com/show/20046/intel-unveils-meteor-lake-architecture-intel-4-heralds-the-disaggregated-future-of-mobile-cpus https://www.anandtech.com/show/20046/intel-unveils-meteor-la... And Intel seems well ahead in the packaging game. Rather than big interposer dies, Intel's using smaller sized & much finer EIMB bridges between chips. Which helps them save power as well as reducing size. They have Foveros for much more heterogenous chip stacking than what most are pulling off. Architecturally it feels like Intel's been very much refining & iterating across the multichip era for a long time, from the drastically underrated old Lakefield, to the very very highly integrated upcoming Lunar Lake. AMD is doing a great job making cores and gpu's, but Intel's been doing remarkably good, especially considering their 10nm+++ Intel 7 process, especially with the E-cores being a modest sized nicely performing core. I also want to complement Intel on their really interesting architecture innovations. But I have severe doubts that their various on-chip accelerators are going to reach critical adoption levels where the developers that matter are excited about spending time optimizing for these awesome luxuries. Like Ponte Vecchio, very interesting tech, and something the hyperscalers and supercomputer can be excited about, but it's hard to see a path towards long term success. I'd love to see Intel ship photonics-intergated solutions again. Their EIMB tech should complement that well, and that used to be a huge high value offering they had.

012673 2y ago

Help me to understand this title... it's closer to the lowest price in a decade... where did we get 50 year low?

kseifried 2y ago
Stock splits. https://www.intc.com/stock-info/stock-splits https://www.intc.com/stock-info/stock-splits They basically keep doubling the number of shares which halves the price.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
012673 2y ago
[flagged]
sophacles 2y ago
Well, any drop is the stock moving towards (as in in the direction of) its 50 year low....

ThrowawayTestr 2y ago

If Intel can actually get fabs built and operating in the states they'll be fine in the long term. US administration has made it clear domestic chip production is a matter of national security.

mlsu 2y ago
Jury is still out on whether they can do that though. Chip fab requires a skilled and specialized manufacturing workforce, which does not exist here in the US. They can build the fabs, but they will need to import the talent to run them. I'm not seeing the domestic pipeline. What is the pathway for a high school graduate today to work on the line at one of these chip fabs that are coming up? Would any bright young person choose to do that today?
- ThrowawayTestr 2y ago
  It's a big "if"
- hangonhn 2y ago
  > I'm not seeing the domestic pipeline. I hear a different by similar version of this same idea, which is that a lot of fab engineers and semiconductor engineers have retired. I wonder if the US lacks the ecosystem to churn out these engineers. I don't mean just the schools but also the non-leading edge foundries that aren't as sophisticated to help new college grads gain experience before they get employed at leading edge foundries.
  - Workaccount2 2y ago
    It kind of sucks, but software is just such a damn good deal that you kind of have to be dumb to go engineering and stay out of software. WFH and make $180k/yr with elite benefits or commute to a lab full of dangerous/hazardous stuff and make $100k with crap benefits?
- wakawaka28 2y ago
  Was there such a pipeline in any country where a fab was built? Or did clever people just apply to the company and get trained on the job? This is not a new problem for the US or any other country. IMO people don't study manufacturing-adjacent stuff as much in the US because there is little manufacturing going on here.

Havoc 2y ago

Some wall street bet guy invested 700k into it morning of the drop. Good 100k down by lunch lol https://old.reddit.com/r/wallstreetbets/comments/1ehjuzj/i_bought_700k_worth_of_intel_stock_today/ https://old.reddit.com/r/wallstreetbets/comments/1ehjuzj/i_b...

consumer451 2y ago
I woke up this morning thinking about this kid's original post on this topic. I generally don't think about other people's investments, but this just sounded so bad. I was vicariously suffering through him ahead of time. I believe that he is a math major or something, everyone on WSB told him that this was a bad idea... there are so many reasons why he should have known better than to do this. Then, in 24 hours he loses 20%. Guh-adjacent.
- spacemadness 2y ago
  I mean, they inherited money at a young age and now he has $600k or so to start life with. Who really cares? They’ll be absolutely fine.
  - consumer451 2y ago
    That's what was so disturbing to me about waking up thinking about this. Why did I care? But apparently, my brain cared. I guess it was an anomaly that needed solving?
    - consumer451 2y ago
      > Ok, I definitely picked the wrong day to buy (intel 700k yolo update) 700k down to 492K. They are taking it like a champ though. I hope that this issue is now resolved for my subconscious. https://old.reddit.com/r/wallstreetbets/comments/1eiktnw/ok_i_definitely_picked_the_wrong_day_to_buy_intel/ https://old.reddit.com/r/wallstreetbets/comments/1eiktnw/ok_...
  - thejazzman 2y ago

fnord77 2y ago

With the end of Moore's law, is it surprising the Intel's growth will dramatically slow down?

etempleton 2y ago

Intel’s future will be based on Intel 18a. Pat Gelsinger has said as much. If 18a is better than the competition, which it is projected to be, then their chips and their fab will be popular and Intel should recover well. If it is anything short of the best process Intel is in big trouble. I am personally bullish on Intel long term under the current leadership, but man are they taking a beating.

TZubiri 2y ago
Cheap stonks
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
petre 2y ago
Gelsinger had his shot. Multiple shots actually. If the stock doesn't recover it's time for him to step down, but that's all on the board to decide.
zipityzi 2y ago
Projected to be better by Intel and Intel alone. Intel has disclosed virtually no details of Intel 18A on any industry-standard metric: perf / W with an Arm core, transistor density; precise perf & density improvements over Intel 4, 3, and 20A. TSMC is far, far more transparent than Intel—which is backwards. Intel is who needs more customers. Intel's silence on 18A's specifics is not inspiring. Qualcomm resoundingly rejected Intel 18A, according to the Wall Street Journal, due to Intel missing multiple promised 18A milestones. >Qualcomm, which designs chips and outsources manufacturing, wanted to work with Intel, and assigned a team of engineers to work toward making mobile-phone chips at Intel’s factories. It was particularly interested in a cutting-edge chip-making technology that Intel hopes will be the most advanced in the world by late next year. >In early 2022, Intel’s foundry arm sent a delegation to Qualcomm’s San Diego headquarters, where they met with CEO Cristiano Amon. Then Intel missed a June performance milestone toward producing those chips commercially. It missed another in December. >Qualcomm executives concluded Intel would struggle making the kind of cellphone chips they wanted, even if it succeeded in making high-performance processors. Qualcomm told Intel it was pausing work while it waits for Intel to show progress, according to people involved in the discussions. Source: https://www.wsj.com/articles/intel-gelsinger-nvidia-turnaround-30febac6 https://www.wsj.com/articles/intel-gelsinger-nvidia-turnarou... // We have a long way to go. Intel only expects 18A high-volume manufacturing (HVM) in 2026, with "small amounts of 18A wafers [in 2025]". Source: https://www.tomshardware.com/tech-industry/manufacturing/intel-18a-based-cpus-will-ramp-to-high-volume-in-2026 https://www.tomshardware.com/tech-industry/manufacturing/int... // Without Qualcomm, Intel has only found one real customer after a half-decade of hype: UMC's design subsidiary Faraday is an "evaluation [sever] platform" with Arm Neoverse cores, while Microsoft is making a vague "custom" chip. Faraday won't even sell those CPUs (it's an ASIC firm primarily) and Microsoft couldn't be bothered to give a single word of detail of what they are producing. I'm not hopeful, yet, until someone actually ships a key product on Intel 18A.

jarbus 2y ago

Very curious to see if they call pull off their new fabs.

typedef_struct 2y ago

So glad we poured 8.5 billion into this sinking ship. Thanks Joe. https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases/2024/03/20/fact-sheet-president-biden-announces-up-to-8-5-billion-preliminary-agreement-with-intel-under-the-chips-science-act/ https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases...

petre 2y ago
What's the alternative, let the Chinese get ahead, them buy chips with backdoors from them? Or maybe let Taiwan do it and then get invaded? It was the right decision.
- create-account 2y ago
  If you pour taxes on it, you should at least get a % of the stock
  - EasyMark 2y ago
    I definitely agree with this. They could be sold back later to go back into the treasury
- zipityzi 2y ago
  I would've preferred the gov't handing Intel a check and expecting, in return, 1) ownership stake of Intel, including governance, for xx years 2) stock buyback ban 3) stock dividend ban 4) golden parachute ban 5) far more public disclosures of progress, setbacks, and other problems If Intel—who's spent BILLIONS on buybacks—can't find enough money from the debt or equity or private markets, then, yes, serious strings should be required. Currently, CHIPS only receives some profit sharing and that's it. There were way too many alternative ways to implement this and we're paying the price of picking a "winner" that is massively cocky and arrogant with abysmal results. Major mistake and unlikely to deliver because it got wads of cash with very few serious strings attached. Just exposed yesterday: >The company is permanently grounding the Intel Air Shuttle, which flies workers between its major sites in Hillsboro, Silicon Valley and Arizona. >The company stopped the flights last year then resumed flying in April. The shuttle was especially prized by Oregon employees, who sought to avoid the 30-mile drive across the metro area to Portland International Airport. >The decision to permanently ground the shuttle, just five months after reinstating it, suggests that Intel executives didn’t recognize the severity of their financial situation until very recently.

proneb1rd 2y ago

How can be it be a 50 year low lol

pushingice 2y ago

This is incorrect. Adjusted for corporate actions (splits/dividends) it's more like 2010 levels. https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/INTC/ https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/INTC/ (click "ALL")

ksec 2y ago

Which makes Intel a decent target for merger and acquisition. Qualcomm, Apple, Broadcom, Google, Amazon, Microsoft, Saudi Aramco, Facebook, TSMC, Samsung and Finally...... AMD.

finaard 2y ago
> and Finally...... AMD. I don't think AMD would get enough out of that to make it worth for them. And that's before you take into account that a condition of that merger would be spinning off the x86 CPU business to a separate entity to avoid a monopoly there. The big loss maker here is the fab business - and AMD realized a long time ago they're better off without their own fab (and got heavily criticized back then) - so why would consider investing a shitload of money for a bit of IP just for having to deal with spinning of fab business yet again?

PerennialStill 2y ago

Intel's got a bit of a headache with the disproportionate number of senior engineering positions, especially those Principal Engineer types and up. These folks are pretty much untouchable when it comes to reshuffling the company because firing them is a real pain - you need sign-offs from all over the place. Back in the day, these roles were for Intel's superstars, but now? It's more about who you know than what you know. So we've ended up with a bunch of people pulling in over $750k a year, and a lot of them aren't really bringing that much to the table. It's like having a sports team full of overpaid benchwarmers.