[3/14/25 Market Memo] Macro, Mobile, Markets, and Mercy for Intel

Beware the week leading up to the Ides of March...

Mar 15, 2025

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Holy crap so much crazy shit happened this week. I have been extremely busy with real-life things. Finally have some free time.

Several disjoint topics to cover today…

Widely viewed as the most bloated semiconductor company in existence.
- Makes Qualcomm look efficient by comparison.
- 5x team size…? Try 30x. I am not kidding.
Hiring managers are actively discriminating against current Intel employees.
- Logic is that if someone is still there, they either part of the problem or too incompetent to get employment elsewhere.
- Multiple hiring managers have told me the quality of candidates from Intel is remarkably low.

I have been privately lobbying every institutional investor I know that the entire management chain (Director and above) at Intel Advanced Packaging department needs to be fired.

No severances. No mercy. National security issue.

Thankfully, LBT is going to make the changes needed.

Another thought is the idiotic super-cope on Flacon Shores and Cougar Shors or whatever the next gen vaporware AI chip is called.

DO NOT WASTE MONEY TAPING OUT FALCON SHORES.

FIRE EVERYONE.

CUT THE ENTIRE dGPU DEPARTMENT.

It is so batshit insane that Intel still thinks they can somehow compete with Nvidia, AMD, and ALL OF THE CUSTOM HYPERSCALER ASIC.

Falcon Shores test chip into a “rack-scale” competitive solution in what… 2028?

The company is on the brink of death.

Hard decisions need to be made.

Cutting the entire dGPU division (gaming, datacenter) is not one of the hard decisions. It is the easiest.

Foundry will survive if CapEx is slashed and 18A is placed on life support for the next 12-18 months.

The PDK is bad. I am tired of fighting Intel shills on Twitter.

No, the mythical 1.0.1 PDK update did not magically fix things.

18A will be a good node… in 12-18 months. There are problems that need to be solved and the smart people at Intel Process Tech are working on it. They need time.

Delusionally screeching that 18A is fine in its current state does not help anyone.

Building trust starts by not spouting bullshit in public when every single person who has seen the PDK knows exactly what is going on.

From an engineering perspective, 18A-P (whatever they call the fixed version of 18A) can easily be superior to TSMC N3P because of backside power delivery.

From an economic perspective, 18A-P can easily be superior to TSMC N2 given the crazy wafer price rumors going around.

I am long the stock. We are on the same side, Intel shill friends.

But building trust is critical if we want IFS to become a real competitor to TSMC in the FOUNDRY ECOSYSTEM.

Honest communication builds trust.

Those on the inside at Intel need to get the memo or face Lip-Bu Tan’s righteous flamethrower.

If I see one more idiotic take about backside-power delivery based on bullshit IEDM papers I am going to lose it.

The real world is much more complicated than the curated toy crap companies show at conferences. 18A in its current state is not anywhere close to better than TSMC N3.

Share?

Peter W.

Mar 19

Well, I disagree on the "cutting the GPU.. entirely" part. Here is why:

If the GPU division is definitely bleeding red ink, then yes, amputate ASAP. But, we don't know. They might actually generate positive cash flow.

Battlemage has actually gotten a good reception and uptake. And, their GPUs are produced entirely fabless. So, in many ways, it should be reasonably straightforward for Intel to figure out if the GPU division is currently (!) a drag or a plus for the bottom line. And then, there's this: You can't be in the Notebook/2-in-1 SoC space without a decent iGPU. Not anymore. Object lesson here was Qualcomm's Snapdragon SoC. One major reason for poor reception in the market was (is) the very underwhelming GPU performance. Which was a letdown, as many of us expected their Adreno prowess from their smartphone SoCs to carry over to their notebook SoC - it didn't.

So, you need a decent iGPU with good software support to succeed in the notebook space. Which is a lot more straightforward if that iGPU is derived from a dGPU based on the same architecture. Xe and Xe2 were and are successful as iGPUs. To keep that going, Intel will need a capable GPU team, even if they decide today to exit the dGPU business entirely.

The need to have good iGPU performance in Mobile SoCs will IMHO be even bigger once the first Mediatek/Nvidia SoCs hit that market. Unlike Qualcomm's Snapdragon, that collaboration's SoC will have a capable GPU, with great firmware and driver support from the start.

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