Intel planning for thousands of job cuts, internal sources say

[daxzy]

Today you can get a tiny 4cyl that produces 300 horsepower and can get 35 mpg on the highway. 10 years ago it was unfathomable. But billions and billions of R&D plus government regulations sure has a way of sparking innovation.

What vehicle has 300 HP and gets 35 mpg highway?


Also, I think a lot of the reason we're seeing decline in new PC sales is that old PC's are perfectly fine; second hand sales (does anyone track them?) are growing quite a bit. A midrange and above SandyBridge era system from 8 years ago (with an SSD) is perfectly fine for casual use.

The trend is that there is a market schism. We have premium and value, with mainstream dying out. Either people want a cheap throw-away (growth here) or something stylish and/or powerful (even more growth here). That's why we see ASP's of cpu's going up, despite their volume going down (the PC group revenue actually increased 2% YoY for Q1-2016 despite the volume decrease).

Personally, I see the consumer CPU line-up in general as a huge convulated mess. We have Atom x3/5/7, Celeron/Pentium (which are Atom for mobile/desktop or Core for desktop), Core m3/5/7 series, and Core i3/5/7 series. They just need to axe Celeron/Pentium altogether.

 

[cytg111]

I know this is argument is getting old, non the less, I firmly believe (give it 90%) that VR and AR is gonna respark the perfomance sector. The headsets is bound to go wireless and the latency involved makes it impossible to offset the compute to centralized servers. We are all gonna need that power house in-the-house, to drive our future AR / VR needs.
And AR/VR needs ooompf. Big Ooompf.

 

[daxzy]

I know this is argument is getting old, non the less, I firmly believe (give it 90%) that VR and AR is gonna respark the perfomance sector. The headsets is bound to go wireless and the latency involved makes it impossible to offset the compute to centralized servers. We are all gonna need that power house in-the-house, to drive our future AR / VR needs.
And AR/VR needs ooompf. Big Ooompf.

The only company taking the AR route that I know of is Microsoft. And their Hololens purportedly an Atom based solution (it has to run off battery, so putting Core products in their doesn't make sense). Most of the calculations is supposedly down by their "HPU".

VR could definitely boost it. But the Occulus launch didn't really live up to its hype. Maybe a bit further down the road.

 

[ShintaiDK]

Qualcomm:

-19% chip volume shipment.
-12% licensing revenue.
-25% equipment and services revenue.

 

[ShintaiDK]

Um, no. Intel has been seeing record Core mix quarter after quarter. People don't buy PCs as often, but when they do, they are tending less and less to buy cheap crap.

Exactly. More quality, less quantity. We see the same with GPUs.

 

[imported_ats]

So let me get this straight -- a car that can actually drive itself like the Tesla is a small change? A car powered by a hydrogen fuel cell is a small change? We've seen massive changes within the last 5 years -- that may make gasoline and drivers themselves obsolete in the very near future.

Cars driving themselves? 10+ years old.
Hydrogen fuel cell cars? 10+ years old.

None of this is new. The only thing that has changed is the cost of it, mostly driven by: CPUs!

 

[imported_ats]

By keeping the same frequency and increasing the core count you get a linearly scaling device, this way a 100W DT CPU will have 20x the throughput of a 5W phone/tablet CPU, the resulting perfs ratio being more than one order of magnitude would make sure that a lots of apps would be out of reach for phablets, and hence would keep the PC its past relevancy.

Oh BS! You almost NEVER get linear scaling. You are lucky to generally get sub-par sub-linear scaling. You might want to do some research on Amdahl's Law.

 

[ShintaiDK]

Oh BS! You almost NEVER get linear scaling. You are lucky to generally get sub-par sub-linear scaling. You might want to do some research on Amdahl's Law.

He is only used to benchmark the niche selection of applications with 90%+ scaling due to FX CPUs

 

[USER8000]

Um, no. Intel has been seeing record Core mix quarter after quarter. People don't buy PCs as often, but when they do, they are tending less and less to buy cheap crap.

Which also means they will be keeping their PCs even longer,meaning Intel will get even less sales over a period from that consumer,since a more expensive CPU will last longer than the cheaper one.

People also forget that a PC which can run Windows Vista reasonably well can run Windows 10 reasonably well,meaning one of the main reasons people have upgraded in the past is not there anymore.

 

[Dresdenboy]

Cars driving themselves? 10+ years old.
Hydrogen fuel cell cars? 10+ years old.

None of this is new. The only thing that has changed is the cost of it, mostly driven by: CPUs!

Not new, but this is mostly about robustness, not some fancy research results. Developing this logic in a robust way with limited hardware, and with testing thousands of possible scenarios to work out correctly is a different task. If you test a research prototype or a low volume model, you won't see many incidents, but if you sell millions, the story changes a bit and you'll might even experience some black swan events.

And CPUs are just a small part of it and as they also have to fulfill requirements, they're often not the best ones you can get. MobilEye uses their own ASIC, BTW. Others also have FPGAs, DSPs, etc. Sensors also needed to improve.

 

[teejee]

What vehicle has 300 HP and gets 35 mpg highway?

For example Volvo S60 T6, 306HP, 2.0L engine.

 

[Nothingness]

Qualcomm:

-19% chip volume shipment.
-12% licensing revenue.
-25% equipment and services revenue.

Not everyone is seeing decline it seems:
ARM:
+14% revenue
+15% EPS
+10% ARM-based chips shipped
+24% processor licensing
+15% processor royalty.

Of course, they don't sell chips, but the results show their customers are selling more chips.

 

[ShintaiDK]

But it tells a lot about smartphone shipments since Qualcomm sits on modems.

 

[x26]

The Lady Gaga thing was a stroke of genius, really speaks to Intel as a brand :awe:

Not near as great as "Will-I-Am".

 

[Nothingness]

But it tells a lot about smartphone shipments since Qualcomm sits on modems.

It indeed looks like smartphone shipments declined in Q1 by 1.3% YoY.

 

[PingSpike]

Exactly. More quality, less quantity. We see the same with GPUs.

As near as I can tell GPUs worth buying, that is buying period start at $100 with occasional dips for AR prices down to $85 or so. Anything below that the used market will offer you way more for the same price.

Is that new? I feel like in the past there were worthwhile if not super powerful cards available under $100.

So it doesn't surprise me people are buying higher end because IMO they don't even sell anything worth buying at all low end anymore.

 

[VirtualLarry]

As near as I can tell GPUs worth buying, that is buying period start at $100 with occasional dips for AR prices down to $85 or so. Anything below that the used market will offer you way more for the same price.

Is that new? I feel like in the past there were worthwhile if not super powerful cards available under $100.

So it doesn't surprise me people are buying higher end because IMO they don't even sell anything worth buying at all low end anymore.

I propose a new term for tech items, that are sold and made so cheaply, yet don't provide any good value to the customer, like current sub-$100 GPUs, and Atom CPUs in desktops - "GUTTERBALL TECHNOLOGY".

Yeah, you roll the ball, but it's certainly not a "strike".

And in the end, that piece of tech ends up in the "gutter" somewhere.

Edit: Not to say I'm not a consumer at that level of tech. My Foxconn C-60 based NanoPCs and my overheating MeegoPad T02 compute sticks come to mind.

 

[Systems analyst]

Oh BS! You almost NEVER get linear scaling. You are lucky to generally get sub-par sub-linear scaling. You might want to do some research on Amdahl's Law.

Mellanox provide the TILE-Gx72 Processor, a cache-coherent SoC, based on 72 ARM A53 cores I believe:
http://www.mellanox.com/page/products_dyn?product_family=238

This features ARM cores:
https://careers-mellanox.icims.com/jobs/3075/software-architect---multicore-processors/job

Sandia Labs have tested multi-processor ARM based SoCs:
http://www.mellanox.com/related-docs/solutions/SB_M400.pdf
They say:
"... we were able to fully exploit all the cores on the processor to achieve linear scaling."
James Ang, Sandia National Labs.

The SoC fabric provides the cache coherency across the SoC.

Mellanox merged with EZchip, who had bought Tilera.

Maybe X86D: does not scale linearly, but ARM V8 does.

 

[MiddleOfTheRoad]

Cars driving themselves? 10+ years old.
Hydrogen fuel cell cars? 10+ years old.

None of this is new. The only thing that has changed is the cost of it, mostly driven by: CPUs!

We're not talking about re-runs of Knight Rider, dude.

Prior to the Telsa, there was never a car that could autopilot/drive itself available for purchase to a consumer. So what ever you are smoking -- I'd like some....

But thanks for the laughs.

 

[ShintaiDK]

AMD just posted their worst quarter. 832M$ revenue, 109M$ loss.

Down 19% YoY.

Semicustom revenue is hit hard.

 

[USER8000]

http://blogs.barrons.com/techtrader...rs-20-q1-beats-q2-view-rev-crushes-consensus/

AMD Soars 22%: Q1 Beats, Q2 View Rev Crushes Consensus

Chip maker Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) this afternoon reported Q1 revenue that topped analysts’ expectations, and a net loss that was better by a penny per share, and forecast revenue this quarter well above what the Street has been modeling, sending its shares surging in late trading.
Revenue in the three months ending in March declined to $832 million, yielding a net loss of 12 cents a share.

Analysts had been modeling $818 million and 13 cents a share.

On a GAAP basis, the company lost 14 cents a share.

Gross profit margin in the quarter was 32%, up 2 points from the prior quarter, which the company was primarily a result of “a richer product mix and the mix of revenue between business segments.”

CEO Lisa Su said that “Our strategy to build a strong business foundation and improve financial performance through delivering great products is beginning to show benefits.”

Added Su,
We continued to strengthen the performance of our Computing and Graphics business as our customers and partners show a growing preference for AMD. We are optimistic about our growth prospects in the second half of the year across our businesses based on new product introductions and design wins.

This quarter, the company sees revenue rising by 12% to 18% from last quarter, which would be $932 to $982, well above consensus for $890 million for the June quarter.
AMD shares are up 51 cents, or 20%, at $3.13.

Update: Shares keep adding to gains, now up 58 cents, or 22%, at $3.20.
Update 2: Digging through the release, AMD cites its “computing and graphics” division as having revenue of $460 million, which was down from $532 million a year earlier.
Its “enterprise, embedded and semi-custom” division saw sales fall to $372 million from $498 million a year earlier.

 

[Phynaz]

Qualcomm:

-19% chip volume shipment.
-12% licensing revenue.
-25% equipment and services revenue.

Ouch.

China is putting a bunch of hurt on all over the world.

 

[Adored]

China deal could be worth a lot going forward for AMD.

 

[ShintaiDK]

China deal could be worth a lot going forward for AMD.

Not really. It looks to be a revolver deal unfortunately.

AMD will get 25M$ from it in Q2. Assuming they hit the milestones in technology transfer.

 

[USER8000]

Not really. It looks to be a revolver deal unfortunately.

AMD will get 29M$ from it in Q2. Assuming they hit the milestones in technology transfer.

Supposedly at least $300 million:

http://www.wsj.com/articles/amd-to-license-chip-technology-to-china-chip-venture-1461269701

Under the deal, AMD said it had licensed x86 chip technology to a new venture it is forming with Tianjin Haiguang Advanced Technology Investment Co., which will use the technology to develop chips for server systems to be sold only in China. In exchange, AMD said it expects to receive $293 million in licensing fees plus royalties on sales of any chips developed by the venture.