Will more funding be needed to keep Intel competitive?
On 1 August 2024, Intel announced financial results for the second quarter of 2024. They weren’t pretty; the company’s stock dropped more than 25 percent as it announced an aggressive plan to cut costs, including layoffs that will impact 15 percent of its entire workforce.
Intel’s current CEO is Pat Gelsinger, he’s an engineer who was the chief architect of the i486.
It’s not just who’s at the top, the issue is that the company has gotten too big. There’s a reason why AMD with such a lower staff count has managed to leapfrog Intel.
I suspect Intel has a broader product range than AMD to justify the headcount, but I’m not sure where the extra resources should go.
Their networking chipsets were gold-standard in the 100M and Gigabit era, but their 2.5G stuff is spotty to the point Realtek is considered legit.
They’ve pulled back from flash, SSDs and Optane.
There must be some other rich product lines that they do and AMD doesn’t
AMD doesn’t have fabs, and contracts that work out to TSMC. Intel has fabs worldwide. That alone makes Intel a much more capital-intensive, labor-intensive business.
AMD just makes the designs and farms out manufacturing. Intel has to make the designs and manufacture the chips themselves.