Thread regarding Intel Corp. layoffs

Intel will be ahead of TSMC with 18A is wishful thinking... Intel is saying what they are thinking of is better then what TSMC has. Bloviating like only Intel can do.

To continue the comment from before, AMD was first to effectively use chiplets to dominate servers.

Intel, even with their “advanced” packaging is way behind AMD and won’t catch them for many years — if ever.

Intel designs are just not as good as AMD.
Apple beats just about everyone. Good thing they don’t run windows or sell to the server market.

Intel prodco cannot compete with AMD on equal footing.

AMD is using TSMC N4P for strict point (laptop) whereas Intel is on the more expensive N3E.

Zen5 desktop is on N4X vs arrow lake N3E and it pretty much destroys it.

Intel is not competitive at all in any dimension. With the brain drain, low pay, bad culture etc… it’s pretty much in a death spiral.

Intel is stepping ahead of TSMC for a bit with 18a and packaging, and that is what is attracting the current level of Foundry interest, by internal and external customers.

ProdCo was held down by the prior reliance on Foundry and once that was removed, the products were better able to compete, with AMD at least. They are also removing legacy support in the architecture, which does not get much press but helps improve x86 performance.

The current effort has been to get competitive, or risk going the way of Global Foundries. Now they have to at least maintain parity if not the occasional chance to leap frog, and the stark difference in R&D spending may yet pay off in some fashion.

But TD needs a good scrubbing. R&D is far too high and they need someone able to make choices other than 'all of the above'.

I think the intent of what PG has been doing is to get competitive enough to at least have the option of spinning off potentially the entire company, and there is clearly at least another year or two of that effort to be done.

If new efforts such as AI produce a smash hit then that delays the need to spin out ProdCo divisions and Foundry. PG and the board have been working to create options, to maximize shareholder value regardless of the ultimate outcome.

If it is more of the same, along with all those ARM vendors taking major share from PC and Datacenter, then x86 vendors will be forced to consolidate. That could lead to a RISC-V division and the next big thing for products. Majority interest in Foundry may be retained regardless.

To be clear, INTEL can survive.... as a fabless company.
It makes no sense to buy wafers from TSMC and develop your own process technology.
The problem however is the tens of thousands of LTD headcount which would be made redundant by this move. TSMC does cutting edge semi research only in Taiwan.

That is where I suspect the cuts going into 2026 will be coming from.

Catching up implies the competition will slow down, which will never happen. Intel was the one that slowed down by not building new factories for 20 years, it did it to itself. It has nothing to do with the workers, they don't control the factory build schedule.

No fab can survive long without customers. Shareholders probably do not want to wait for another year. 4Y5N already fails long way ago. Should any one be responsible?

You can't have excess 30,000 heads and burn $1B in cash per quarter and survive very long.

It's fine to swing for the fence, but if you get it wrong you take the entire company and all its workers down in a very short amount of time.

Would have been much smarter to scale back the operation, focus on core x86 and prepare the company for sale when the new CEO took over. Excess hiring and breaking ground on multiple fabs that will never be used was the death nail. The hubris in thinking you could compete against TSMC when you were already behind by 5 years was monumental. You should have done the math and realized you'd burn through all the cash long before you would be competitive. What a sad spiral.

Intel is Intel. We did this to ourselves. The fact that we were so arrogant for so long has finally caught up to us. It’s karma. Our bullsh-tting for last decade is finally exposed to the larger world. It su-ks that some many careers will be ruined by this. Ones that truly didn’t deserve it but can never fully recover and get back on track due their association with Intel

CCG and DCAI have some great products, why is no one buying that silicon manufactured by TSMC?

Intel has a product problem, its taking too long to admit it.

Pat made a bold move four years ago and it does not pan out. The adaptation to the reality is too slow and even US government hesitates to bet on it. The winter will be long for it.

Those setbacks are not new.
However as Intel had deep cash reserves , it could sustain for a long time.
The problem today is that those reserves have been depleted for 5N4Y and new fabs
This is the core of the existential issue facing Intel today and worse we apparently are so behind that we do not qualify for CHIPS act money .
We cannot recover our investment thus the deep cuts .
However no matter how you cut , it does not change the fundamentals that it is taking far too long to recover our investments .

That is why it looks like a death spiral which reminds me of many of the old IEDMs .

How did Intel fail? First, it was slowly and then suddenly all at once... where IFS was the accelerant that torched what remained

Gross margins in the tank, forced to rely on TSMC... negative operating cash flow, weak demand and all new innovative products shut down. This business is NOT doing better then expected by any meaning measure.