Discussion Intel's past, present and future

[DrMrLordX]

MEDS

Lame, it's already annoying when @adroc_thurston does this.

or better, open a book

Uh huh.

 

[igor_kavinski]

Lame, it's already annoying when @adroc_thurston does this.

Meditations. Lots and lots of meditations

 

[coercitiv]

saw the link to former ceo craig 10 point plan and wrote this before reading it, just read it, almost 100% agree

You agree with the part of keeping Intel in one piece while infusing it with $40B?

We can't blame capitalism for Intel's failures.

They probably cumulatively spent more than $40B on share buybacks. Capitalism as we experience it today is seriously broken, but I 100% agree this is not the time and place to discuss such a topic.

Hope you get well soon 💐

There's no need for this, you can agree to disagree and move on.

 

[igor_kavinski]

I'm genuinely sorry for every non-billionaire human in this planet who thinks capitalism good.....

It only works as long as a company takes its social responsibility seriously. The moment it stops caring about the workers who do the actual work and starts rewarding the sociopath executives for being the worst pricks, capitalism fails. I bet there were thousands of employees at Intel who knew how to make Intel better but they had no say in the matter because the people calling the shots were too arrogant to listen to their subordinates.

 

[Thibsie]

Now if trump doesn't suffer a short term memory loss and forget LBT's history he just learned about, hopefully Intel can get to a good place.

Whatever he does or doesn't it will be thanks to him Intel is Great Again.

/s

 

[DrMrLordX]

They probably cumulatively spent more than $40B on share buybacks.

Intel has a fiduciary responsibility to maximize profits for the shareholders. The only way a stock buyback makes sense in this light is if that $40 billion can't be spent on anything better (the buybacks amounting to looting the till of a failing business). Unless you really believe that Intel had fallen on such hard times that it could not invest its way out of the problems dating back to (arguably) 14nm, they failed as a corporation to meet those fiduciary responsibilities. They make poor capitalists.

Capitalism as we experience it today is seriously broken

*points at AMD* they're doing just fine, despite a few needless stock buybacks of their own.

sociopath executives

Such as Lisa Su?

capitalism fails.

In this case, it is simply Intel that fails. The fact that they wanted money was not the problem. It is a cheap and foolish excuse for poor decision-making and incompetence to blame the failure of a firm such as Intel on some ism or another.

 

[RnR_au]

They probably cumulatively spent more than $40B on share buybacks.

FWIW - Intel has spent $152 billion on stock buybacks since 1990.

 

[511]

Apple has spent nearly Trillion $ in stock buybacks btw new cope

https://twitter.com/x/status/1955054270656680435

 

[NTMBK]

Apple has spent nearly Trillion $ in stock buybacks btw new cope

https://twitter.com/x/status/1955054270656680435

New stock manipulation

 

[fastandfurious6]

[Capitalism] only works as long as a company takes its social responsibility seriously

Yes, and that was and will happen... never.

The biggest "whales" were always unethical and it just becomes worse over time. There is way too much wealth among billionaires to control the entire West and it's exactly what they do.

You agree with the part of keeping Intel in one piece while infusing it with $40B?

Yes, but that's not the point of that article, the point is Fix Intel from Inside including gov subsidies. The article just makes sense

 

[fastandfurious6]

Another comment:

As someone who works at an intel campus can confirm, the company is mostly cooked. 25% layoffs devastated all areas; eliminating 20+ yrs senior techs the buyout was too good, can't blame them. Attrition + the 2nd round of layoffs gutted areas so hard they just kept bleeding people, truly some areas are just running on life support; machines can't get fixed cause there's no one there etc. Ain't looking so good.

I have the impression that all those global mass-layoffs in the last years are strongly powered by AI. They make no sense and are gutting real company knowledge and skills without possible replacement.

As known, majority of HR and Corporate Management types of people are mostly braindead and literally follow "what everyone does". Within those circles, there must have been some kind of viral insider "secret sauce" How To Save X Millions In Your Company With Ethical Layoffs Powered By AI or similar, describing a series of prompts and 'methodology' to doing that, all including the same process everyone's talking about:

- Layoffs chosen at random, no sense
- Preplanning to announce "below average" performance to avoid severance
- Sudden scheduled calls with manager and HR
- The calls are one-way only, literally are 1-5 mins just announcing the decision, no discussion allowed
- Sometimes there's no calls at all

etc... it's extremely dystopian and only executed because HR and Corporate Management types are literally both braindead and soul-less

They are literally the face of capitalism. When someone thinks "capitalism" this is the type of person they should think about, not "capitalism enabled roaring success of apple" Lmao

 

[igor_kavinski]

it's extremely dystopian and only executed because HR and Corporate Management types are literally both braindead and soul-less

Most of the times they have zero idea of what a worker is actually doing and how much education/training and years of experience was required to get the worker to even start working. That's why these idiots will fire someone important, thinking they can find a cheaper replacement and then one of the following usually happens:

1) New worker is unable to cope with the amount of work or ill-equipped to do it at the same level as previous worker.

2) New worker gets fired and another new worker is hired. This may happen a number of times until they have the brilliant idea that maybe one worker isn't enough and so hire two and at this point, the savings are gone from firing the previous worker.

3) In rare cases, the original worker will be hired back. If that worker is smart, HR/management will need to sweeten the deal and the original intent of saving some money goes out the window and they move onto the next victim of their stupidity.

 

[511]

Don't forget HR is the position who does the least work in a company

 

[igor_kavinski]

Don't forget HR is the position who does the least work in a company

My previous managing director had a good handle on what each job entailed. He figured that HR duties were so minimal and could be done in a few hours per day so just had some existing staff do it on a rotation basis. The new management created a really expensive HR department, paying them handsome salaries and they are enjoying their lives and having "team sessions" in the conference room with pizza parties to brainstorm how to do their "difficult" job of data entry in Excel sheets. Such pathetic but really well paid losers.

 

[511]

My previous managing director had a good handle on what each job entailed. He figured that HR duties were so minimal and could be done in a few hours per day so just had some existing staff do it on a rotation basis. The new management created a really expensive HR department, paying them handsome salaries and they are enjoying their lives and having "team sessions" in the conference room with pizza parties to brainstorm how to do their "difficult" job of data entry in Excel sheets. Such pathetic but really well paid losers.

agreed there only job is to hire people and do stuff in a company with 10s of thousands of employees you need some HR but very less not so much

 

[whoshere]

Apple and NVIDIA Eye Intel's 14A Node for Trial Production

Intel's leadership has placed the fate of its 14A process on confirmed commitments, following CEO Lip-Bu Tan's statement that future spending will require confirmed external orders. Speaking on a recent earnings call, Tan signaled a departure from the previous build-first mindset and warned that...

www.techpowerup.com

 

[511]

faster and cheaper microprocessors that put them into OUR hands

this is totally thanks to one dude motivating the industry not capitalism

 

[OneEng2]

There's a push for TSMC to get involved, and now Barrett is encouraging the Feds to force American semiconductor firms into an Intel-centric consortium (making it Intel-centric is probably the worst part about this plan).

Intel's biggest weakness is their lack of infrastructure and process to handle external customers with their foundry. Also, their costs are intertwined with the design portion of the company and are currently being used as the bad guy for spending vs. looking at the foundry as an independent company providing a service.

Can we not play the "capitalism bad" card in here? Capitalism has produced roaring successes like Apple, AMD, TSMC, etc. We can't blame capitalism for Intel's failures.

I would argue that pure capitalism is bad. In the US we have socialized capitalism. The amount of socialization has decreased precipitously over the last 50 years.

The logical outcome of pure capitalism is monopoly. I don't think anyone would argue for that.

On the flip side, pure socialism is bad as well. A good balance is needed for a prolonged healthy economy and society IMO.

Right now, I think a little more socialism would be very helpful with respect to IFS.

 

[Saylick]

Apple and NVIDIA Eye Intel's 14A Node for Trial Production

Intel's leadership has placed the fate of its 14A process on confirmed commitments, following CEO Lip-Bu Tan's statement that future spending will require confirmed external orders. Speaking on a recent earnings call, Tan signaled a departure from the previous build-first mindset and warned that...

www.techpowerup.com

Any leading fabless design firm should be evaluating every cutting edge node because that's just called doing your due diligence. It doesn't automatically mean Apple/Nvidia will commit.

 

[jpiniero]

Right now, I think a little more socialism would be very helpful with respect to IFS.

If they were going to spend any money (and were serious about getting results) I would rather them buy another fab from TSMC or maybe give a bit to GloFo.

 

[511]

If they were going to spend any money (and were serious about getting results) I would rather them buy another fab from TSMC or maybe give a bit to GloFo.

China won't allow this they didn't allow buying Tower Semi it would have been a boon they posses the core skill of how to be a fab.

 

[DrMrLordX]

Right now, I think a little more socialism would be very helpful with respect to IFS.

Again, let's look at Samsung and (arguably) SMIC. Handing Intel free Federal dollars (or similar) isn't going to be some panacea. Intel suffers from internal organizational problems, not from monopolism or whatever other societal bugaboo that people imagine has harmed poor Intel. TSMC is rapidly approaching global monopoly status in leading-edge foundries and is doing very well from a technical merit PoV. Their nodes are good, and their cadence is mostly solid. That doesn't mean that monopoly is a desirable outcome, but it DOES mean that being a monopoly hasn't (yet) turned TSMC into a failed company.

If all the Feds do is take over Intel, they'll be on the hook to run a dysfunctional company. No one - and I mean NO ONE - in Congress or working with Congress knows how to fix Intel's problems. It would be a massive waste of tax dollars, which is exactly what Barrett seems to want for Intel.

One option is to let Intel choke and die so that another company can rise to replace it. The best argument against that is that no company may attempt to replace Intel, since it's easier to let a foreign monopoly take their place (as far as silicon foundry is concerned; from a design perspective, there are plenty of players ready to replace Intel). From a strategic perspective, that's bad. Unfortunately, the Feds have no idea what they're doing. They need help from people who might know what they're doing. Which is people in what's left of the American semiconductor business that aren't currently affiliated with Intel.

Yes, eventually, the levers of government will be used to "fix" the Intel problem, though it could go very badly for everyone.

this is totally thanks to one dude motivating the industry

What? No!

@jpiniero

If GF had access to Intel's IP, they could do some work. Just sayin.

 

[511]

What? No!

Really the semi industry and everything would be like this without Moore's Law ?

 

[511]

If all the Feds do is take over Intel, they'll be on the hook to run a dysfunctional company. No one - and I mean NO ONE - in Congress or working with Congress knows how to fix Intel's problems. It would be a massive waste of tax dollars, which is exactly what Barrett seems to want for Intel.

He doesn't want the tax dollars he wants funding from customers and they can make Intel a better foundry by actually berating them you are doing this wrong and all that. He wants government to force the companies to do this $40 Billion is too much though.

Edit: It's my interpretation
Set the stage -> force the companies In one way or another
Customer can give -> they can give Intel feedback and funding
Customer get -> second sourcing and some leverage over TSMC
Government get -> American Semi Manufacturing and R&,D

 

[DrMrLordX]

Really the semi industry and everything would be like this without Moore's Law ?

YES

He doesn't want the tax dollars he wants funding from customers and they can make Intel a better foundry by actually berating them you are doing this wrong and all that. He wants government to force the companies to do this $40 Billion si too much though.

Same difference, what exactly do you think "funding from customers" means if customers have no incentive to fund a company that currently can't meet their needs? Nobody is going to pay extra money to Intel today in hopes that they can fix 14A or whatever. Not without someone bigger and meaner forcing them to do so.