News Intel to layoff more than 15% of workforce — almost 20,000 employees — encountered Meteor Lake yield issues, suspends dividend

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8086 said:
Considering how Intel just received billions from the CHIPS Act, I cannot understand why they are in such dire straits.
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They're not getting money just for being Intel, and to do with as they please. They're getting it for fab construction. If they don't spend it on fab construction, and match it with enough of their own money, there are claw-back clauses.

The point of the CHIPS bill was to build domestic semiconductor production capacity, because there might come a day when we can no longer just rely on Taiwan for that. It has specific measures to keep the funds from simply flowing into the pockets of investors.

8086 said:
My inner personal conspiracy theory
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Don't. If you don't have solid supporting evidence, please don't post that kind of fanfic.
 
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So, does anyone have any good guesses which products they're going to cancel? Sad to say, if their ARC dGPUs weren't already dead, I'd say they're now well and truly goners.

Probably Falcon Shores is also gone. If Intel is using Habana for AI, they don't also need GPGPUs. Sure, Ponte Vecchio (and presumably Falcon Shores) is more about the HPC market than AI, but I somewhat doubt that market is very big or strategically important, for Intel. At least, not the slice of it they realistically stand to win.

I don't have a lot of other guesses, though. It seems like most of the obvious stuff has already been gotten rid of.
 
rm12 said:
First off, all these issues materialised during the past quarter? None of those existed the quarter before? So, now throwing all together and taking a hit in the hope next quarter is better?

On Yahoo Finance an analyst is saying that Intel is still a few years behind TMSC and revenue can only start to show from maybe 2028. TMSC is earning a living atm fabbing silicon for other parties. TMSC will keep investing big time in their fabs, if Intel cuts back now, they will fall (further) behind.
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The design of a box that holds a cpu is also done by an engineer and not just a designer
A giant company like intel has loads of things that are not involved with their core business that involve R&D.

So intel trimming some fat doesn’t mean they will no longer have the manpower to develop new chips, maybe the box won’t be as fancy anymore but practically no one cares about those
 
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bit_user said:
So, does anyone have any good guesses which products they're going to cancel? Sad to say, if their ARC dGPUs weren't already dead, I'd say they're now well and truly goners.

Probably Falcon Shores is also gone. If Intel is using Habana for AI, they don't also need GPGPUs. Sure, Ponte Vecchio (and presumably Falcon Shores) is more about the HPC market than AI, but I somewhat doubt that market is very big or strategically important, for Intel. At least, not the slice of it they realistically stand to win.

I don't have a lot of other guesses, though. It seems like most of the obvious stuff has already been gotten rid of.
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The consumer side of the GPUs (as standalone products) as MLiD prophetisized a long while back, has been in the chopping block for ages. The proof is that there's no Battlemage announced to anyone. Not even OEMs or Distribution Channels (we would have had leaks about it at least). Only the iGPUs which use improved Alchemist cores (as I understand it) and maybe Battlemage will see the light of day as an iGPU as well.

So, from where I stand and speaking strictly about the discrete GPU side, I don't think they'll die for Server and HPC/AI, but the focus and priority for the development and implementation will be outside of the consumer space, for sure. Intel needs the "accelerators" to work on multiple levels, as that's what they bet on with SPR, right?

As other products they can kill or spin off, I have a few in mind:
- Intel Security (ex-McAfee)
- Client Division of Graphics
- Workstation (low end Xeon or HEDT efforts scrapped)
- Parts of Networking (this is an interesting one to think about; less likely, I'll admit)
- Altera (super unlikely, but there are things from Altera they could get rid of)

Regards.
 
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I'm also very doubtful Intel will continue down the discrete path even though I think it would be extremely beneficial for the market and another revenue source for Intel. There's two things that I think could keep them in the game:

1) Strix Halo is an absolute anomaly for the PC market. Intel cannot just ignore it and hope for the best as it has the opportunity to shift more revenue to the CPU manufacturer. With the amount of potential there everything midrange and below could now have integrated graphics. The only company losing out here would realistically be nvidia.

Intel making a competitor for Strix Halo would require complex enough engineering they'd basically be making discrete GPUs.

2) If the GPU engineers have nailed all the time lines for Celestial and it's ready so cards could ship 2H next year.

-Fran- said:
Only the iGPUs which use improved Alchemist cores (as I understand it) and maybe Battlemage will see the light of day as an iGPU as well.
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LNL uses Battlemage and launches in a month so it stands to reason that PTL will likely also use Battlemage. ARL does use the same cut down Alchemist GPU tile as MTL unless something has changed.
 
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Kondamin said:
The design of a box that holds a cpu is also done by an engineer and not just a designer
A giant company like intel has loads of things that are not involved with their core business that involve R&D.

So intel trimming some fat doesn’t mean they will no longer have the manpower to develop new chips, maybe the box won’t be as fancy anymore but practically no one cares about those
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I wonder just how much "fat" people think Intel has. If this were their first round of layoffs in a while, then sure. However, as noted, they've had a big round of layoffs already, this year, not to mention last year. We've also heard of many projects being cancelled and a few parts of the company being sold off.

These are just some of the layoffs we know about, in the past 2 years:

As outsiders, I think it's hard for us to know if they have more excess that can be trimmed. However, that's not to say there's no evidence for us to consider. If they were executing almost flawlessly, then I might buy into the notion that they could probably be slimmed down, a bit. As it is, I wonder just how many of these recent, high-profile failures were due to not having enough of the right people, in the right places:
  • Intel fined $300M for Aurora supercomputer delays, due to Ponte Vecchio GPU (2021)
  • Sapphire Rapids delayed by over 1 year, due to chip bugs (2022)
  • ARC Alchemist dGPU launches late, with buggy, unoptimized drivers (2022)
  • Raptor Lake oxidation problems, during fabrication (2022)
  • Meteor Lake desktop CPU cancelled (2023)
  • Raptor Lake degradation fiasco (2023-2024)
  • Meteor Lake production problems (2024)
  • Lunar Lake fabbed entirely on TSMC 3nm, not Intel 3 node (2024)

How many of those problems at least could've been flagged sooner, just by having more test engineers? Or maybe caught during development, by having more design engineers? The way I see it, Intel's biggest problems are with execution. If they were firing on all cylinders, the R&D costs surely wouldn't be a problem.

But, go ahead and tell yourself they have plenty of fat to trim. Honestly, it seems like some people just believe whatever they want.
 
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-Fran- said:
The consumer side of the GPUs (as standalone products) as MLiD prophetisized a long while back, has been in the chopping block for ages. The proof is that there's no Battlemage announced to anyone. Not even OEMs or Distribution Channels (we would have had leaks about it at least).
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When would you expect it to be "announced to anyone"? The wheels seemed to be in motion, at least as recently as 1 months ago.

-Fran- said:
- Altera (super unlikely, but there are things from Altera they could get rid of)
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Didn't you hear?
 
bit_user said:
When would you expect it to be "announced to anyone"? The wheels seemed to be in motion, at least as recently as 1 months ago.
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Didn't you hear?
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Ah, I did forget about that Battlemage leak/rumour. It was also fairly recent, so maybe my brain scrapped the information, ha.

It's good to see there's at least a bit of news, although hardly any confirmation of when.

And Altera is a weird one, yes. I know they spun off Altera, but they still hold the ownership, even if they allow it to operate as a standalone entity/company. They can still cut it off (sell it) and get some influx of cash, but that would be a really dumb move. Still, sometimes desperation make the bean counters make stupid decisions.

Regards.
 
-Fran- said:
And Altera is a weird one, yes. I know they spun off Altera, but they still hold the ownership, even if they allow it to operate as a standalone entity/company. They can still cut it off (sell it) and get some influx of cash, but that would be a really dumb move. Still, sometimes desperation make the bean counters make stupid decisions.
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They're preparing for another public offering. I guess this is just an intermediate phase, so it can establish its own financials and show that it's operating independently?
 
bit_user said:
I wonder just how much "fat" people think Intel has. If this were their first round of layoffs in a while, then sure. However, as noted, they've had a big round of layoffs already, this year, not to mention last year. We've also heard of many projects being cancelled and a few parts of the company being sold off.

These are just some of the layoffs we know about, in the past 2 years:
........

But, go ahead and tell yourself they have plenty of fat to trim. Honestly, it seems like some people just believe whatever they want.
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Looking through the articles you linked, the total number of employees keeps staying at a surprisingly stable level around 120k-130k. The Verge has an article mentioning current headcounts and some trends from the past year.
Intel previously had a big round of layoffs in October 2022, when it also announced it would cut between $8 billion and $10 billion in costs every year through 2025. But the company didn’t shrink all that much as a result. While headcount dipped roughly 5 percent in 2023 (from 131,900 employees to 124,800 employees), Intel hired its way back to 130,700 employees as of March 30th, 2024, its financial records show.
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I can't figure out what they're doing with these layoffs. Are they just reorganizing manpower? Trying to reduce salaries? Look good to shareholders? Is this 15% layoff actually going to stick or will they go on another hiring spree is six months as they try to plug the holes they created?
 
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bit_user said:
They're preparing for another public offering. I guess this is just an intermediate phase, so it can establish its own financials and show that it's operating independently?
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​
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Ah, good finding as I didn't know Pat also said that.

Thing is, look at Altera's performance as well. How can Pat expect a positive balance on the sheets with the performance on decline? This is to say, an IPO of it is a good idea, as long as the market actually sees good numbers and projections, otherwise it'll flop shortly after the IPO and be shorted to oblivion, making whatever left-over shares on Intel's hands worthless.

I'm not an economist, but I don't think I'm far off the mark there.

Regards.
 
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Flemkopf said:
I can't figure out what they're doing with these layoffs. Are they just reorganizing manpower? Trying to reduce salaries? Look good to shareholders? Is this 15% layoff actually going to stick or will they go on another hiring spree is six months as they try to plug the holes they created?
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I wonder how much of that subsequent hiring was trying catch up in the AI race that suddenly started heating up. I'm sure not all of it was, but probably some.
 
umeng2002_2 said:
I'm always shocked how executives think firing thousands of employees magically makes a company able to make better products.
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It's all about stock for them. Since they mostly get paid in stock.
What is shocking is "capitalism" as in USA's version.. there is really not trickle down, and CEOs sure as hell do not pull themselves with their bootstraps as they nicely get away by their mistakes in management by firing other people.
 
If I were Warren Buffet, I'd be ordering some Omaha Steaks and looking at buying some Intel stock right now.

Just to be clear, I'm not Warren Buffet, but I do like Omaha Steaks.
 
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