Intel Corp (INTC)

[DavidA2]

Disclaimer: I no longer own Intel stock. But I like tech. I sold at a wrong time.

According to some articles, investors are "spooked" at less than expected data center revenues. Since its their "diversify from PC" strategy, I can understand that.

Two reasons:
-AMD Naples. I think Skylake-SP(Purley platform) is a wonderful product. They will bring once in a few years opportunity of platform and performance increases. However, they've got 98% or so marketshare. Any semi-decent product from AMD means they'll lose that. Even 5% loss is materially significant.

Based on Ryzen, its slower than Skylake by maybe 15%, 20% at most. But Ryzen will have 32 cores. 28 cores is currently the maximum known cores for Skylake-SP. 32 cores are possible but probably very limited. Naples will be competitive. It has 64 PCI-E lanes per CPU versus 48 for Skylake-SP. 8-channel memory versus 6-channel for Skylake-SP.

It's more than semi-decent. It's very decent. Now I do not believe Naples will do better comparatively than Ryzen, but even 5% loss in share will be felt. I think AMD will capture more of that eventually. 20% is not out of line. Intel's projections of high single digit growth will essentially flatten in the coming years.

-Second reason is waiting. Apple finances show this easily. The quarter before product launch results in reduced earnings because people wait for it. Not only Naples is coming from AMD, Purley platform is going to be here soon.