Intel to Lay Off 15% of Workers, Cancel Billions in Projects in Bid for Rebound

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silverpixie2435@reddit

Can someone explain why there isn't at least one large company wanting to use Intel fabs for the newer nodes like 14A? Sure it may not be as top tier as the latest TSMC, but TSMC is probably a lot more expensive and delayed anyways because of how many orders they already get.

Are companies actually willingly to delay their own semiconductor products just to wait for a slot at at a TSMC fab, rather than go with a potentially cheaper sooner Intel one?

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airminer@reddit

Intel has historically required the use of their in-house EDA tools when designing for their nodes, rather than the industry standard ones by 3rd party EDA vendors that are used everywhere else, and that outside customers would be familiar with.

With the opening of their foundry to outside designs, they've been working to change this, but I'm not sure how far along they are / which nodes are compatible with outside EDA tools.

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Exist50@reddit

IIRC, all their foundry nodes are intended to be used with 3rd party tools. Intel doesn't do that in-house anymore at all.

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phil151515@reddit

Intel 3 ?

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Exist50@reddit

Pretty sure that also just uses Cadence/Synopsys.

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Soggy_Bad1169@reddit

What does it say to potential foundry customers when you're having another foundry (TSMC) manufacture some of your products?

It shows lack of confidence in your own manufacturing capabilities. To the point your willing to underload your own factories.

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DehydratedButTired@reddit

14a is a gamble. No one knows the yields or how reliable their process is. It’s new.why pay for an unknown process that’s 2 years away when you could pay for TEMc or Samsung to give you a reliable process with predictable yields.

Consider that Intel can’t even manage itself, how is it going to manage a process for you reliably? This is a decade of failure and mismanagement coming due.

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Helpdesk_Guy@reddit

14a is a gamble. No one knows the yields or how reliable their process is. It’s new.

18a is a gamble. No one knows the yields or how reliable their process is. It’s new. No, wait! They meant 20A!
No, Intel 3. Or was it not Intel 4? Dammit! Let's settle on 10nm then. Though could be also 14nm …

This shop is just so lost …
I still don't get why their brain-dead investors and share-toddlers haven't yet just fired the whole kaput board!

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DehydratedButTired@reddit

4 was solid and 3 is based on 4 so its just iterating on it and its been reliable. There is good stuff there, they just have no plan and no way to salvage it. I think the talent all jumped ship years ago once the layoffs kicked off and they don’t have enough engineering talent to really get their ducks in a row.

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Helpdesk_Guy@reddit

There is good stuff there, they just have no plan and no way to salvage it.

Pretty much sums it up, yeah …

I think the talent all jumped ship years ago once the layoffs kicked off and they don’t have enough engineering talent to really get their ducks in a row.

No wonder, as Intel got constantly gutted their internal engineering groups for competition.

Gelsinger killed their internal Intel Architecture Lab (to eradicate internal competition for him being unquestioned as CTO), than Krzanich dismantled the follow-up Intel Architecture Lab years later as soon as he was in charge, and Gelsinger now gutted them and killed a lot of internal competition (Royal Core et al).

There's basically no other, who has done as much damage to Intel, as Gelsinger himself.

Gelsinger killed their internal Intel Architecture Lab (eradicating competition for unquestioned CTO)
Gelsinger pushed Itanium like no other and almost killed Intel back then.
Gelsinger then knifed their perfect PhysX/CUDA-equivalent with Polaris (just for being NOT x86)
… only to push his idiotic Larrabee (with the rehash Xeon Phi);
… which led to Intel failing on original Aurora (A18) from 2015–2018 with nothing compute at hand
… and again on AuroraNext (A21) from 2021–2024 with nothing compute at hand
… to now have absolutely sub-zero in computing since a decade, as Gelsinger beheaded Intel off HPC/GPC.
He knifed the complete Royal Core-architecture (with Beast Lake)
… and with that the already engineered underway follow-up to Royal called Cobra Core.
He's personally responsible for tarnishing a 40% rebate at TSMC over a $15Bn outsourcing-contract

I could go on and on, you get the memo …

Pat's the one who basically mortally crippled Intel up until 2009! Only to come back again for a second run and finish off, what he didn't managed back then. … and y'all cheering for this clown and mental noodle. SMH

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DehydratedButTired@reddit

He really didn’t do much good for VMWare when he went over there either. They ousted the founders for him and he ended up shifting the company’s focus away from their core services to the cloud and partnerships. He then left them in a lurch to return to Intel.

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Helpdesk_Guy@reddit

He really didn’t do much good for VMWare when he went over there either.

Well, what can you say …
I've never understood the absolute bonkers claims of him having allegedly made VMware stellar! That is such a baseless merit-shelling, it's embarrassing for everyone! Especially for VMware's IIRC duo Rosenbaum/Greene.

Pat could've been literally DEAD at the desk for the better part of his bad tenure, VMware's economic trajectory wouldn't have had changed that much for the worse – He didn't have to do anything, as the company was basically running on evaporating kerosene, autopilot and cash was flooding in regardless. It was like Microsoft in 1996 with Windows 95, Windows XP's lunch or Windows 7 very sales start.

Since it was the time were the whole world was shoving everything into the cloud and VMware was basically the only play in town were businesses could be heading to, so … He did exactly nothing at VMware but pretending to be somehow important and running his foul mouth, at least nothing for the company's betterment.

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Exist50@reddit

Can someone explain why there isn't at least one large company wanting to use Intel fabs for the newer nodes like 14A?

There are several reasons, but the biggest is quite simple. The risk that Intel fails to deliver outweighs any discount that Intel is willing/able to offer.

Are companies actually willingly to delay their own semiconductor products just to wait for a slot at at a TSMC fab, rather than go with a potentially cheaper sooner Intel one?

Intel is roughly a node, maybe node and a half behind TSMC, where they are far less volume constrained. So going with Intel does not offer any time to market advantage.

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casualnarcissist@reddit

Why is Intel not able to manufacture as well as TSMC? They have the same vendors and actually pay engineers better (per my former coworker who chose Intel Oregon over moving to Taiwan to work at TSMC). How much of the blame can fall solely on executives?

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DorphinPack@reddit

Intel has (according to stuff I read and can’t remember how to find now so don’t quote me) apparently developed a thick layer of middle managers promoted for political reasons during the stagnant era where they kinda just stopped moving as fast without a real competitor.

Even the whole “AMD couldn’t compete” narrative is a little too simple. I think we should also add another angle where you understand they’re famously ruthless and didn’t end up with a pseudo-monopoly in the datacenter through pure merit and elbow grease. Allegedly.

I know I’m not alone in my 100% personal opinion that the “Wintel Cartel” stifled innovation to keep their edge and suffered huge internal rot for it. Not enough to take them out and it’s not exec who pay the steepest price, though.

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narwi@reddit

There is no "allegedly" there, it has all been layed out very clearly in US and EU court documents.

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DorphinPack@reddit

Wow I didn’t realize the cases went that far! Gonna do more research.

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scytheavatar@reddit

Intel having to pay engineers better shows the uphill task they have to climb. In Taiwan being an engineer for TSMC is seen as being as prestigious by parents as being a lawyer or doctor, because of how important they are to the nation. The talent pool TSMC has access to is simply way bigger than what Intel has.

With Intel's reputation being in the toilet it's not enough for their fabs to be as good as TSMC, customers will only pick them if they are cheaper. Just like how customers will only pick AMD GPUs over Nvidia's if they are cheaper for the same performance. What lever does Intel have to pull to lower the costs of their chips? Manufacturing chips in America is not cheap.

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Oxygen_plz@reddit

What lever does Intel have to pull to lower the costs of their chips? Manufacturing chips in America is not cheap.

There is no way, Intel 18A's cost per wafer will be higher than the current-gen TSMC nodes, even when factoring for higher labor costs in the US vs. Taiwan.

TSMC has insane margins even on their mature and refined nodes like N3 and its iterations.

The problem probably is that potential customers don't have faith that Intel is able to ramp-up production of 18A to the scale it has promised.

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fak3g0d@reddit

Intel probably has more MBAs mucking things up

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Exist50@reddit

Who knows? Those are always the big questions for major corporate failures. Turns out that it's more complicated than dollars and tools.

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mockingbird-@reddit (OP)

Reputation is everything.

After disastrous delays of 10nm, 7nm, and cancellation of 20A, potential customers are right to be concerned.

Imagine if a company (i.e. Apple) can't get its billion-dollar product (i.e. iPhone) out on time because of Intel's delays.

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CuddleTeamCatboy@reddit

Nobody ever gets fired for buying TSMC.

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Culbrelai@reddit

Poor IBM, how are they doing these days anyway

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CuddleTeamCatboy@reddit

They’ve beat earnings estimates for the last 4 quarters, and Rapidus is building their fab using IBM’s 2nm process. Things might finally be looking up for big blue.

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Helpdesk_Guy@reddit

Things might finally be looking up for big blue.

I think some saying along those lines were said a couple of times through-out IBMs incredible lifetime and its past performance, and all things came and went: During the punchcard-era, in the dawn of the two world-wars, the resourceful aftermath, then the mainframe era alongside Digital or the IBM-PC with Intel …

You really think IBM cares are about success? Or isn't it rather a case of existence for sake of witnessing thinks?

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callanrocks@reddit

The breakless freight train stops for nothing but entropy.

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Helpdesk_Guy@reddit

I guess that's because back then, when good 'ol Hermann ›The German‹ Hollerith started to begin to compute and punched things to no end, computers just weren't crystal-controlled, and thus NOT able being bricked hardware-bugs like the Y2K-bug (Year 2000) or the nearing 2038 problem – Numbers were just *punched* in by hand into cards (hence punchcards).

So as long as someone literally punches in every morning (and they still have 293,400 doing it every single day), this giant of old age and old days of yesteryear just marches, and likely outlives all of us.

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Helpdesk_Guy@reddit

The last and actually original Big Blue (now hovering in the background as the Mighty Blue Electron, watching everyone), is still making massive dimes (after a successful turn-around from near-term bankruptcy).

Just kidding. Actually IBM has been on a real roll since around 2020 and has been steadily approaching its all-time high just today with no less than $259.72 USD!

The joke is, IBM was at $216 USD just before the crash in 1929 – Even during its actual all-time high in the 1970s in the mainframe-era, when International Business basically was business and basically synonymous with everything computing, it still 'only' was $179.70 USD.

Even its creation of the infamous IBM-PC 5151 and the whole PC era afterwards now looks like a mere blip in IBM's time-line, though a happy fluke reshaping the industry.

So despite its age of now no less than 114 years (sic!), when founded through merger back in 1911 (and no less than 141 years, if we account for Hermann Hollerith since 1884 and his Tabulating Machine Company), this true dinosaur of computers is really hard to die and just refuses to let go of thinking, still trots on and jogs along as the age-old reactionary diehard it ever was from day one.

I guess that's because back then, when good 'ol Hermann started to begin to compute things, computers just weren't crystal-controlled, and thus NOT able being bricked hardware-bugs like the Y2K-bug (Year 2000) or the nearing 2038 problem – Numbers were just punched in by hand into cards (hence punchcards).

So as long as someone literally punches in every morning (and they still have 293,400 doing it every single day), this giant of old age and old days of yesteryear just marches, and likely outlives all of us.

Though that's just 👁️ 🐝 M – It didn't coined Watson's famous slogan „Think!“ for no reason!
Since thinking is being. I think, therefore I am. (Cogito, ergo sum).

… and it seems this beast just took it literally, and already easily Kodak outlived and virtually 🔻Verbatim!

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Flakmaster92@reddit

It’s also very important to know that for cutting edge silicone, the design of the processor is usually tied in some way to the fabs they were targeting during the design phase. Different fabs operate differently, it’s not like machining where everyone has essentially the same C&C machine as anyone else

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xternocleidomastoide@reddit

Large companies are extremely risk adverse. Especially decision makers within them.

Nobody wants to risk their job/career going with intel as a fab partner, when most modern SoC projects cost hundreds of millions of dollars to build and design.

Also, there are huge investments in terms of silicon teams present within TSMC (and Samsung to a lesser extent) from NVDA, QCOM, AVGO, etc. Which are not present w Intel. There is a lot of inertia there, when it comes to those major/large customers, that intel has done a very poor job at addressing.

At the end of the day, Intel had to implement tremendous changes within their corporate culture in order to transition into an open fab model. But they have to do so.

Lastly, they pissed lots of possible (big) partners with the cancelation of 20A, which was the initial node that CHIPS act was pushing American fabless teams into adopting/testing. Leaving them hanging burned a lot of good will (and interest).

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0riginal-Syn@reddit

Agreed, you are seeing even large companies that were traditionally exclusively Intel move away from that model, as it is a risky gamble at this point.

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rtyuuytr@reddit

Intel 4, 3, 18A have basically all failed at volume production. Just one more time type of thing at 14A.

Let's bet your company's future product on an unknown node from a company's last 3 nodes have failed. This is ignoring the whole Intel 7 effectively Intel 10.

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Geddagod@reddit

Intel 3 was fine.

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DehydratedButTired@reddit

Intel 3 was a refinement on Intel 4. It makes sense that they were able to keep it within the roadmap.

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nanonan@reddit

Likely the culture there is the turn-off. Intel has some sort of archaic caste system going on, an internal division between 'blue badge' long term employees and 'green badge' contractors, so they have internal employees who are already considered outsiders and apparently treated disrespectfully. Can't imagine it's too hospitable to actual outsiders.

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juGGaKNot4@reddit

Haven't delivered a node in time since 2014 why would anyone risk their product being late?

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Kionera@reddit

I'd imagine that letting your competitor know how your chips are produced can't be a good thing.

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noiserr@reddit

Companies want a roadmap and a successful track record of execution before betting their bread and butter on a partner.

Look how long AMD has had leadership in the datacenter and how long it took them to gain market share with Epyc.

Also this business is about scale. The setup costs for using a fab for a product are really high. Which means you can't just half commit to using another fab. You kind of have to go all in.

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Intelligent_Top_328@reddit

What happens if Intel goes bankrupt?

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RedIndianRobin@reddit

AMD will have a full monopoly in the CPU market. X3D chips will cost $999+tax.

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kongweeneverdie@reddit

ARM based companies take over.

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JAEMzW0LF@reddit

Because this is the only way to get growth, which is only demanded by the babies who run the stock market (a mature company with no stock market pressue is not bothered by a straigh, horizontal line if its generating billions per quarter). And really, short sighted, stock market focuses thinking is what got them here.

Here is an idea, stock price down? buy back every one of the and just forget the stock market exists, and then find all of the business-only people and fire all of them.

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martinkou@reddit

And they still have more headcount than nVidia and AMD combined.

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Lycanthoss@reddit

AMD + TSMC has more workers than Intel and it would be more equivalent. But even then, Intel doesn't just make CPUs or manufacture chips, it also has networking products and more. You can't just compare these numbers without taking into account everything else Intel does.

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abbzug@reddit

Joe Rogan Experience employees make more profit per employee than employees at either Nvidia or AMD. The obvious conclusion of this is that Jensen Huang and Lisa Su should sell their companies and become podcasters.

This is the problem with relying on arbitrary metrics.

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Exist50@reddit

Sad part is, this seems to be the exact argument Tan's making to "right-size" Intel.

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Exist50@reddit

As long as they have fabs at all, of course they will.

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IBM296@reddit

Things are looking quite bad at Intel. I would say its board already has a bankruptcy announcement planned for 2027... These steps are just to reduce costs till that time.

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mockingbird-@reddit (OP)

...and a bailout from the US government

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IBM296@reddit

If the Chips Act couldn't save Intel, I doubt another bailout will.

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Strazdas1@reddit

We have tried giving them no money so i guess we are all out of ideas now.

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6950@reddit

Chips Act gave them barely anything it won't cover the cost for 1/10th of a modern fab

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3G6A5W338E@reddit

Would be an awful waste of taxpayer money.

There are plenty of US based tech companies that overlap with everything Intel does or used to do. There's no need to save Intel as it slips into irrelevance and bankruptcy.

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127-0-0-1_1@reddit

What US companies fabricate remotely competitive chip nodes?

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steve09089@reddit

They’re probably planning to sell it for parts, not for a bailout.

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DehydratedButTired@reddit

I think the x86 licensing would be lost in the shuffle then. Even if they manage to sell the related components to it, who ever buys that portion would have to cross license all over again with AMD.

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bloodwine@reddit

Has there ever been a case of a company cutting projects & innovation to successfully rebound? It sounds more like U.S. capitalism culture has killed Intel and it is now a zombie masquerading as still being viable. Short term gains at the cost of long-term viability and relevance.

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Helpdesk_Guy@reddit

Has there ever been a case of a company cutting projects & innovation to successfully rebound?

Yes, AMD, which doesn't really need no further explanation, thanks to stellar Uber-CEO Lisa Su!

Or IBM for example (which Lisa Su earned her merits back then) with Lou Gerstner turning IBM around from almost bankruptcy and is as powerful as it can be, being literally TODAY on its all-time high of its +114 years existence.

Yet even Lou Gerstner warned Intel, that a turn-around of a ship of such a size, is very difficult.

There's no real chance of a turn-around for Intel, since this company is just gone for good, mainly due to is cultural rot.

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mockingbird-@reddit (OP)

After disastrous delays of 10nm and 7nm and the cancellation of 20A, how can Intel assure potential customers that 14A will arrive on schedule and work as expected?

Imagine if a company (i.e. Apple) can't get its billion-dollar product (i.e. iPhone) out on time because of Intel's delays.

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tarmacjd@reddit

That’s literally what happened and pushed Apple to move away from Intel

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IcyestRetro@reddit

This is their way of publicly extorting the NSA and all the other intelligence agencies that beg them for back doors every release.

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3G6A5W338E@reddit

Intel could embrace RISC-V.

But they're clueless over there. It will choose to die.

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moofunk@reddit

Intel can’t do anything special with RISC-V that other startups aren’t already doing.

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aprx4@reddit

how does embracing another CPU architecture help saving its manufacturing? Intel doesn't have issue with chip design.

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Dreamerlax@reddit

They're the local RISC-V cheerleader.

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Exist50@reddit

Intel doesn't have issue with chip design.

Well, it does, but the manufacturing is the more problematic side. Nor would RISC-V help.

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xternocleidomastoide@reddit

The previous poster is projecting their own lack of clue. FWIW RISC-V has one of the most insane fan bases in tech. For some reason.

It's really bizarre.

?

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Echrome@reddit

You are welcome to discuss r/hardware moderation on r/hardware, but please do so in a dedicated [Meta] thread

Please do not discuss other subreddits’ actions, moderators, or rules on r/hardware

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mockingbird-@reddit (OP)

I got banned from r/Intel for posting this.

Things are so bad that r/Intel's mods are cracking down on anything that reflects badly on Intel.

Persistent agenda-posting, only ever posts negative Intel news

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SkillYourself@reddit

I mean ... you've hidden your comments now but

Persistent agenda-posting, only ever posts negative Intel news

This is 100% on point lmao. You've been doing this for years.

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RPG_Cool_Ideas@reddit

Seriously, who is he trying to fool here?

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mockingbird-@reddit (OP)

Since when is it the moderator's job to filter "negative news"?

Regardless there aven't been many "positive news" of Intel for years now.

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ExeusV@reddit

Since when is it the moderator's job to filter "negative news"?

dafq? their subreddit, their rules, wtf?

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mockingbird-@reddit (OP)

It's the moderator's job to enforce the subreddit's rules, but there is no rule for posting "negative news".

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lockedout8899@reddit

Exactly. They cant have it both ways. Regardless of whether or not they "moderate" the subreddit (they don't "own" shit)

They can either enforce the rules they have laid out, or they can create a rule saying "no negative Intel news allowed" and be transparent about it.

Those are their two options.

Anything else leaves them wildly open to criticism and mockery.

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yabn5@reddit

The top posts on r/intel are negative news. It’s the poster not the articles.

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mockingbird-@reddit (OP)

Fool what?

There haven't been many "positive news" of Intel for years now.

Regardless, it's not moderator's job to filter "negative news"

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Vathe@reddit

Yeah he is clearly the exact type of loser that he is complaining the mods of that subreddit are. People who post on GPU subreddits, console specific subreddits - it's always the same "console war" type of cringe. People who are either 13, or did not grow past being 13.

It also takes exactly 1 second to click on the intel subreddit, and see that the top post is THE SAME NEWS OP here is trying to complain about being banned for. Even the top comment on the post is negative.

These types of people should be banned from reddit tbh (although easier said than done of course). All they do is contribute to the negative spiral of social media disinformation.

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PainterRude1394@reddit

Lol hiding the evidence then complaining

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mockingbird-@reddit (OP)

There haven't been many "positive news" of Intel for years now.

Regardless, it's not moderator job to filter "negative news"

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hoti0101@reddit

There is a fine line between posting articles and just being a negative troll for a subreddit. You seem to enjoy being the latter.

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mockingbird-@reddit (OP)

...by posting articles from WSJ and Reuters?

You have a very different definition of "troll" than most people do.

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lockedout8899@reddit

So many crazy people have access to the Internet.

They live in delusional fantasy worlds and call anyone a "troll" for just pointing out very very very obvious things that they don't like.

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fine_printer@reddit

Negative Intel news shows up mockingbird-: (insert M. Bison's meme) Yes, yes, YEEEESSS!!!

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mockingbird-@reddit (OP)

I go to Google, type in "Intel" and post what is in the content section of Google News.

Regardless, it is not the moderator's job to be filtering "negative news".

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IIlIIlIIlIlIIlIIlIIl@reddit

If you spam them daily, it is.

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ExeusV@reddit

Why are your comments/posts hidden?

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yabn5@reddit

You know why.

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Sevastous-of-Caria@reddit

I dont get some of these brand mods at all. Some dgaf at all just straight ban you. While some like in nvidia shadowban you (got banned for letting people consider old rdna2 or turing cards rather than new nvidia slop) so that you dont complain to other subs and try to stay "proffessional" which is extremely funny cause its reddit. Thats why I like r/AMDhelp or r/radeon or even r/intelarc subs. They chill you can post almost anything positive or negative.

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mockingbird-@reddit (OP)

The moderator's job is to enforce the subreddit rules, but many of these moderators instead see their role as filtering out content that negatively reflects companies associated with the subreddit.

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lockedout8899@reddit

MSI does this as well. To counter it i just then use my 325 reddit accounts and VPN to f*ck with them even harder.

They are low IQ monkeys. These mods LOSE all day both online and in real life.

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imaginary_num6er@reddit

Yeah those on some of those subs think shadow banning someone would prevent them from just creating an alt. It's idiotic

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EffectiveLong@reddit

Lol r/layoffs consider me racist or some kind anti-immigrant phobia when I joked about AI stands for Actual India. The poster literally posted about AI and offshore issue🤣

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Darksider123@reddit

Yeah I got shadow banned from nvidia as well. They're super corporate down there.

I've complained about amd on the amd sub, and those mods are fine with it.

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Jaybird149@reddit

Nintendo subs mods are like this too

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crab_quiche@reddit

They banned people from talking about the horrible decision to update Mario Kart World to only be a straight line simulator lol

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kuddlesworth9419@reddit

Asrock is also a funny one. Best place to go to find out if Asrock have killed another AMD CPU or not.

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Sevastous-of-Caria@reddit

Im suprised asrock still denies or shifts blame when chips keep dying on their hands

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mockingbird-@reddit (OP)

Didn't AsRock already admit that its PBO setting was causing the issue?

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Sevastous-of-Caria@reddit

Their statement was weird. I guess they admitted and spend the rest of it trying to shift blame to AMD's PBO algorithm/curve optimiser. They need to come clean because there are people still arguing whose fault is it at asrock subreddit.

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mockingbird-@reddit (OP)

AsRock is to blame, but so is AMD.

AMD should be checking what it partners are doing.

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kuddlesworth9419@reddit

It got to the point where people where wandering if it wasn't actually Asrock but just AMD CPU's dying but all the other motherboard vendors don't have this problem just Asrock so I think they all understand now not to buy Asrock motherboards. Gigabyte do some cheap ones now anyway so there isn't a good reason to take the risk anymore.

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