To set the stage: I’ve heard the recent news about layoffs with Intel. Before that I read from their new CEO “On training, I think it is too late for us”. Lastly there has been some offhand comments (from LTT) that they’re preparing to sell the company.

Yet while I have no doubt that they are behind; their revenue is about 55 billion since 2023, down from the high of 78-80ish Billion during the pandemic, but about the same as the plateau leading up to the pandemic 2015-2019.

Maybe i’m naive about the way businesses work; but if your still profitable, and you know you need to “catch up” why lay off people and close sites? Maybe that works for a consumer goods company; if your overhead is too high and your not making a profit: slim down.

However for a company where RND is really where the value is, like Intel, it just doesn’t seem to make sense; your not going to get better designs and processes by reducing your experienced staff and letting them go work for the competition. Maybe some restructuring, (in the engineering sense not the euphemism for layoffs).

  • socsa@piefed.socialEnglish
    23·
    18 hours ago

    Semiconductor fab is an industry which takes years and tons of cash to stand up a new product line, so a failure can really set you back a ton. Intel has had a series of false starts and outright failures competing with the entire industry. They can’t match TSMC on fabs, they can’t match AMD on x86 cpus, they got stomped by ARM in portables/edge, and they can’t seem to make a dent in the GPU market. The only place where they have a small market lead is in data center cpus, but they are at serious risk of falling behind that curve if AMD wants to move to a smaller node, or if server grade ARM finally takes off.

    Intel got rich on vertically integration and now they are struggling on both the fab and the IP side, which has really broken their traditional business model.