Not great. Still losing money. Q2 forecast pretty bad. Don’t have time to post more right now, others can dig into the numbers. I’ll post more specifics later if others haven’t done so by then.
I tried reading that, but its so filled with marking BS, I have no idea how they are really doing. I can't believe ANYTHING marketing tells me.Not great. Still losing money. Q2 forecast pretty bad. Don’t have time to post more right now, others can dig into the numbers. I’ll post more specifics later if others haven’t done so by then.
Source"I’ve been surprised to learn that, in recent years, the most important KPI for many managers at Intel has been the size of their teams. Going forward, this will not be the case." - Lip-Bu Tan
Were any of the fans that used to produce raptor been upgraded to produce newer stuff? Could also be a source...My theory is that there were delays in Arrow Lake/Meteor lake that are causing greater demand for Raptor Lake during the period that it's supposed to be winding down as they have other, secondary market products scheduled for the same node that are starting to consume water starts.
Quite a few possibly (bad) reasons written in no particular order:Does anybody have a good theory (or even a bad theory) why Intel would be capacity constrained on Raptor Lake?
Last but not least, Intel does weird things. The company that stopped giving fruit and coffee to employees may have also panicked and cut down on RPL production... to "save money". /s
That's the exact opposite of what Jim Keller learned when he went on a "management books reading" spree. Bigger the teams, bigger the problems! It also lets more people slack off while a select few may be burning the midnight oil to make things happen and then the extroverts take credit for their hard work because the introverts don't want to call too much attention to themselves (fearing even more responsibility and workload).
Intel forgot the main thing: each new generation needs to be enough of an improvement over the previous to justify the investment. With most customers not caring about AI at all, what does meteor lake and arrow lake bring to a customer that is notably better than what they purchased 3-4 years ago? It's not night and day faster than Alder Lake, either on desktop or mobile. In certain laptops, it has better battery life, but it's hardly dramatic in most cases unless the previous one was just a bad model.Quite a few possibly (bad) reasons written in no particular order:
Last but not least, Intel does weird things. The company that stopped giving fruit and coffee to employees may have also panicked and cut down on RPL production... to "save money". /s
- Raptor Lake stock was drained during the past year as people and OEMs replaced heaps of degraded chips - not the main factor, but exacerbates any other cause
- Raptor Lake is the last product line to benefit from aggressive pricing from Intel, MTL/LNL/ARL are more expensive products for multiple reasons
- AI branding for CPUs was a flop, but the BOM cost of AI hardware was not imaginary - so demand may have failed to shift towards new and more expensive products
- Meteor and Arrow Lake may have also failed to make a positive impression on consumers from a performance standpoint
- Intel probably expected the demand for RPL to wind down, so they planned accordingly
Bonus content from Hardware Canucks, who seem quite opinionated lately:
Demand for PCs in general was higher than expected last quarter. And I think Raptor Lake (especially the mobile parts) is the channel filler which absorbs any unexpected demand. But I have to say any supply "difficulty" doesn't seem to be reflected in pricing here...The "unexpected demand" part is just corporate bullshit.
The issue is that AMD and Intel saw that the improvements aren't that massive... heck, even Zhao Xin who is far behind is doing frog leaps! But at the end ARM is getting the edge they don't expect.Intel forgot the main thing: each new generation needs to be enough of an improvement over the previous to justify the investment. With most customers not caring about AI at all, what does meteor lake and arrow lake bring to a customer that is notably better than what they purchased 3-4 years ago? It's not night and day faster than Alder Lake, either on desktop or mobile. In certain laptops, it has better battery life, but it's hardly dramatic in most cases unless the previous one was just a bad model.
And, to be fair, AMD is in a similar boat. How is Strix Point dramatically better than Phoenix? It's a little faster and a little more efficient under load, other than AI, that's it. Anyone rocking anything older is just waiting for their current computer to either die or not be able to do something that they want it to do.
They may be fabbed in one country, but do they have to cross tariff lines during the packaging and sales process?Does anybody have a good theory (or even a bad theory) why Intel would be capacity constrained on Raptor Lake?
It is not too far after Intel recorded underutilization penalties, while shipping more products out of its own fabs...
The Fabs themselves may be depreciated, but Intel is already on record that N7 products are relatively more expensive to produce. Remember, it's their 10nm process, 10esf++, they are likely pushing that poor node to it's limits, sacrificing density, and having to bin it heavily to get working top end parts...Raptor Lakes are made in Intel's depreciated DUV fabs so they are dirt cheap. It's Intel's only way to convince OEMs to push their stuff, bybribinggiving profit to those OEMs. The "unexpected demand" part is just corporate bullshit.
Raptor Lakes are made in Intel's depreciated DUV fabs so they are dirt cheap. It's Intel's only way to convince OEMs to push their stuff, bybribinggiving profit to those OEMs. The "unexpected demand" part is just corporate bullshit.