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Another Perspective on Intel's Future: How Can They Generate More Revenue?

This is what I think should happen.

Intel could spin off or sell everything that isn't profitable, except for GPU/AI.

It is still early days in AI, and if Intel got rid of it's other capital sinks, and kept just the x86 cash cow along with the AI/GPU business, they could invest $10b a year into GPU/AI accelerator development and associated software ecosystem.
I blame Swan on Axing GPU division if intel planned for GPU it could have More than AMD worth of Revenue in GPU because Intel Knows how to do Software a knowledge AMD Lacks in both CPU/GPU Intel is one of the largest contributor of Open Source Software a thing that is holding AMD back
 
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Nvidia is competing with its customers, Google, Amazon, Microsoft are all competing with their supplier with their in-house silicon. So why can't Intel compete with its offerings?

But that's different kinds of competition they all can work with. It will be a totally different story if Intel starts grabbing the ultimate customers, such as United Airlines, Allstate Insurance, P&G, and Pfizer away from Google, Amazon, and Microsoft.
 
If Intel Can get 25% of the AI GPU market, they would be fine. Foundry required billions more in spending and billions in losses to get to the scale they want and any margin. The numbers dont add up. IMO, this has been the problem: PC market is flat and Intel is doing pretty well. DC CPU market is growing some and Intel is slowly losing share. GPU market is skyrocketing and Intel is in 3rd position best case with slower growth than others.
 
DC CPU market is growing some
Is that really true ? I thought that data center CPU sales have dropped over the past couple years, in favor of GPU expenditures, plus Intel has lost share, while AMD is starting to ramp some visible share in GPU. That‘s what these charts imply to me.

 
FWIW a recent opinion 🫣

“To summarize, there is no market-based reason for Intel Foundry to exist; that’s not a market failure in a purely economic sense, but to the extent the U.S. national security apparatus sees it as a failure is the extent to which the U.S. is going to have to pay to make it happen. And, if the U.S. is going to pay up, that means giving that foundry the best possible chance to stand on its own two feet in the long run. That means actually earning business from Apple, Nvidia, AMD, and yes, even the fabless Intel company that will remain. The tech world has moved on from Intel; the only chance for U.S. leading edge manufacturing is to do the same”

 
FWIW a recent opinion 🫣

“To summarize, there is no market-based reason for Intel Foundry to exist; that’s not a market failure in a purely economic sense, but to the extent the U.S. national security apparatus sees it as a failure is the extent to which the U.S. is going to have to pay to make it happen. And, if the U.S. is going to pay up, that means giving that foundry the best possible chance to stand on its own two feet in the long run. That means actually earning business from Apple, Nvidia, AMD, and yes, even the fabless Intel company that will remain. The tech world has moved on from Intel; the only chance for U.S. leading edge manufacturing is to do the same”

A lot of this product-related commentary is bullshit. Like the desktop and server CPU discussion just being "repackaged" for laptops, that's nonsense. The laptop microprocessor design had a different microarchitecture than Pentium, and was done in Israel (Banias). That's why the CPU core development has been done in Israel ever since. Would a RISC strategy have been better? I think so, in power efficiency terms, but then Intel and Microsoft would have a big porting problem to the new instruction set, like Microsoft is having right now with Qualcomm. A lot of PC games won't run at all or optimally on Snapdragon yet. You know there's a big problem when even the Wall Street Journal has an article about it. So there is some truth to Gelsinger's old argument about software compatibility being important, but if Apple can do it, so can Intel and Microsoft.

And that part where Intel fab process isn't good for GPUs, and that's why Intel hasn't succeeded in GPUs... that's just dumb.

Purchase guarantees are also unlikely to be anywhere near enough to solve Intel's capital investment problems. If the US wants Intel to be a leader in manufacturing at this point it's probably going to take more direct subsidies. Playing catch-up is more expensive than leading.
 
Is that really true ? I thought that data center CPU sales have dropped over the past couple years, in favor of GPU expenditures, plus Intel has lost share, while AMD is starting to ramp some visible share in GPU. That‘s what these charts imply to me.

Our model is that DC CPU is growing slowly. If you add AMD, Intel, ARM DC CPU revenue it is increasing. The total number of datacenters in increasing. DC GPU sales are not decreasing server sales. 2022-3 was a downturn but 2024 is returning to growth.
Please show me the reference if there is info that shows less total servers sold or less total CPUs sold.
Your comment is a common belief, so I am interested, I have not see data to back that from IDC, Trendforce, mercury research
 
Please show me the reference if there is info that shows less total servers sold or less total CPUs sold.
Your comment is a common belief, so I am interested, I have not see data to back that from IDC, Trendforce, mercury research

I'm just spitballing from Claus' chart from the SemiWiki link I included, with the added knowledge that AMD was forecasting $4B in AI/GPU sales for 2024 at the time this chart was done. Add that Pat G. said this in his Deustch Bank talk - "Servers, we're still in the environment where the AI build has continued to depress the overall server market.

Screenshot 2024-09-03 at 2.20.03 PM.png
 
Our model is that DC CPU is growing slowly. If you add AMD, Intel, ARM DC CPU revenue it is increasing. The total number of datacenters in increasing. DC GPU sales are not decreasing server sales. 2022-3 was a downturn but 2024 is returning to growth.
Please show me the reference if there is info that shows less total servers sold or less total CPUs sold.
Your comment is a common belief, so I am interested, I have not see data to back that from IDC, Trendforce, mercury research
If you're including Arm CPU license revenue it might be true that revenue is still increasing. But the increase in volumes of cloud computing company CPUs must be effectively lowering industry CPU revenue per unit. Merchant DC CPU companies like Intel and AMD must looking at a dim future in their product plans. Unless there's projected movement of cloud computing back to enterprise data centers I'm missing.
 
A lot of this product-related commentary is bullshit. Like the desktop and server CPU discussion just being "repackaged" for laptops, that's nonsense. The laptop microprocessor design had a different microarchitecture than Pentium, and was done in Israel (Banias). That's why the CPU core development has been done in Israel ever since. Would a RISC strategy have been better? I think so, in power efficiency terms, but then Intel and Microsoft would have a big porting problem to the new instruction set, like Microsoft is having right now with Qualcomm. A lot of PC games won't run at all or optimally on Snapdragon yet. You know there's a big problem when even the Wall Street Journal has an article about it. So there is some truth to Gelsinger's old argument about software compatibility being important, but if Apple can do it, so can Intel and Microsoft.

And that part where Intel fab process isn't good for GPUs, and that's why Intel hasn't succeeded in GPUs... that's just dumb.

Purchase guarantees are also unlikely to be anywhere near enough to solve Intel's capital investment problems. If the US wants Intel to be a leader in manufacturing at this point it's probably going to take more direct subsidies. Playing catch-up is more expensive than leading.
1725409406817.png


He is based in Taiwan. That is expected. He also chose to publish this article on the date Intel launched Lunar Lake, also a day with large market volatilities. In the long run, I don't think idiosyncrasies should be a large factor. One of the reasons to automate is minimise human variation. I think the question for Intel is how it manages 2025:
1. Swiftly complete the layoffs and portfolio triming
2. Control costs
3. Ensure Panther Lake (18A), Clearwater Forest (18A), and Falcon Shores (TSMC) are executed on schedule
4. Ensure software readiness in preparation for Falcon Shores
5. Focus on US fabs to harvest chip act rewards and dropped overseas projects
6. Deleverage while waiting for Interest rate to come down
 
I'm just spitballing from Claus' chart from the SemiWiki link I included, with the added knowledge that AMD was forecasting $4B in AI/GPU sales for 2024 at the time this chart was done. Add that Pat G. said this in his Deustch Bank talk - "Servers, we're still in the environment where the AI build has continued to depress the overall server market.

Odd data. Broadcom has guided to about $11B in AI semiconductor data center revenue for Y2024. (70% is for training / inference).
 
Something overlooked is its China revenue, which is approximately $15-22 billion per year. It's going to gradually decline with the current trend.
 
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Odd data. Broadcom has guided to about $11B in AI semiconductor data center revenue for Y2024. (70% is for training / inference).
Why odd ? Data for first two quarters looks like $1.5B and $2B - if they keep growing per the trendline, a $3B and a $4B quarter pretty much gets them there.
 
Lets say you use one of Cerberus's machines to train a 24 trillion parameter A.I.
Imagine it takes 1 whole year.
Well Cerberus can scale to 2048 machines.
1 machine = 365 days
2 machines = 182.5 days
4 machines = 91.25 days
8 machines = 45.625 days
16 machines = 22.8125 days
32 machines = 11.40625 days
64 machines = 5.703125 days
128 machines = 2.8515625 days
256 machines = 1.42578125 days
512 machines = 0.712890625 days
1024 machines = 0.3564453125 days
2048 machines = 0.17822265625 days = 134.6600622452111 minutes LOL look at those decimals hahahaha
The above math would only check if the latency within a chip is the same between chips inter-connected via network. The latency to access data over a network with multiple hops is at least 1000x-1000000x higher than accessing SRAM on a chip.
 
View attachment 2241

He is based in Taiwan. That is expected. He also chose to publish this article on the date Intel launched Lunar Lake, also a day with large market volatilities. In the long run, I don't think idiosyncrasies should be a large factor. One of the reasons to automate is minimise human variation. I think the question for Intel is how it manages 2025:
1. Swiftly complete the layoffs and portfolio triming
2. Control costs
3. Ensure Panther Lake (18A), Clearwater Forest (18A), and Falcon Shores (TSMC) are executed on schedule
4. Ensure software readiness in preparation for Falcon Shores
5. Focus on US fabs to harvest chip act rewards and dropped overseas projects
6. Deleverage while waiting for Interest rate to come down
Why is being based in Taiwan relevant?
 
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