Will more funding be needed to keep Intel competitive?
On 1 August 2024, Intel announced financial results for the second quarter of 2024. They weren’t pretty; the company’s stock dropped more than 25 percent as it announced an aggressive plan to cut costs, including layoffs that will impact 15 percent of its entire workforce.
No, AMD just had an absolutely staggering recovery.
Before AMD recovered, high-performance CPU manufacturers that fell behind had a 100% track record of fading into complete obscurity or going bankrupt.
AMD sold everything they had, including their fabs, they put their graphics division into what was effectively life support by only making a very cheap to manufacture Polaris chip (RX 480/580 cards and their derivatives) and a (unsuccessful) vega chip for several years, they pleaded with Microsoft and Sony to be used in their consoles for only the most pathetic margins that Intel and Nvidia would scoff at, and they got to work on Zen, putting everything into it.
If Zen failed, AMD would’ve went bankrupt, without question. Everyone expected bankruptcy from AMD. Their stock price went to under $2. Certainly nobody expected Zen to be as good as it was. They went from multiple generations behind Intel, to ahead in practically everything but gaming (which would take a couple more years) overnight.
Then, a moment of excellent luck for AMD, and poor luck for Intel, Spectre and Meltdown (two devastating vulnerabilities for Intel CPUs), accelerated the enterprise sector’s switch to AMD.
thanks for the write-up.
i knew something had happened there but only read half headlines.
Thats an amazing story and gokd to know, thanks for clarifying and condensing it for me.
have a good one!