Is Intel's "Process Lead" Somewhat a Sham?

[witeken]

Revolution 11 said he didn't know a single product with BT. I replied that there's a tablet, T100, which is very popular and there are quite some other nice BT tablets too. I didn't mean that BT is crushing the competition, just that there are some nice products and 1 of them is even extremely popular as low-cost tablet+laptop.

BTW, the site I linked to is an independent site for specs and price comparisons that has all products on its site (and has links to all webshops where you can buy it). The 'most popular' ranking is based on page views, not sales.

 

[Exophase]

Revolution 11 said he didn't know a single product with BT. I replied that there's a tablet, T100, which is very popular and there are quite some other nice BT tablets too. I didn't mean that BT is crushing the competition, just that there are some nice products and 1 of them is even extremely popular as low-cost tablet+laptop.

Okay, I wasn't sure if you were responding to the no product statement (which is just bizarre, you could even find a fair number of x86 phones going back if you just want to find a product) or the part about Intel not crushing its competition.

BTW, the site I linked to is an independent site for specs and price comparisons that has all products on its site (and has links to all webshops where you can buy it). The 'most popular' ranking is based on page views, not sales.

Honestly I think that makes it even less relevant..

But yeah, it's not like Silvermont chips aren't being shipped to OEMs at least in the millions, something has to account for those huge contra-revenue figures Intel has reported right?

 

[R0H1T]

But yeah, it's not like Silvermont chips aren't being shipped to OEMs at least in the millions, something has to account for those huge contra-revenue figures Intel has reported right?

Does that mean OEM's don't necessarily have to ship their products with Silvermont inside, I mean they could just accept the chips & the associated contra revenue but need not release a product with it ?

Seriously trying to make a sense of all the ridiculous numbers Intel's been projecting for their mobile division :hmm:

 

[Arachnotronic]

Does that mean OEM's don't necessarily have to ship their products with Silvermont inside, I mean they could just accept the chips & the associated contra revenue but need not release a product with it ?

Seriously trying to make a sense of all the ridiculous numbers Intel's been projecting for their mobile division :hmm:

Do you really think OEMs are going to buy bucketloads of Bay Trails only to not ship them in devices? Man, you must think these OEMs are morons... ;-)

The contra-revenue is per-unit shipped. So if Intel sells 0 processors that require contra-revenue, it will not ship a dime of contra-revenue. In the most recent quarter, the big mobile loss you saw had very little to do with contra-revenue and everything to do with high R&D costs coupled with extremely low sales volume.

 

[R0H1T]

Do you really think OEMs are going to buy bucketloads of Bay Trails only to not ship them in devices? Man, you must think these OEMs are morons... ;-)

The contra-revenue is per-unit shipped. So if Intel sells 0 processors that require contra-revenue, it will not ship a dime of contra-revenue. In the most recent quarter, the big mobile loss you saw had very little to do with contra-revenue and everything to do with high R&D costs coupled with extremely low sales volume.

Yes I get that but I always thought that since the Baytrail based devices weren't flying off the shelves there was this possibility of some of those chips still lying around with the OEM's & that they wouldn't have to return it to Intel, since Intel was mostly interested in counting number of Baytrail chips sold & not necessarily the actual devices being sold to the end user. Not really sure how the manufacturers handle the unsold devices situation hence I raised the question as shipment numbers is not = number of devices sold in the market.

 

[AtenRa]

In the most recent quarter, the big mobile loss you saw had very little to do with contra-revenue and everything to do with high R&D costs coupled with extremely low sales volume.

Sales volume was up, they sold 5 million chips. Contra-revenue was subtracted from the Net-revenue. That is the reason of the lower Net-revenue in the mobile division in Q1 2014, not because of lower sales volume.

 

[witeken]

I just found this, Paul Otellini expects TSMC to fall off Moore's law at 450mm.

In general, every time there has been a wafer size change, in our industry, there has been half as many players on the other side of those transitions, half as many people manufacturing, half as many people designing. Because the scale drives this stuff. So, I think you will likely see the structure of the industry evolve pretty dramatically over the next 4-5 years. It's clear to me that Intel will be viable on the other side of that chasm, it's clear to me that Samsung is very likely to be viable

[...]Fast forward another 2-3 years, and I think it becomes more difficult.

Intel suggesting the other guys are only able to follow because of reverse engineering ():

And then by the time you got to the 80-90s the recipes were pretty common, we all bought the same equipment, Intel might have been early on the transition, but it was pretty much the same. And reverse engineering through destructive analysis was very much possible, You could sort of figure it out. You get to the dimensions that we are at today, and reverse engineering destroys the part in a way that you can't analyze it.

When fabs cost $10 billion, which they will, it takes $20 billion to fill them at 50% margin, who's got that kind of revenue?

Although it seems he made a small mistake: "Trigate? We are on our second generation no one has figured that out, they aren't going to figure that out."

 

[Homeles]

I just found this, Paul Otellini expects TSMC to fall off Moore's law at 450mm.



Intel suggesting the other guys are only able to follow because of reverse engineering ():




Although it seems he made a small mistake: "Trigate? We are on our second generation no one has figured that out, they aren't going to figure that out."

He probably would have been correct, had TSMC's revenue stayed flat, but it didn't. TSMC had a revenue of $19.89 billion FY2013. They've been doing really well as of late. There's a good chance they'll be able to keep on top of things, if they decide they want to keep playing that game.

 

[Exophase]

Intel suggesting the other guys are only able to follow because of reverse engineering ():

What he really said is that there could be a multitude of IDMs a long time ago because of reverse engineering. That doesn't mean he thinks everyone else had to reverse engineer what Intel did. That he even says that you can't really do it anymore (and this was as of 2012) is a pretty clear statement that he doesn't think that's true for the remaining foundries.