5 ms·

Man this is sad. My read is that they’re throwing in the towel and they’re going to milk their x86 duopoly and government subsidies through a steady, managed d

Man this is sad. My read is that they’re throwing in the towel and they’re going to milk their x86 duopoly and government subsidies through a steady, managed decline into irrelevance.

starspangled 2y ago
Throwing in the towel on what?
- ilyagr 2y ago
  I see "giving up" between the lines of: > A key priority for Intel Foundry is to increase our capital efficiency. <...> Now that we have completed our transition to EUV, it’s time to shift from a period of accelerated investment to a more normalized cadence of node development and a more flexible and efficient capital plan. That is, they no longer see a way and will no longer try to turn money into real innovation, at least as far as chip manufacturing is concerned.
  - knowitnone 2y ago
    "no longer try to turn money into real innovation" because they can't. they've failed at every turn which is why they are in this predicament. They let a company with less resources, fewer engineers, no fab trounce them. It's like Intel hasn't done a thing for years and years when they were far ahead of the game. But CEO gets to walk away with MILLIONS while losing the company BILLIONS. If you ever wanted to look up the meaning of loser, look no further. And Pat is left to fix the mess. What's he got to work with? A bunch of losers.
    - ClassyJacket 2y ago
      " They let a company with less resources, fewer engineers, no fab trounce them" Which company are you referring to?
      - deleted 2y ago
        [deleted]
      - HDThoreaun 2y ago
        amd + nvidia + qualcomm too why not, I guess arm too
        _fs 2y ago
        not to mention losing the golden goose of the apple market
      - jwineinger 2y ago
        ASML?
      - ac29 2y ago
        Presumably Apple or AMD. I disagree. Intel seems to be as good as either one at chip design, but they are hamstrung by behind behind in manufacturing. They haven't really struggled with performance, its performance per watt and cost that are their problems. Both of those are mostly fab issues. Lunar Lake, built on TSMC, looks really competitive. Both with Apple, and with AMD (though AMD has had constant struggles with shipping laptop chips to the point they aren't even seriously considered for large scale enterprise deployment).
        musicale 2y ago
        Apple has a lot of resources (though traditionally less expertise in silicon.)
  - spookie 2y ago
    I do not read it that way. They've made investments (EUV systems) and are now focusing on getting the most out of them.
  - BeetleB 2y ago
    He's not talking about that. Intel's problem is they are fat and inefficient. On the product design side, they have far more employees than their competitors, and they still produce a lower quality product. When you translate that to finances, it means their gross margin is low (lots of employees means high cost). On the foundry/fab side: Same story. The amount of revenue the fab generates per foundry employee is tiny compared to TSMC - and it's not because Taiwan is cheaper. Intel was behind TSMC. When Pat became CEO, he set his vision of "5 nodes in 4 years" to get ahead of TSMC. Next year will be the 4th year, and so far that plan is panning out. But doing 5 nodes in 4 years is unprecedented, and the only way they achieved it so quickly is by throwing all kinds of resources at it (e.g. lower than acceptable yields, with Intel eating up the costs of the low yields). This is what he means by "accelerated investment". So what he is saying in the quote above is: Now that we are near the end of the 4 year period, we need to focus on improving the efficiency of the fab to be competitive with TSMC's prices.
xtracto 2y ago
They are entering their IBM phase.
- htrp 2y ago
  Intel Global Foundry Services Solutions doesn't yet exist.....
- xhkkffbf 2y ago
  IBM may not be the world leader any more in a number of ways, but that doesn't mean they're not relevant to all of their customers. So maybe the x86 will just limp along, but it's still doing pretty well. By the end of the 80s, the RISC guys were going to dethrone the CISC monsters. It's taken them decades to get this far.
profsummergig 2y ago
After a few nails in its coffin, a Chinese co. will acquire it, and then the West will wonder how they could let such foundational tech be lost to a competitor nation.
- justinclift 2y ago
  > a Chinese co. will acquire it That would be outright blocked under any number (other than 0) of "national security interests" type of thing.
- cameldrv 2y ago
  And, if this, in fact, is the strategy, perhaps the government should decline to provide the subsidies and instead reallocate the money to younger hungrier companies. The subsidies are supposed to be to maintain long-term American competitiveness, but to me it's fairly clear that Intel is not going to provide that even with the government money.
- BoredPositron 2y ago
  Meh... I am fine with that I hate having these zombie tech corps lingering around.

Man this is sad. My read is that they’re throwing in the towel and they’re going to milk their x86 duopoly and government subsidies through a steady, managed decline into irrelevance.

starspangled 2y ago

Throwing in the towel on what?

ilyagr 2y ago
I see "giving up" between the lines of: > A key priority for Intel Foundry is to increase our capital efficiency. <...> Now that we have completed our transition to EUV, it’s time to shift from a period of accelerated investment to a more normalized cadence of node development and a more flexible and efficient capital plan. That is, they no longer see a way and will no longer try to turn money into real innovation, at least as far as chip manufacturing is concerned.
- knowitnone 2y ago
  "no longer try to turn money into real innovation" because they can't. they've failed at every turn which is why they are in this predicament. They let a company with less resources, fewer engineers, no fab trounce them. It's like Intel hasn't done a thing for years and years when they were far ahead of the game. But CEO gets to walk away with MILLIONS while losing the company BILLIONS. If you ever wanted to look up the meaning of loser, look no further. And Pat is left to fix the mess. What's he got to work with? A bunch of losers.
  - ClassyJacket 2y ago
    " They let a company with less resources, fewer engineers, no fab trounce them" Which company are you referring to?
    - deleted 2y ago
      [deleted]
    - HDThoreaun 2y ago
      amd + nvidia + qualcomm too why not, I guess arm too
      - _fs 2y ago
        not to mention losing the golden goose of the apple market
    - jwineinger 2y ago
      ASML?
    - ac29 2y ago
      Presumably Apple or AMD. I disagree. Intel seems to be as good as either one at chip design, but they are hamstrung by behind behind in manufacturing. They haven't really struggled with performance, its performance per watt and cost that are their problems. Both of those are mostly fab issues. Lunar Lake, built on TSMC, looks really competitive. Both with Apple, and with AMD (though AMD has had constant struggles with shipping laptop chips to the point they aren't even seriously considered for large scale enterprise deployment).
      - musicale 2y ago
        Apple has a lot of resources (though traditionally less expertise in silicon.)
- spookie 2y ago
  I do not read it that way. They've made investments (EUV systems) and are now focusing on getting the most out of them.
- BeetleB 2y ago
  He's not talking about that. Intel's problem is they are fat and inefficient. On the product design side, they have far more employees than their competitors, and they still produce a lower quality product. When you translate that to finances, it means their gross margin is low (lots of employees means high cost). On the foundry/fab side: Same story. The amount of revenue the fab generates per foundry employee is tiny compared to TSMC - and it's not because Taiwan is cheaper. Intel was behind TSMC. When Pat became CEO, he set his vision of "5 nodes in 4 years" to get ahead of TSMC. Next year will be the 4th year, and so far that plan is panning out. But doing 5 nodes in 4 years is unprecedented, and the only way they achieved it so quickly is by throwing all kinds of resources at it (e.g. lower than acceptable yields, with Intel eating up the costs of the low yields). This is what he means by "accelerated investment". So what he is saying in the quote above is: Now that we are near the end of the 4 year period, we need to focus on improving the efficiency of the fab to be competitive with TSMC's prices.

xtracto 2y ago

They are entering their IBM phase.

htrp 2y ago
Intel Global Foundry Services Solutions doesn't yet exist.....
xhkkffbf 2y ago
IBM may not be the world leader any more in a number of ways, but that doesn't mean they're not relevant to all of their customers. So maybe the x86 will just limp along, but it's still doing pretty well. By the end of the 80s, the RISC guys were going to dethrone the CISC monsters. It's taken them decades to get this far.

profsummergig 2y ago

After a few nails in its coffin, a Chinese co. will acquire it, and then the West will wonder how they could let such foundational tech be lost to a competitor nation.

justinclift 2y ago
> a Chinese co. will acquire it That would be outright blocked under any number (other than 0) of "national security interests" type of thing.
cameldrv 2y ago
And, if this, in fact, is the strategy, perhaps the government should decline to provide the subsidies and instead reallocate the money to younger hungrier companies. The subsidies are supposed to be to maintain long-term American competitiveness, but to me it's fairly clear that Intel is not going to provide that even with the government money.
BoredPositron 2y ago
Meh... I am fine with that I hate having these zombie tech corps lingering around.