Intel Corp (INTC)

[Unkwn]

Goldmont isn't central to Intel's business. How well it is designed has very little to do with the fabs. And I really can't see how they are going to lose their process lead in any relevant timescale with the amount they invest into it and their interest in keeping a performance lead.

Compare Intel's CAPEX with that of TSMC or Samsung. Intel isn't investing more into its fabs anymore then they do. Intel still has a lead, but vs. Samsung that has shrunken to about one year. Samsung is investing heavily into new fabs so at 10nm, I suspect Intel's lead to shrink to a few months (full production/yield comparison).

And yes, Goldmont is central to Intel's business. It is the only way to keep the foundries and ARM competition small. Core i won't do it. If they can continue to earn as much money as they do with their ARM based SoCs, they'll be able to invest heavily into designing high end performance cores. They are not going against AMD anymore. They are going against Samsung, Qualcomm, NVIDIA and the likes. Intel is way too slow to compete with them once they are at the same performance level. This won't happen within the next two years, so I think we won't see any negative market reaction due to this until then (in my opinion, share prices are pretty short sighted - only the most current figures really count for a company like Intel). There is some time left to breathe for Intel, but I don't think they will get another shot on this, especially not if they plan to have a lousy tick with Goldmont at 10nm. Goldmont would better be best in class.