Intel plans layoffs of thousands of employees - October 12, 2022

The U.S. chipmaker appears to be gearing up for cost-cutting measures.

Intel is planning a "significant headcount reduction," according to a Bloomberg report. An official announcement of the cost-cutting measures is to be made along with the next quarterly report on Oct. 27, 2022, anonymous sources told the business magazine. The number of layoffs is expected to be in the thousands. Accordingly, the workforce of some departments such as marketing could be reduced by up to 20 percent.

Intel's revenue declined 22 percent year-over-year in the second quarter of 2022. The company made a loss of 454 million US dollars. This continues a trend that the US chip manufacturer already felt in the first quarter. At that time, sales fell particularly in the client computing division. One reason is the weakening PC market. According to the calculations of various analysts, sales in the second quarter fell by 12 to 15 percent year-on-year. They see fear of a recession as well as continuing difficulties in the supply chains as the cause.

The entire U.S. technology industry reacted to the economic developments of recent months with mass layoffs. Software developer Oracle wants to save one billion US dollars with job cuts, the management of Google and Meta tuned their workforce to hiring freezes. Intel itself last laid off thousands of employees in 2016. At that time, 12,000 jobs were cut, 350 of which were also in Germany.

Source: www.golem.de/news/prozessoren-intel-plant-entlassungen-tausender-mitarbeiter-2210-168886.html

 

Wouldn't be surprised if that meant axing their GPU division by the end of next year. It's going to take a long time for their GPU business to become profitable.

 

Sounds very likely. I would like to see them continue with GPUs because that market really needs more players, but if it's just a monetary black hole for them I would understand if they need to shut that division down.

I don't know much about Intel's GPUs (and GPUs in general), but if I understand it somewhat correctly they are actually quite good. The main problem people seem to be complaining about is the drivers. We all know how frustrating bad drivers can be so that's something that really needs to be fixed if they want to continue developing GPUs. I haven't had a PC with dedicated GPU for the last 5-6 years now so I've not been following the developments in GPUs for a while. However, now that DSP on GPUs is becoming a thing I might have to build a proper PC again!

I really hope that PC market stabilizes soon. The last couple of years of chip shortages and fluctuations in the prices of PC components has not been very enjoyable.

 

You're right and I also hope Intel GPUs stay in business though it seems doubtful. Unfortunately there's another big problem, this time by design: Intel GPUs lose like 25% speed on CPU/mobos that doesn't support PCIe resizable-address-bar. And there's a lot of people with PCs that doesn't support it.

It was first used by AMD with Ryzen Zen3 (5000) along with their Navi2 (6000) GPUs. Smart-whatever they called it. But that was optional and only could boost 5-10% performance.

 

They have had a lot of problems and at least 3 delays. Of those losses a good chunk goes to the GPU department for sure.

And when you're forcing and pushing a product with problems... it's already out but who knows how many of these GPUs pass the quality tests. Maybe they are even losing a bit of money without counting the development stage. Driver issues aside they don't look so bad for the price of a medium-high end GPU compared to nVidia/AMD. But considering what we're talking about who's the brave who buys one right now...

Intel owning his own fabs of "raw material for chips" can be good but also bad. Clearly bad in the last years. Although we should see how AMD and nVidia are doing financially.

Yeah they keep doing that embarrassing marketing. But I think the CPUs will be good enough. I mean, the last gen 12K is quite good.

Don't know. But right now when it comes to the fabs of there's only Intel and TSMC for everyone else: Apple, AMD, nVidia...
Half a year ago everyone thought TSMC was gonna be completely overwhelmed with demand these days. But then the war multiplied the economic recession right after the covid... not even the best experts know.

I hear nVidia is desperate to sell the sudden huge stock of both new and used RTX3000 (thank you mining rings motherfuckers) in the worst possible moment economically.
Also AMD is desperate to sell the new Ryzens 7000 because they require a new mobo/RAM again, in the worst possible moment.
The CPUs are very good despite what some people say, but new RAM and expensive mobos right now... Intel still had luck making their own transition earlier.

 

Last edited: Oct 13, 2022

Intel is suggesting desktop computers are obsolete.
Does that mean musicians are fvcked?

 

Of course they are! Because the alternative explanation is that the computer industry is suggesting that Intel chips are obsolete.

I don't think so. Lots of new towers and laptops use Ryzen these days. Also ARM-based systems like Raspberry Pi and Apple M1-M2 have been growing. Intel were (nearly) the only game in town for CPUs for decades, and they rode that high even many years after the market has finally opened up. IMO many Intel CPU and GPU options are rather good, but they have been gradually succumbing to the competition.

 

Intel has been having issues with efficiency, heat and scale for a decade now. The refusal of Intel to do something about it is why Apple went their own way and at the time Intel was pulling an AVID screaming "do you know who you are talking to, I am the only game in town."

That and their refusal to branch out into small devices and RISC for NTCDs like car infotainment systems and control and instead focus on FPGA and the reason their mainline GPUs never saw the light of day was they were too thirsty and hot.

They are either being smart and using this as a reason to clean house and refocus or they are going to shoot themselves in the dick and fall even further behind AMD, Apple, Qualcomm and Nvidia who have been eating their lunch for years now.

 

it wouldn't be supprising if all these job lay off where in china.

I read an article in the IET news letter magazine on the US goverment only allowing companies that don't make microchips in china to have goverment contracts.

I read it in a magazine and too lazy to re-readit on the web tocheck this is the right article but this might be it?
https://eandt.theiet.org/content/ar...g-looms-as-us-plans-new-china-chip-clampdown/

any way if this law gose through and they want to make computers for the goverment then good by china parts

 

one might think Intel had more money then god, so why wouldn't they have bought up a majority stake of AMD shares by now through some kind of portfolio management company or something like that?

 

the downfall of intel is partly based on current trends for sure and they wernt able to adapt, but this rapid collapse is also the result of an economic model on its way down the drain that nobody is throwing a life-ring to it... i hope i can stretch to at least say that much without getting hammered here. its hard to pretend its no the case