See price target by some of these analysts. Extreme optimism or extreme pessimism. Take your pick.
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Intel: Bulls Cheer ‘Watershed,’ ‘Mailed Fist’ in 14-Nano; Too Late? Asks Raymond James
After Intel (INTC) yesterday discussed some key forthcoming chips, “Broadwell” for PCs, and a lower-power part for laptop designs that can be thin and light and avoid having a fan to cool them, called “Core-M,” the Street is debating what it means for Intel’s positioning.
The parts are distinguished by using Intel’s chip-making technology for transistors measuring 14 nanometers.
Core-M is expected to arrive in devices by this holiday season, while the higher-power Broadwell parts will come sometime in the first half of next year. VentureBeat’s Dean Takahashi was on the scene covering the press event, and AnandTech’s Jarred Walton offers the site’s usual excellent deep dive into the details.
Drexel Hamilton’s Rick Whittington reiterates a Buy rating on Intel, and a $50 price target, writing that the company is ”Brandishing The 14nm Mailed Fist.”
Intel is “the only logic company still on Moore’s Law improving performance, diminishing cost curve, with others falling further behind,” he writes, noting that “14nm half the die size in XY axis has longer, thinner Z fins, Intel is leading with inherently higher yielding small, low power mobile parts.”
Jefferies & Co.’s Mark Lipacis reiterates a Buy rating and a $45 price target, writing that the unveiling is a “watershed” for the company, “as we believe it is the first process node where Intel will have both a transistor density and cost advantage.”
“We ultimately believe this will lead to share gains in tablets and handsets.”
Aside from just transistor size, what’s important to Intel, notes Lipacis, is the fact that Intel has already been ahead of competitors such as Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing (TSM) in making chips that have 3-D transistors, which it calls “TriGate” and which the industry broadly refers to as “FinFet”:
Intel’s 14nm sees better- than-normal scaling, achieving >2x improvement in perf per watt, compared to the historical 1.6x per gen. In addition to being 1yr ahead in FinFET, Intel expects to have greater transistor density at 14nm (volume now) compared to competitors’ 14/16nmFF (volume in 2015?). Intel was clear in its expectation that greater density translates to a lower cost per transistor relative to competition. Intel’s 2nd-gen tri-gate uses taller and thinner fins, improving drive current (performance), translating to fewer fins per circuit, resulting in better scaling (lower cost) and capacitance reduction (lower power).
Lipacis sees opportunities for Intel to further distance itself using its manufacturing edge:
Having overcome the yield challenges of 14nm 2nd-gen tri-gate using advanced double-patterning techniques, we would not be surprised to hear Intel announce an advancement on III-V materials that further extends its manufacturing lead on future process technologies.
Not everyone is satisfied.
Raymond James’s Hans Mosesmann reiterates an Underperform rating on Intel today, writing that Intel is trying to create a firewall with Core-M against the low-cost parts of competitors using technology from ARM Holdings (ARMH): “Core M, in our view, is Intel’s attempt to create an impregnable barrier for ARM-based players to penetrate platforms above the tablet space. Alternatively, low cost versions of mainstream Core and/or Atom variants (e.g., Bay Trail today) may not be doing the job as hoped or needed.”
But the timing of this is questionable, and Intel is late to market relative to where it should be, thinks Mosesmann:
Much about Core M is not known as test platforms where tech bloggers can play with and benchmark may be months away. This tells us that Intel is cutting it close in terms of timing for the holidays. We also do not know about clock speeds, which would give away a better feel of trade-offs between performance (valued in traditional PC/servers) and efficiency for Broadwell generally. Apples-to-apples mainstream Core Broadwell will hit the market sometime in 1H15, which we view as a year late relative to last year’s Haswell (22nm) launch. What this may do to Intel’s tick-tock product cadence with the upcoming Skylake processor in 2015 will be interesting to watch, but we would say that product positioning and/or transitions are in flux.
Intel shares today are down 16 cents, or half a percent, at $32.86.
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