Intel has always had great "signs" but fell completely apart once the time came for execution.
Which is to say, I'll believe it when I see it. I say that as an Intel fanboi, too.
If Trump/DOGE comes in and slashes Intel funding one way or another, even better.
And then I Googled (to check the spelling of "Gelsinger"), and found this:
https://www.cnbc.com/2024/12/02/intel-ceo-pat-gelsinger-is-o...
https://techcrunch.com/2024/12/02/intel-ceo-pat-gelsinger-re...
The man's retiring.
Hm. Damn.
So who are David Zinsner and Michelle Johnston Holthaus? They seem to be money and product people, not foundry people or architects? I'll need to look more closely, but to my mind this doesn't bode well for the long term.
I see that the stock is up 5%, but I don't trust investors to think long-term enough. Investors are also happy when you Boeing the shit out of a company.
Top 5 in single core performance are Intel chips.
The best Intel core for single-threaded performance, Lion Cove, has an IPC (instructions per clock cycle) about 2% higher than AMD Zen 5.
Currently both cores are made by TSMC and they reach the same clock frequencies, therefore the Intel core is negligibly better in single-thread performance.
Nevertheless, Intel Lion Cove has a much greater area than AMD Zen 5, despite being made with a superior TSMC process. Because of this, Lion Cove is inefficient for multi-threaded performance (because in the same area more smaller cores could be crammed), so Intel is forced to use it in hybrid configurations with Skymont cores, in order to achieve an acceptable multithreaded performance.
The worst is however that Intel is not able to use its up-to-date cores in server CPUs, because they are too slow at design/validation. Their new server CPUs, Sierra Forest and Granite Rapids, use obsolete CPU cores that are not competitive with AMD Zen 5, instead of using the best Intel cores.
Unlike Intel, where 1 year or more of delay between using a core in consumer CPUs and using it in server CPUs is normal, at AMD they launch the corresponding server CPUs only a few months after launching consumer CPUs.
The biggest compute demands right now are all about GPU power, especially with the AI boom. And Intel... well, take a look at those DirectCompute benchmarks. You'll need to scroll past 100+ other cards before you even see them listed (https://www.videocardbenchmark.net/directCompute.html). They make great CPUs, no doubt, but they've got some serious catching up to do in the GPU space if they want to stay relevant in today's parallel processing world.
And in cases where I don't personally know, one of my heuristics for who's more likely on the right side of a question is who's contributing to my understanding, who's setting context, who's comparing alternatives, who seems to be pointing out specific details I didn't know about. Those are the positive indicators. On the not so good side are things that I would call reflexes, which is to say things that are not expressing ideas but are more like muscular reflexes that don't react to or build on the information of the more constructive comments.
While I'm not thrilled with Intel over the past few years, the context of their capabilities to manufacture chips, the specifics about next gen 1.8nm chips, and the way this is complementary to R&D which is happening simultaneously, those allow me to hold two things in my brain at the same time, namely that Intel has made poor strategic decisions lately and also that they nevertheless are stewards of profoundly important and valuable chip design and manufacturing capabilities.
The only players in that market are Samsung, TSMC, and Intel. It'd be crazy to let one of the three global EUV lithography manufacturers disappear because their R&D costs have lowered net revenue temporarily.
People act like Intel has nothing to offer, when they're one of a low single-digits number of companies who are even capable of making modern microchips. Even China won't likely crack EUV for the next 5 years. Throwing all of the money on pure R&D would be madness. And the chips act is investing in a major R&D facility in upstate NY for next gen stuff anyway.
Scrapping their last gen process to focus on 1.8nm was a long term play, and all signs point out to it working out well.
Not to mention, it'll be nice to have at least this one US company making modern microchips, in case the many fabless US microchip companies ever need to switch to domestic production, due to economic or geopolitical reasons that are clearly on the short term horizon.