News Intel spends more on R&D than Nvidia and AMD combined, yet continues to lag in market cap — Nvidia spends almost 2X more than AMD

[Admin]

Nvidia spent $3 billion on R&D, and AMD spent $1.5 billion, but this pales in comparison to the $30 billion that Apple spends on its future products annually.

Intel spends more on R&D than Nvidia and AMD combined, yet continues to lag in market cap — Nvidia spends almost 2X more than AMD : Read more

 

[redgarl]

This is probably the best indicator of the reason why Intel will probably never be able to stir the ship.

Without the money for the R&D, Intel will just fall into a dead spiral leading to smaller budget, less R&D and less revenue.

 

[Pierce2623]

I’ve said that a million times. Until Intel becomes a more efficient engineering led company again, they’ll continue to suffer. Also, moving to TSMC just to eke out some efficiency was a bad move. No matter how bad the yields or efficiency are Intel 4 would be more profitable than buying wafers from TSMC while still paying to keep the foundry running. I think even though the efficiency would be worse, they could’ve gotten higher performance out of Intel 4, too. I mean Intel 7 matched TSMC 5nm on peak performance even if it was much less efficient.

 

[Dustyboy1492]

Intel spends R&D on process development for fabs, AMD and Nvidia do not. Why is this news?

 

[EzzyB]

I’ve said that a million times. Until Intel becomes a more efficient engineering led company again, they’ll continue to suffer. Also, moving to TSMC just to eke out some efficiency was a bad move. No matter how bad the yields or efficiency are Intel 4 would be more profitable than buying wafers from TSMC while still paying to keep the foundry running. I think even though the efficiency would be worse, they could’ve gotten higher performance out of Intel 4, too. I mean Intel 7 matched TSMC 5nm on peak performance even if it was much less efficient.

Intel spends R&D on process development for fabs, AMD and Nvidia do not. Why is this news?

Neither do Apple and Qualcomm. Maybe add in TSMC and Samsung for a better comparison?

 

[bit_user]

Wow, what a clickbait title! Intel has fabs, which takes a lot of R&D. If you're comparing to AMD or Nvidia, then you would have to add their R&D spending to that of TSMC's, in order to get an equivalent figure.

Yet Intel spends on CPUs, GPUs, FPGAs, networking gear, quantum computing, and many other products.

Okay, so you had just listed AMD's Pensando business, which makes networking gear. We all know AMD makes CPUs and GPUs. And guess what? They also make FPGAs, via Xilinx (thanks, @thestryker)! Pretty much the only area you listed that they're lacking is quantum computing. Gelsinger killed off a lot of other businesses Intel was in, such as SSDs and NUCs. So, that probably doesn't leave a whole lot of "other products"!

they all pale behind Apple's R&D expenditure.

Apple sells entire systems, so they have to do more hardware and software work, for that. They also develop their own operating systems, applications software, iCloud, the iTunes & app stores and have their own streaming service! Not to mention the financial services stuff they're doing and their automotive products group. All of that client-side and cloud-based software takes a lot of R&D spending to develop, maintain, and support.

Comparing any of them to Apple is probably an even more nonsensical comparison than comparing the others to Intel!

 

[shady28]

This article reflects tremendous level of ignorance on the part of the author.

AMD, Nvidia, Qualcomm and Apple are 'fabless'. They do not have to do R&D on new process node tech. TSMC, Samsung, and Global Foundries do that for them.

Intel has fabs, which require huge R&D efforts to upgrade. Do I need to say this again? I guess so. Intel has fabs, Nvidia AMD Qualcomm and Apple do not. Fabs require R&D - a lot of R&D.

TSMC spent $6.3B on R&D in FY 2023.

The only remarkable thing here is that Intel has managed to catch up to TSMC and passed Samsung with process node tech, while becoming more competitive with AMD all at the same time.

 

[thestryker]

Okay, so you had just listed AMD's Pensando business, which makes networking gear. We all know AMD makes CPUs and GPUs. And guess what? They also make FPGAs, via Altera Xilinx!

You flipped the two company's FPGA arms.

 

[dCasualGamer]

Bringing up a node in fab is a high R&D cost.

 

[jed351]

Apple spent quite a lot of money on electric self driving cars. I still don't understand why they even spent money on it. The step up from consumer electronics to cars is simply too big.

And we are near 2025. How do we still get articles comparing the cost of fabless companies to companies with fabs?

 

[EzzyB]

Apple spent quite a lot of money on electric self driving cars. I still don't understand why they even spent money on it. The step up from consumer electronics to cars is simply too big.

And we are near 2025. How do we still get articles comparing the cost of fabless companies to companies with fabs?

It happens. All of these huge companies take some giant swings and miss badly sometimes. Add in Apple's latest VR whatnot, Microsoft's as well as their purchase of Nokia, but really, Google is the Champion.

 

[MoxNix]

Intel spends more money but they spend it foolishly.

Intel tries to buy everyone and everything. They wind up overpaying for both people and technologies. Often just to keep anyone else from getting them/it. The other guys are smarter about their spending, they pay their key guys very well but don't overpay everyone else too and don't waste ridiculous amounts of money on unnecessary tech purchases either.

 

[EzzyB]

Intel spends more money but they spend it foolishly.

Intel tries to buy everyone and everything. They wind up overpaying for both people and technologies. Often just to keep anyone else from getting them/it. The other guys are smarter about their spending, they pay their key guys very well but don't overpay everyone else too and don't waste ridiculous amounts of money on unnecessary tech purchases either.

No, like we said, none of the other companies listed have fabs. The R&D needed to spin up a new process node costs billions, something none of the others have to pay out of their R&D budgets.

It's a useless graph.

 

[bit_user]

It's a useless graph.

It's an interesting graph, IMO. Just misleading to plot all of the companies as if they're peers. However, I do like seeing how changes in the slope of the various lines coincide (or don't).

 

[JayNor]

They'll be able to sell 4Tb optical chiplets and the advanced packaging technology to combine it with TSM chiplets. That looks like a goldmine to me.

 

[JayNor]

Intel also now has wifi7 and TB5, which they can sell as chiplets or finished product.

They've been saying for several years that their VRAN technology will dominate, and now they've added layer 1 acceleration on-chip.

 

[JayNor]

We don't really know how their government projects will pay off. They demoed a graph processor ... PIUMA ... that is for DARPA HIVE. That looks like a possible winner, now that they have the 4Tb optical chiplets.

 

[JayNor]

Intel did spend what looked like a lot, at the time, on Altera ... but then AMD spent something like $50B on Xilinx, and haven't attracted the same amount of criticism.

Mobileye was a big purchase. Jury's still out on that one.
Nervana and Habana on AI processor solutions ... can't blame them for not seeing AI as a potential business. FB was gushing over Gaudi at the time...

 

[bit_user]

Intel did spend what looked like a lot, at the time, on Altera ... but then AMD spent something like $50B on Xilinx, and haven't attracted the same amount of criticism.

Because AMD's P/E ratio was nuts and Xilinx was a stable business with significant cash flow. It was a good move to convert some of that inflated share price into more revenue.

 

[thestryker]

Intel did spend what looked like a lot, at the time, on Altera ... but then AMD spent something like $50B on Xilinx, and haven't attracted the same amount of criticism.

AMD also didn't have any overlapping business units and Xilinx brought exactly what AMD uses for their HPC/Cloud expansion.