Replies to post #149275 on Intel Corp (INTC)

[Andy Grave]

https://static.seekingalpha.com/uploads/2017/8/1062195_15028814230147_rId6.png

Does ANYONE here anticipate Intel to be able to maintain a > 2/1 ASP vs AMD over the next year or so? Even if Intel sees no unit decline, what will the effect of a modest $10-$15 ASP decline be on Intel profits?

[borusa]

Autonomous cars is a tiny slice of embedded control. Embedded
control is a sprawling, highly fragmented, low margin segment
that is the utter crap end of the general purpose MPU market.

Nope, there will be a Plastic BK on the dashboard ..... the halo effect will be like a General Lee statue in Harlem.

[Unkwn]

Hitting it out the f***king park in autonomous cars is mice
nuts compared to the financial hit Intel's high margin PC
business is suffering from slow and uninspired process and
product development and lack of plan to deal with MS's own
foot shooting proclivities. To the extent that AMD can claw
back market share in servers and high end desktops also
reflects Intel's failure under BK to be a paranoid survivor by
always being a step ahead.

That's also what I think. The question is not if Intel gets into some industry consortium but whether Intel is going to make money out of this business. This is where I have doubts. Maybe Intel can leverage some of its FPGA business, through integration with its processor IP, but this is hardly something others can't do by simply cooperating with Xilinx (I bet such developments are already settled up).

In the end, it is embedded business which, in most cases, didn't bring much money to the chip designers. Only the fabs have made good money out of this business, but that's more a volume thing than really a margin thing. Intel could, in theory, benefit from it via its own fabs but the track record we have seen so far wouldn't make me bet on it for a second time. They screwed too much up already. By the way: You still can't buy Stratix 10. That makes it what? A three years slip in schedule? In businesses like graphics cards or mobile SoCs, such missteps kicks you out of business immediately. Let's not hope Intel also screws up Altera's, in the past really well run, business. That would be really sad and a huge loss for Intel shareholders.

Besides: This is exactly what I don't understand about Intel's management: Since they know they are having huge delays manufacturing chips other than their own CPUs in their fabs - why don't they go second source until they have it under control? They can switch to their own fabs as soon as things are working and are economically reasonable. If Intel would have selected external fabs for some of its projects sooner rather than later, like mobile and FPGA, they likely would have been more successful. Puzzles me ...

[mcbob101]

Just thinking about the mantra before K. I believe it was fill all available sockets with Intel MPU? This car thing looks to be a very large market.

I hear ya that it might be chump change now. I'm looking forward at a huge market for delivering custom MPU and storage for all the potential data generated in autos as this plays out. Intel does not need to own it all to move the needle in stock price even as desktop mpu slowly fades away.

I know this is several years away but so was the cell phone movement that was totally missed by intel. All they can do is improve from that miss.
I think AI and Auto applications is the future.