Intel aims to reinvent itself as foundry focus sharpens amid leadership shake-up Intel wants to be "the western provider of leading-edge silicon," according to interim co-chief executive David Zinsner, but needs a successful products division for this to be possible. Zinsner, one of the Intel execs appointed to take temporary charge following the departure of Pat Gelsinger, was speaking at the UBS Global …
On Lunar Lake “couldn't get good deal on memory”
Why though? The rest of the industry using on package memory isn’t whining.
The “lifestyle company” (Apple) has shipped 4 generations of PC SoCs with memory on package at this point. On package memory contributes to the industry leading performance and efficiency Apple enjoys.
Intel signalling they’ll abandon on package isn’t exactly a great look.
But hey, none of this matters because the competition is “in the rear view mirror” right?
Intel has a long history going back to at least the dom-com bust of being an unreliable partner. I've lost count of the number of people screwed by going with them in wireless in the early 2000's. Use them as a foundry? How do I know my stuff won't get bumped for Intel's own? I'd rather take my chances with Global or TSMC.
What a catastrophic own goal distaster by Intel's board here! Except for hysterical investors who panicked like Drew Barrymore meeting E.T. for the first time (fantastic performance by the actress, at 0:40) on August 1st, the ship was being righted, steadied, and moved in the proper direction. Plus, the tech was reassuringly solid,and the bulk of the execution was outstanding for a wounded contender coming from behind as fast as it could! Aurora passed the 1 Exaflop/s mark, and is #1 in both HPL-MxP and io500, Granite Rapids beat all competition in HPCG with MRDIMM (to be followed by Diamond Rapids and CXL 3.0), Gaudi and Arc are doing very well against the competition (can't wait for Falcon Shores!), and 18Å's on track with brand spanking new leadership class High NA EUV litho systems, the first ones shipped by ASML!
The board unreasonably and abruptly firing Gelsinger like that just produced the biggest buttload of uncertainty about the future of this outfit IMHO! The stepwise recovery from the August 1st drop (in stocks) has just about been erased by this nonsense. There's nothing Zinsner or Chandrasekaran can say or do about it. This failed and delinquent board has killed Intel, and that herd of hooligans needs to be dissolved, fired, cancelled, buried, and otherwise removed if the company is to have any chance now, IMHO!
... and they owe me a new keyboard!
No mention of the 13/14th gen lawsuit ? I'm surprised that has such little bearing on the "changes" that it is not even mentioned.
From an article in the Verge by Sean Hollister - Even though Intel’s core businesses are still profitable on their own, revenues have declined — two former employees also suggest Intel spent too much on preparing its future foundry business while cutting costs on the products it shipped in the meanwhile. In particular, one claims that Intel’s Meteor Lake and Arrow Lake CPUs were supposed to have a special “Adamantine” cache that could have helped them beat the competition: “It would have been significantly more competitive to the point it would kick Zen 5’s ass, but was cut for cost reasons.”
This Reg article quotes Intel's Chandrasekaran, talking about foundry: "When we were IDM 1.0, we were building to inventory, but now we have to change ourselves to build-to-order. That's a very different mindset. The other mindset that I'm seeing is we are very driven towards no wafer left behind. That means you cannot miss any demand. You're OK to have built out extra capacity believing that there is going to be some demand. And in a monopoly, that's OK. But now you have to go to no capital left behind where you're eking out every wafer out of a tool and trying to drive efficiency further. That's a cultural change that needs to happen."
That sounds great but I'm sure it takes more than massive layoffs to build out extra capacity, and more than a single $8 billion steroid injection + $3 billion military contract. TSMC is spending something like $10 billion USD a year on R&D - that would have be multiplied by maybe 4 to get the US equivalent. Does Intel have $40 billion year available for that?
So after firing Gelsinger, is Intel really in any better shape to fund both its product development AND its foundry? Or is it going to end up starving both - the very problem Gelsinger tripped up on.
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