Intel inside a world of pain as revenue plunges by a third Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger has expressed confidence in the company's trajectory despite posting a $700 million net loss on revenues that plunged 32 percent during the fourth quarter of FY 2022, to a measly $14 billion. "Clearly the financials aren't what we hoped for, but we're also pleased with the execution process we made," a …
They've already laid off most of their top engineering talent, and spend little on R&D.
Intel had an effective monopoly for 10 years until 2019. Their chips got 5 to 10% faster per year, which was all that was needed.
They got out of the mobile device and network market in 2007, just before it boomed.
Its been interesting how the hungrier AMD has caught up with Intel - at one point it looked like they were going to the wall and failing. I was told a long time ago that people work best when they're 'hungry', before anyone gets narky about pay and literal hunger, the comment meant not having gazillions in the company bank account that you can free-wheel on and hungry to prove you can do it. Intel have been fantastic over the decades but someone always catches you up or chases an innovation you didn't think to pursue.
I'm sure you don't mind me covering for Will Godfrey, but as he already tried to put it;
People are most intelligent when hungry and a bit cold.
… which means, he already had a plenty breakfast, as obvious as it gets. ツ
The study he likely wanted to source:
»Always Gamble on an Empty Stomach: Hunger Is Associated with Advantageous Decision Making«, from 2014.
Source: National Library of Medicine · National Center of Biotechnology Information – PubMed Central (www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/)
URL: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4207792/
The phenomenon is called ›Empty-Stomach Intelligence‹.
For instance, here's some article from 2006 from the NYT of it (https://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/10/magazine/10section1C.t-1.html).
They got out of the mobile device and network market in 2007, just before it boomed.
Even worse, they owned what was at the time the fastest ARM core (acquired from DEC) and Steve Jobs approached them about making SoCs for the as yet unannounced iPhone. Apparently Intel's brain trust decided it was better to sell off the IP for that fast ARM core in 2006 to Marvell and tell Jobs to pound sand rather than get in on the ground floor of a smartphone revolution. They probably believed Bill Gates' vision for Windows Mobile devices was going to rule the future.
Instead Apple has been pumping countless billions into TSMC for the past decade and making them the dominant player that has left Intel in the dust.
I think what happened happened long before we need to talk about the iPhone or Windows molile.
" Texas Instruments licensed the ARM7TDMI, which was designed into the Nokia 6110, the first ARM-powered GSM phone.[3] This led to the popular series of Nokia phones using the processor, including the 3210 and 3310."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ARM7
Any source for your claim they sell the majority of server NICs?
I wouldn't expect they do - their NICs are more expensive than their competitors' and the chipsets for IceLake and Sapphire Rapids don't provide LAN-on-motherboard (part of the PCH with Skylake/Cascade Lake). Servers today typically have an OCP slot and all major NIC manufacturers provide options in that form factor, not just Intel.
Intel sells embedded x86 processors and FPGAs to mobile network manufacturers. Oh, and they also tried to sell their 10nm chip fab services to one major 5G mobile network manufacturer just few years ago, but because of their infamous 10nm trouble they couldn't really deliver working chip, which almost sunk that poor customer.
Intel had an effective monopoly for 10 years until 2019
One of the enterprise architects at a previous orkplace was adamant that we buy nothing else other than Intel because "with those others you never know what bugs they have and Intel is clean".
Then the news came out about the FDIV bug. Oh how we laughed..
(He had to allow the 68000 CPUs since that's what the Macs were using then..)
Wasn't this guy paid $180m according to recent headlines, whether that is stock/cash split I don't think it matters at those levels. That is a third of the companies losses. Why the F does he care about Intel anymore? And why do his next 10 ancestors for that matter. It's just the same problem for these boomer led shitfests that are failing semiconductor companies. It would be fine if there were consequences at the top level, but the reality is they will just cry for more handouts from Uncle Sam rather than be forced to innovate and restructure their entire culture.
Roll on AMD earnings. I'm long $AMD.
Looking at all these stories about events which are just a small image of the world situation, I expect that we're going to see some big issues in the next five years or so, as the world economy gets better and worse. I'm worried that the rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer ... locally I'm seeing a lot of "homeless" people in the USA working and only getting paid $10 a day.
We need to make this a better world for everyone.
“$10 a day,” you could get that with two good pan-handlings. Minimum wage is either $15 an hour now or imminently, thou doth exaggerate overmuch? I may be poor in actual “cash” terms but I’ve got me plenty of cast-off HP, WD, Netgear equipment. Granted not quite a full-supercomputer, but getting there. In me basement!
I spent almost a decade (2012 - 2021) tending to the physical and emotional needs of a handful-of-thousand servers in an HPC cluster...A definitely Xeon-infused shop. A couple tire kicking looks at AMD servers in the middle of said tenure, then EPYC comes along...And yeah installing a thousand Rome servers took more than a day.
OK, not at Google or AWS or Tencent scale, but still a lot of sockets lost to Intel's 14+...+++ issues.
I don't wish Intel ill will (OK making two Intel 8008s talk over a serial port in an EE class in 1977 was a pain as was 286 assembler). But they need to find a DeLorean and a flux capacitor, go back about 10 years and fix their management team.
@Yet Another Anonymous coward
"They just need to go back to a world where PC and server spend went up every year and they were a monopoly".
Yes the good old times you can read about in "Inside Intel" by Tim Jackson , very recommendable.
"Intel exerts industrial muscle on the same scale as Microsoft, yet its customers and PC users have little idea of the realities that lie behind its much-promoted logo. Its technical triumphs are matched by aggressive marketing and by millions spent on lawsuits to preserve its dominance and its secrets.
Founded by two of Silicon Valley's most gifted engineers, Intel has been run for most of its history by Grove, a brilliant and hard-driving scientist who fled communist Hungary and waited at tables to put himself through college in New York. With the motto that only the paranoid survive, Grove has moulded Intel in his own image, and built it into one of the most powerful and successful companies in America."
I worked for Intel for a couple of years in the eighties, it was when the 80386 was in full swing. I recall one meeting in Phoenix where the new company strategy was being shared with us underlings. This was to initially build PCB sub-systems to sell to OEMs, then to use that as a springboard to become a system manufacturer themselves. The belief was that systems were more profitable than chips. This was also the year they came up with "Intel Inside" to try and capture some of the system value for the chip. The tagline presented (maybe by Grove?, I can't remember) was "We've conquered semiconductor hill, now let's climb system's mountain". They clearly had no foresight into the golden goose that the PC/x86 duopoly had landed in their lap. They were undoubtedly brilliant engineers (not me, I hasten to add), but memories of that meeting always left me thinking that the business execution had a lot of luck. I guess that at least they had the sense to drop that strategy as the rivers of cash from x86 swelled.
"Outside my window is a tree; There only for me, and it stands in the grey of the city. No time for pity, for the tree or me. There is a world of pain, in the falling rain around me." - 1967, Disraeli Gears.
I remember listening to this when it was released and being scared initially, but loving the album back in those days when I saw the Cream and it's still wonderful - I'm going to put it on again right now! Yes, we all talk about the world of pain but it seems like we never do anything to fix our issues. I'm not going to gaslight about it, I'm happy to try and help poor people even though I'm not rich. I love the world, it's just that "our" part has issues.
I'm not sure what Intel hopes to achieve with Gelsinger, other than to rid themselves of a combined $180 million in salary, bonus, stock per year.
Intel is at least 2 jumps behind AMD in the server market, a generation behind in the desktop chipset and has missed multiple areas of innovation over the recent few years, not least of all the GPU boom lead by NVIDIA.
This seems typical of flabby US corporations - establish a lead, rest on one's laurels, get smashed. We've seen this with Boeing, Lockheed, IBM, to name but 3
The next step - already underway - is to whine to the US government for subsidy to cover up . Central Ohio is looking forward to becoming the next state of the art FAB, I'm certain.
This seems typical of flabby US corporations - establish a lead, rest on one's laurels, get smashed. We've seen this with Boeing, Lockheed, IBM, to name but 3
"You're suggesting people should learn from others mistakes, Centurion.
We in the Roman army don't hold with that kind of constructive thinking.
It's okay though, it'll never happen to us."
(In latin obvs.)
This post has been deleted by its author
Yep I can confirm about those server sales, I just picked up another DL380P Gen. 8 for $34.33. It’s not “perfect,” first of all it’s 22nm product dating from 2013 (and some of the fans got liberated). Also, a rack mount ear got clonked. Only 24GB system ram. And as usual, somebody ran away with all the HDD sleds. Nevertheless that’s a good buy of about 50 lbs of top HP + Intel tech!
There should have been a class action lawsuit against HP's Gen 8 Servers, given so many fail from an inherent design fault, the iLO4 firmware for years made continuous heath data writes, destroying the onboard flash chip. Not least, because HP put the firmware updates behind a paywall to correct the problem, and even if you did eventually update the firmware the damage by then was done.
I'm yet to see a HP Gen8 machine that was fixed by the advisory put out to fix the problem, the so called iLO 'Format Flash' sticking plaster repair, seemed like utter fakery by HP, to bat away businesses/consumers attempting to get a replacement mainboard outside warranty.
And dealing with HP Support is like pulling teeth, at the best of times, just awful.
I could smell this coming under the previous CEO. I was approached by an agency for a contract position and interviewed with a team. I detected signs of stupid things in the project and its team's clearly offshored H1Bs and backed away. I later wondered whether the same signs would exist in other projects in the company. Now I am more sure they were.
The Register 
Biting the hand that feeds IT
Copyright. All rights reserved © 1998–2024
