[HN Gopher] Intel grew revenues in Q2 2020, but key manufacturin...
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Intel grew revenues in Q2 2020, but key manufacturing upgrade
delayed
Author : sleepyshift
Score : 130 points
Date : 2020-07-23 20:48 UTC (2 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (venturebeat.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (venturebeat.com)
| coldtea wrote:
| Not like they are under any pressure...
| nodesocket wrote:
| Can't tell if you being sarcastic, but AMD is working Intel
| these days.
| totalZero wrote:
| I'm still waiting for them to move to 10nm.
| hmottestad wrote:
| Haha. Yeah, me too. Still no 10nm pro laptop cpus, desktop cpus
| or server cpus.
| jjoonathan wrote:
| Have any insider accounts of the 10nm debacle emerged, or is it
| still too soon?
| snovv_crash wrote:
| This is 3rd hand, but I heard that the 14nm was rushed with a
| crazy schedule, and as a result the greybeards who actually
| knew everything all left. Intel is having to rebuild all that
| institutional knowledge from scratch again.
| stormbeard wrote:
| Any idea where most of them went?
| ksec wrote:
| 20% YoY Revenue increase, 43% YoY Growth in Datacenter Segment.
| 76% Growth in Non-Volatile Memory solution, _another_ 7% YoY
| growth in Client Side computing.
|
| This is truly amazing results.
|
| I get stabbed over at Anandtech every time I made an argument
| _for_ Intel as an AMD investor. The Internet is full of Intel
| bashing comments but reality is Intel has been making record
| revenue quarter after quarter.
|
| For the not so good part.
|
| > _The company 's 7nm-based CPU product timing is shifting
| approximately six months relative to prior expectations. The
| primary driver is the yield of Intel's 7nm process, which based
| on recent data, is now trending approximately twelve months
| behind the company's internal target._
|
| The most important bit is that last part, _12 months behind
| Internal target_. To put this into perspective.
|
| Intel original 7nm, ( on the assumption it is still the same 7nm
| because Intel has already changed their 10nm spec) was suppose to
| be slightly better than TSMC 5nm+, but not as good as TSMC' 3nm.
| ( In terms of transistor density, by no means it is the only
| metric it should be judged on ). It was scheduled for 2019,
| pushed to 2020 then 2H 2021, and are now looking at 1H 2022,
| which means in terms of consumer getting their hands on it, it
| would be more like 2H 2022 assuming no further delay.
|
| Given TSMC has never missed a beat in their execution and has
| iPhone SoC production. It is highly likely by the end of Calendar
| year 2022, TSMC would have shipped more 3nm Wafer than Intel's
| 7nm for the whole year.
|
| I am waiting to see AMD's results.
| galeos wrote:
| This obviously puts more wind in AMD's sails. That said,
| Intel's Datacenter growth is very impressive.
|
| I have been an AMD investor since pre-Zen launch and I think it
| is fair to say that EPYC sales feel like they haven't reached
| the levels some have hoped for quite yet. If AMD continue to
| widen the gap between EPYC and Xeon, I suspect we may look back
| on this inertia as a bit of a 'roadrunner effect' and in a year
| or two's time get a shocking quarter where AMD suddenly starts
| taking surprisingly large bites out of Intel's datacenter
| market share.
|
| Also on the GPU side of things, it is rumored that Nvidia has
| struggled to get capacity at TSMC and is having to use
| Samsung's, supposedly inferior, 8nm process for its forthcoming
| Ampere cards, at least until their 7nm capacity comes online at
| TSMC. Not sure how much truth there is to this, but highlights
| the capacity issues that may currently be in play.
| beezle wrote:
| INTC investors are quite unhappy tonight. Down 11.25% at 54.20.
| Anyone expecting the Robbin Hooders to understand comparative
| lithography, well... there's a bridge still available in NY.
|
| Maybe INTC will still make a lot of money but there's a
| "nanometer gap", damnit!
| bhouston wrote:
| Why hasn't Intel given up on their internal process nodes?
| Their advantage is clearly not in owning their process nodes at
| this point. Dump them and adopt TSMC.
| eloff wrote:
| One could ague that vertical integration has been their
| strength up until recently. I don't think it suddenly becomes
| a bad idea just because they dropped the ball recently.
| trasz wrote:
| Giving up manufacturing would reduce Intel to what AMD now
| is, except with worse designs.
| arcticbull wrote:
| They're clearly not reaping any reward from their process,
| TSMC has them beat hands down and they continue to show
| lack of forward progress towards smaller nodes. They have a
| much bigger IP portfolio than AMD, and frankly, it appears
| their foundries are a cost center/boat anchor rather than a
| profit driver for next-gen silicon.
|
| They don't have to give up their existing 14nm capacity,
| but next-generation processors could much more easily
| (apparently) be fab'd externally.
| rgbrenner wrote:
| Who would they order from? Keep in mind they are slightly
| behind Samsung in ic volume. Samsung is #1 and Intel #2.
| Almost double the volume of TSMC. It takes a few years to
| build a new plant.
|
| Literally impossible without a very long term plan... and
| when it's over they lose control of their destiny. They can
| beg TSMC for more chips if they want to meet their sales
| targets, but maybe they'll sell to Apple or Nvidia instead.
| sct202 wrote:
| Where are you getting that number for Intel? Everything I
| see has Samsung, TMSC, then Micron as the top in terms of
| wafer production. Intel is like 1/3 of TMSC which is still
| alot. https://www.eetindia.co.in/over-half-of-global-wafer-
| capacit...
| pantalaimon wrote:
| Why would they grant their competitor a monopoly?
| starfallg wrote:
| Intel is behind, but not actually that behind. Spinning off
| their fab business at this point in time is throwing money in
| to the sea. TSMC doesn't have the capacity to handle the
| volume of Intel orders anyway.
| jonplackett wrote:
| Profit margin. They want that slice o pie.
| orbifold wrote:
| Once they figure out UV, there are lots of in house
| innovations in the pipeline that could prolong Moore's law
| for the next 10-15 years. This is according to Jim Keller,
| who gave talks about how there could be up to 50x density
| increase. Most of that technology is proprietary and together
| with TSMC they are heading toward a quasi monopoly.
| qppo wrote:
| They may be betting that a switchover to TSMC would take as
| long or longer as doing it themselves. As well there's
| hubris, sunken costs, and Uncle Sam taking a vested interest
| in semiconductor manufacturing to take into account.
| nicoburns wrote:
| If there really is not further delay, then Intel will be fine.
| But their 10nm was initially only delayed by 12 months too. And
| then another 12 months. And another. Intel have big problems if
| they have those same delays again.
| bhouston wrote:
| At some point Intel should just dump their own process nodes and
| go with TSMC. This is getting ridiculous.
| bob1029 wrote:
| Seems like even if they went with TSMC, they are a little bit
| late to the party. AMD has been optimizing against TSMC's nodes
| for years.
|
| AMD is also an organization that has been operating with the
| 3rd party foundry model for 10+ years. How long would it take
| for Intel to undergo an org-chart/culture transition into a
| similar model? I have to believe this would be a fairly
| disruptive time for such a large organization.
|
| Not saying Intel can't pull it off, but it seems like their
| strategy will have to exist on a >5 year timeline at this
| point.
| _1100 wrote:
| As much as I enjoy seeing Intel falter for all of the anti-
| competitive practices it has employed in the past...
|
| I think them moving to outsourced foundries would be a huge
| move in the wrong direction for fab consolidation.
| coayer wrote:
| I feel the same about Samsung's Exynos mobile SoCs. While
| they are definitely worse than Qualcomm's, if they went away
| Qualcomm would be the only chip maker for Android flagships
| (excluding Huawei, but without Google play services they
| don't really count).
| sitkack wrote:
| We need to retain competition, otherwise AMD will be the new
| Intel and we will have gotten nowhere.
| abraxas wrote:
| Aren't these node sizes mostly marketing BS that can't be
| compared across manufacturers anyway? If Intel's products can
| compete on performance or price or power consumption then who
| cares what they call it?
| mdasen wrote:
| Some of it is marketing BS, but it's hard to argue that AMD
| isn't benefitting hugely from TSMC's 7nm process. Likewise,
| Apple knows that they can get 5nm parts from TSMC this year for
| their phones and laptops and they know the kind of performance
| advantage they're going to be getting out of them.
|
| Intel has stumbled a lot here and it's showing.
| jiggawatts wrote:
| The objective metrics are things like: transistors per square
| millimetre, power per billion transistors, frequency, SRAM bit-
| cell size, etc...
|
| Marketing calls it "7nm+++super", engineers get graphs of
| power-vs-frequency.
|
| E.g.: comparing transistor densities: Intel
| 14nm 38 MTr/mm^2 TSMC 7nm 97 MTr/mm^2
| Intel 10nm 100 MTr/mm^2 Samsung 5nm 127
| MTr/mm^2 TSMC 5nm 173 MTr/mm^2
|
| This should make it pretty clear why Intel is going to struggle
| to be competitive: The majority of their products are stuck on
| 14nm, which has 22% of the transistor density of TSMC's
| bleeding edge product. They can't compete with the likes of AMD
| and Apple with such outdated tech.
|
| It should also make it clear that Intel's 10nm node is
| basically the same as TSMC's 7nm.
|
| However, from what I heard (I'm not an expert!), Intel's 10nm
| node is a "pain in the ass" to manufacture. The design phase is
| complex, the yields are low, etc...
|
| For comparison, TSMC's 7nm is supposed to be a relatively
| "straightforward" process, and 5nm is actually an _improvement_
| in manufacturability. That is, it 's easier to design and make
| a 5nm TSMC chip than a 7nm TSMC chip. That's actually a pretty
| big advantage, something Intel doesn't talk about much...
| JoshTko wrote:
| Intel's 10% stock drop is all about losing investor confidence.
| They've been given a pass for delaying 10nm for years in part
| because there was no competition and assurances that it was a
| one-off thing and they have learned their lesson. This delay
| threatens that narrative and instead suggest that Intel hasn't
| learned from their 10nm debacle.
| pwarner wrote:
| This has got to be interesting for folks like AWS, Google, MS. Is
| this the opening for AMD? Or will we see things like AWS ARM
| chips take off? They should both be close to entering production
| on 5nm chips once TSMC gets enough Apple chips knocked out. Are
| we going to see more specialization in the form of custom chips
| as process nodes are stalled out?
| ogre_codes wrote:
| Apple's timing here is spot on. If Intel was firing on all
| cylinders, it would be a lot harder for them to pull off a
| processor change.
| paranoidrobot wrote:
| If all Apple cared about was faster chips, they could easily
| call up AMD and move their platform there. It'd be a lot less
| work for them.
|
| Moving to their own ARM chips lets them gain tighter control
| over the platform, and not be beholden to Intel or AMDs roadmap
| or desire to implement specific features Apple wants.
| OldHand2018 wrote:
| > If all Apple cared about was faster chips
|
| Everybody _wants_ faster chips, but for most people, the chip
| is in idle state 99% of the time. Outside of the data center
| and serious gamers, chip speed has been fairly irrelevant for
| years.
| wmf wrote:
| Arguably 2016 would have been the ideal time to switch because
| that's when the delays started. But the second best time is
| now, as they say.
| AaronFriel wrote:
| I wonder to what extent a six month delay could influence
| hyperscaler decisions for compute purchasing. Every major cloud
| now offers AMD Epyc instances at a discount relative to Intel's
| 14nm(\\+)* offerings. It seems unlikely Intel will be competitive
| until 2022. It seems unlikely any of the top three cloud
| providers would go all AMD for new instances but I could see the
| ratio shifting heavily in AMD's favor.
| grizzles wrote:
| Intel is a company that's living on it's distribution legacy. Ask
| yourself - why do regular people still buy Intel PCs?
|
| Because they are easy to buy. A _great_ non Intel hardware and
| software laptop+aio by AMD or someone else would be a mortal
| wound on $INTC.
| chrisseaton wrote:
| > Ask yourself - why do regular people still buy Intel PCs?
|
| Regular people don't buy PCs at all and haven't for a couple of
| decades.
| smabie wrote:
| Regular people didn't but PCs in 2000 that's just not true. I
| think most consumers buy laptops nowadays, but that shift
| started happening around 2005ish, not 2000.
| arcticbull wrote:
| There are some now by AMD, of course, with the new 4900HS
| chips. Linus was fawning all over the Asus ROG Zephyrus G14
| with the 4900HS. Then, we'll see Apple's ARM entries. I don't
| know that these are mortal wounds but they are certainly the
| thin edge.
|
| 4900HS is 25% faster than the i9-9880HK (Intel's fastest
| contender) and uses much less power.
| slezyr wrote:
| There is a scandal around the Asus ROG Zephyrus G14. AMD
| version of it has sealed vents with plastic covers.
|
| https://linustechtips.com/main/topic/1187443-asus-caught-
| bei...
| billyhoffman wrote:
| This is a 2000s view of Intel that is not accurate in 2020.
| Look at the numbers.
|
| - 7% growth for consumer (the "Intel PCs" you mention)
|
| - 43% growth for data centers
|
| - 70%+ growth in nonvolatile storage (SSDs)... much of which
| goes into high end servers in data centers
|
| Will there be more data centers And cloud offerings in 3 years,
| or less? Many More!
|
| Will there be more or less PC sales in 3 years. For Intel it's
| less or the same (Apple is 8-10% of the market that is
| disappearing and PC growth is flat to slightly up. So 3 years
| out it will be roughly the same)
|
| Also keep in mind the margin on Xeons vs The laptop chips That
| go in a $599 plastic Dell.
|
| Intel as a "PC" company is dying. Intel as a data center
| provider (SSDs and heavy processors) is ascendant
| lend000 wrote:
| A single socket AMD threadripper 3995WX (the "ECC" version
| just released) is likely going to destroy a dual socket Xeon
| 8275+ (the ones used for the Amazon C5 metal instance) in
| most benchmarks like the 3990X did, while running at roughly
| the same power and a fraction of the price. Once AMD
| convinces cloud providers that its ECC works just as well as
| Intel's, there's really nothing holding AMD back from taking
| a huge chunk of the server market.
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(page generated 2020-07-23 23:00 UTC)