The Intel Execution in [2024]


 
Last edited:

the company wants their own hallo product ...
 
But, Strix Point is an M Pro competitor, concentrated on laptop. And Strix Halo is an M Max competitor. Like I get the idea that this could be ported to desktop and some would want it for a mini PC. But surely the primary market is laptop.

I wonder when Gelsinger is going to get replaced.
 


Supposedly this was cancelled a while back and is no longer on any roadmaps.
 
The company is discussing various scenarios, including a split of its product-design and manufacturing businesses, as well as which factory projects might potentially be scrapped, said the people, who asked not to be identified because the deliberations are private. - Bloomberg
 
Point being if it was cancelled, why would they be shipping it around now?

They're only reference/evaluation platforms, so could be between different development/test centres? Not every protoype makes it to mass production after all.
 
This sounds like the beginning of the end for Intel, not trying to be snarky either.

This is when stock holder value is placed above all else, and the business is decimated under the auspices of maximizing return on investment within the next four to six quarterly earnings calls without regard for long term growth or stability.

It's a great time to buy stock for the inevitable rise and then ditch it quickly when the tides turn in about eighteen months.
 
What would the viability be of selling off the x86 IP and licensing it back to themselves?
 
To me it seems like an issue with Intel's most valuable IP/assets is that the parties most interested in buying likely would face a lot of push back from US regulators, whether due to national security/foreign policy concerns or anti-trust concerns.
 


Seems like the plan Pat and his team want to present to the board is to sell Altera and Mobile Eye, and possibly other non core divisions, while retaining Intel Foundry but reducing foundry capex even further.

Not entirely unexpected, though I question how much value can they truly extract from those divisions given the recent performance (Significant revenue declines and/or losses). Intel Foundry does not have much value in being sold as its negative margin and the older processes (the erstwhile 14nm/10nm/Intel 7) are only used by Intel which will decline in use rapidly (and really except for Intel 3, cannot even be used by external customers). The say Intel 3 and 18A will finally get them to profitability but requires significant capex to build out to scale. They claim to have several customers lined up for 18A but even if so, revenue is likely only 2026 onwards. They'd likely have to pay someone to take foundry off their hands like IBM did.

No other feasible option I suppose so Intel is all in on foundry at this point. But if you were a customer/prospective customer for either DCAI or foundry at this point, would you even have enough trust in the long term health and future to commit to either?
 
I think their foundry might have a surprisingly high value to either Samsung or Rapidus, either as an acquisition or merger into a joint venture. But 3rd parties who are not already (aiming to be) in that business would indeed find it to have a negative value…

Fundamentally it’s a chicken and egg problem, and they need to eat the egg to survive, so there won’t be any chickens. They need 18A to be successful with 3rd party customers but this is just going to reduce their confidence further and make them lose potential contracts; see e.g. the recent articles about Softbank thinking of going to TSMC instead of Intel for their AI chips.

They still have a chance if they really strongly deliver technically on 18A to the point where customers are very keen to work with them for post-18A processes, while also achieving competitive CPU/GPU/AI IP internally at the same time. So it could still be an amazing comeback story even without any further management decisions beyond what is already committed; but I’m rather skeptical unfortunately.
 
I think their foundry might have a surprisingly high value to either Samsung or Rapidus, either as an acquisition or merger into a joint venture. But 3rd parties who are not already (aiming to be) in that business would indeed find it to have a negative value…

Fundamentally it’s a chicken and egg problem, and they need to eat the egg to survive, so there won’t be any chickens. They need 18A to be successful with 3rd party customers but this is just going to reduce their confidence further and make them lose potential contracts; see e.g. the recent articles about Softbank thinking of going to TSMC instead of Intel for their AI chips.

They still have a chance if they really strongly deliver technically on 18A to the point where customers are very keen to work with them for post-18A processes, while also achieving competitive CPU/GPU/AI IP internally at the same time. So it could still be an amazing comeback story even without any further management decisions beyond what is already committed; but I’m rather skeptical unfortunately.

Why Samsung? Not like Samsung foundry has been doing the best of late but they have their own fabs and leading edge GAA tech (Not sure how it compares to Intel's technically aside from the obvious missing backside power supply), and existing customers including the likes of Nvidia, Qualcomm, etc, and presumably making a profit (Including memory). Why would they want to take on a negative margin foundry when they can barely make their own foundry business work? And the less said about Rapidus the better, it's a vapourware project and I don't see it ever going anywhere.

Yep, that's the key issue. When you have to commit to fab processes years in advance with products worth Billions of dollars at stake, who would you rather bet on? A plan/potential, or a company which has been executing better than anyone else for the past decade or more? Most potential customers seem to have chosen TSMC.

Will they be able to make enough money to fund everything through 2026-2027 by the time that happens though? That's what seems unlikely to me as well.
 
They might not cease to exist, but I think their days as one of the leaders in technology are numbered.
No necessarily though, Intel could trim the fat, become lean, and compete well in CPUs again, just like AMD.

AMD survived for decades on the brink of bankruptcy and rose from the ashes, I don't see why Intel can't do the same.

Seems like the plan Pat and his team want to present to the board is to sell Altera
Are FPGAs profitable these days? AMD's Xilinix has been collapsing for a while, and so is Intel’s Altera, FPGAs are nowhere to be seen in the current AI boom, it does seem that GPUs have sidestepped them.
 
Last edited:
No necessarily though, Intel could trim the fat, become lean, and compete well in CPUs again, just like AMD.

AMD survived for decades on the brink of bankruptcy and rose from the ashes, I don't see why Intel can't do the same.


Are FPGAs profitable these days? AMD's Xilinix has been collapsing for a while, and so is Intel’s Altera, FPGAS are nowhere to be seen in the current AI boom, it does seem that GPUs have sidestepped them.
They survived, but were not a leader in technology. They only reclaimed dominance because of nearly a decade of sheer incompetence on Intel's part.
 
Back
Top