During the Aspen Security Forums 2023, Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger spoke on the topic of semiconductors and national security. During his speech, Gelsinger mentioned that Intel should get the lion's share of the US$52 billion US CHIPS Act money, simply because Intel is a US company. In Gelsinger's opinion, it appears that TSMC and Samsung don't deserve as much, despite both companies manufacturing semiconductors for US companies, with Samsung already having a foundry in Texas, while TSMC is still struggling with the construction of its Arizona foundry.

Admittedly, Intel has far more foundries in the US, but it also seems like Gelsinger forgot about other foundries, such as GlobalFoundries, but also companies such as Micron, Texas Instruments, Qorvo, NXP, On Semi, Analog Devices and so forth that all own foundries that produce their own chips on US soil. We'd expect all these companies to be eyeing the CHIPS Act cash and without many of those companies, Intel wouldn't be able to sell any of its chips, as many of them produce much needed components that are used to build motherboards, laptops and what not. Gelsinger was obviously pointing fingers at the current US China trade war and how the export controls are causing concerns with regards to the global semiconductor business. As such, Gelsinger wants Intel to have fewer restrictions from the currently imposed trade regulations, largely due to China being some 25 to 30 percent of Intel's market, with Intel being busy expanding in the country. Make what you want of this, but it's clear that Gelsinger is expecting to eat the cake and have it at the same time. Video after the break.

Intel Corporation today reported second-quarter 2023 financial results. "Our Q2 results exceeded the high end of our guidance as we continue to execute on our strategic priorities, including building momentum with our foundry business and delivering on our product and process roadmaps," said Pat Gelsinger, Intel CEO. "We are also well-positioned to capitalize on the significant growth across the AI continuum by championing an open ecosystem and silicon solutions that optimize performance, cost and security to democratize AI from cloud to enterprise, edge and client."

David Zinsner, Intel CFO, said, "Strong execution, including progress towards our $3 billion in cost savings in 2023, contributed to the upside in the quarter. We remain focused on operational efficiencies and our Smart Capital strategy to support sustainable growth and financial discipline as we improve our margins and cash generation and drive shareholder value." In the second quarter, the company generated $2.8 billion in cash from operations and paid dividends of $0.5 billion.

Intel and the German federal government have signed a revised letter of intent for Intel's planned leading-edge wafer fabrication site in Magdeburg, the capital of Saxony-Anhalt state in Germany. The agreement encompasses Intel's expanded investment in the site, now expected to be more than 30 billion euros for two first-of-a-kind semiconductor facilities (also known as "fabs") in Europe, along with increased government support that includes incentives, reflecting the expanded scope and change in economic conditions since the site was first announced.

Intel acquired the land for the project in November 2022, and the first facility is expected to enter production in four to five years following the European Commission's approval of the incentive package. Given the current timeline and scale of the investment, Intel plans to deploy more advanced Angstrom-era technology in the facilities than originally envisioned. The Magdeburg site will serve Intel products and Intel Foundry Services customers.

In April, Intel Foundry Services (IFS) and Arm announced a multigenerational agreement to enable chip designers to build low-power compute system-on-chip (SoCs) on Intel technology. We are excited to provide our customers with the opportunity to design their mobile SoCs on Intel's leading-edge 18 A process technology paired with the latest, most powerful Arm CPU core—the recently launched next-generation Cortex-X4—for improved power and performance. This is a great sign of the momentum building around IFS, and it is part of the reason why I was eager to take on leadership of the organization in March. IFS is on a remarkable journey, and now that I've spent some time with the organization, I want to share more about why our mission is critically important for foundry customers around the world, for Intel and for me.

I first joined Intel in 1981 at the dawn of the PC era and returned in 2021 when our CEO Pat Gelsinger introduced Intel's IDM 2.0 strategy. In hearing his vision, I was motivated by the opportunity to help restore Intel's global leadership in the growing semiconductor industry. The global demand for semiconductors continues to see sustained, long-term growth, and the chip industry is expected to reach $1 trillion in sales by the end of the decade. This is an unprecedented opportunity. At the same time, 80% of the world's chip manufacturing capacity is concentrated in Asia, and many foundry customers are looking for more options.

Intel has appointed Deepak Patil as the new corporate vice president and general manager of its Accelerated Computing Systems and Graphics (AXG) group. Patil is set to succeed Raja Koduri in this leadership role - company CEO Pat Gelsinger was the first person to announce news (last month) of Koduri's departure from Intel. At the time of his leaving Team Blue, Koduri's official job title was "Executive Vice President and Chief Architect" so the wording of his successor's executive ranking is slightly different. Patil is the current chief technology and strategy officer at the Intel Data Center and AI Group, and was previously senior vice president at Dell APEX USA. He will be taking over directly from interim AXG division leader Jeff McVeigh.

The official Intel statement regarding its new leadership appointment states: "Intel will deliver competitive accelerated computing products and build scalable systems with easy-to-program software on a predictable cadence. Deepak Patil will serve as the CVP and General Manager of the Accelerated Computing Systems and Graphics (AXG) group. Deepak recently held the position of DCAI Chief Technology and Strategy Officer. Having held senior engineering leadership positions across the high-tech industry, including being a founding member of Microsoft Azure and leading Dell's APEX as-a-service business, he understands the important role that software and open ecosystems play in enabling application developers and service providers to bring innovative solutions to market, at scale."

Intel has been pulling the plug on most of its non-core businesses, including Intel Optane, Intel network switches, and most lately, Intel 5G modems, now it is time to say goodbye to Intel's server building business, selling it to MiTAC, a parent company to Tyan.

While Intel was never a big player in the complete server system hardware market, it has, or rather had, a decent product lineup. Nevertheless, the company is following its IDM 2.0 strategy laid down by Pat Gelsinger, who took the reins as the CEO back in 2021 and made the decision to sell off its Data Center Solutions Group (DSG).

Intel Foundry Services (IFS) and Arm today announced a multigeneration agreement to enable chip designers to build low-power compute system-on-chips (SoCs) on the Intel 18A process. The collaboration will focus on mobile SoC designs first, but allow for potential design expansion into automotive, Internet of Things (IoT), data center, aerospace and government applications. Arm customers designing their next-generation mobile SoCs will benefit from leading-edge Intel 18A process technology, which delivers new breakthrough transistor technologies for improved power and performance, and from IFS's robust manufacturing footprint that includes U.S.- and EU-based capacity.

"There is growing demand for computing power driven by the digitization of everything, but until now fabless customers have had limited options for designing around the most advanced mobile technology," said Pat Gelsinger, CEO of Intel Corporation. "Intel's collaboration with Arm will expand the market opportunity for IFS and open up new options and approaches for any fabless company that wants to access best-in-class CPU IP and the power of an open system foundry with leading-edge process technology."

Intel and the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation announced today that company co-founder Gordon Moore has passed away at the age of 94. The foundation reported he died peacefully on Friday, March 24, 2023, surrounded by family at his home in Hawaii. Moore and his longtime colleague Robert Noyce founded Intel in July 1968. Moore initially served as executive vice president until 1975, when he became president. In 1979, Moore was named chairman of the board and chief executive officer, posts he held until 1987, when he gave up the CEO position and continued as chairman. In 1997, Moore became chairman emeritus, stepping down in 2006.

During his lifetime, Moore also dedicated his focus and energy to philanthropy, particularly environmental conservation, science and patient care improvements. Along with his wife of 72 years, he established the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, which has donated more than $5.1 billion to charitable causes since its founding in 2000.

Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger has issued the news, via a tweet, of Raja Koduri's departure from the silicon giant. Koduri, who currently sits as Executive Vice President and Chief Architect, will be leaving the company at the end of this month. This ends a five year long tenure at Intel, where he started as Chief Architect back in 2017. He intends to form a brand new startup operation that will focus on AI-generative software for computer games. His tweeted reply to Gelsinger reads: "Thank you Pat and Intel for many cherished memories and incredible learning over the past 5 years. Will be embarking on a new chapter in my life, doing a software startup as noted below. Will have more to share in coming weeks."

Intel has been undergoing numerous internal restructures, and Koduri's AXG Graphics Unit was dissolved late last year. He was the general manager of the graphic chips division prior to its split, and returned to his previous role as Chief Architect at Intel. The company stated at the time that Koduri's new focus would be on: "growing efforts across CPU, GPU and AI, and accelerating high-priority technical programmes."

Intel Corporation today announced that its board of directors has reset its dividend policy, reducing the quarterly dividend to $0.125 per share (or $0.50 annually) on the company's common stock. The dividend will be payable on June 1, 2023, to stockholders of record on May 7, 2023. Intel also reaffirmed its first-quarter 2023 business outlook provided at its most recent earnings call, including revenue of between $10.5 billion and $11.5 billion; gross margin of 34.1% on a GAAP basis and 39% on a non-GAAP basis; tax rate of (84%) on a GAAP basis and 13% on a non-GAAP basis; and earnings per share of $(0.80) on a GAAP basis and $(0.15) on a non-GAAP basis.

The decision to decrease the quarterly dividend reflects the board's deliberate approach to capital allocation and is designed to best position the company to create long-term value. The improved financial flexibility will support the critical investments needed to execute Intel's transformation during this period of macroeconomic uncertainty. Since first initiated in 1992, Intel's dividend has delivered more than $80 billion in cash returns to the company's stockholders, and the board is committed to maintaining a competitive dividend.

Intel didn't exactly report stellar results for the past year and now news out of the US are reporting that the management team is in for big pay cuts, due to missing the earnings targets. Unfortunately the pay cuts aren't limited to management level employees only, as everyone "level 7" and above are affected. Level 7 appears to be some groups of mid-level employees, such as staff engineers. Intel is said to have 14 different employee levels, where fresh graduates start at level 3 and the CEO is level 14. Pat Gelsinger is expected to see a 25 percent cut to his base salary, with the leadership team seeing a 15 percent cut in their base salary.

However, VP's are only seeing a 10 percent pay cut and those below VP—to level 6—will see a five percent pay cut. This is said to go into effect on the first of March and it might seem like those employees at lower hiring tiers are getting away without a pay cut, but it's not quite that simple. Everyone else will see a pay freeze and incentives will be cut for all employees at Intel. This includes suspended quarterly profit sharing bonuses, no employee recognition program and the retirement plan contribution matching cut in half to 2.5 percent. The only perk left will be the annual bonus. Considering the current state of the world, the upside of all of this, is that Intel is at least not laying off any employees as of right now, at least not officially. That said, we might see some employees jumping ship to Intel's competitors, if they can offer a more attractive package. We should point out that the average salary at Intel is around US$134,000, so it's unlikely that most of its employees will suffer due to the reduction in pay.

Yesterday, Intel reported that the company experienced one of the most challenging quarters and year overall revenue results, which led the company's share price to plummet and erase almost 10 billion dollars from its market cap. Amid the economic downtrend, the company is preparing to axe unnecessary developments and research costs that it would get in low-margin markets. Today, this has been reflected in the company's network switch business and the RISC-V pathfinder program. In 2019, the company acquired Barefoot Networks, which ended up in a line of Tofino series of standalone network switches. Apparently, this has been a low-margin or unprofitable business for Intel. "NEX continues to do well and is a core part of our strategic transformation, but we will end future investments in our network switching product line, while still fully supporting existing products and customers," noted Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger, adding, "Since my return, we have exited seven businesses, providing in excess of $1.5 billion in savings". Intel NICs are not affected, and the company's investments in other networking businesses continue.

Additionally, the company is also doing a shutdown of its RISC-V Pathfinder program. Thanks to Yusuke Ohara, who questioned Intel's Pathfinder for RISC-V program support, we have information that the company is discontinuing the program "effective immediately." The support also advises that Intel will not provide additional advancements or bug fixes, so everyone should consult 3rd parties for any software and development.

Intel Corporation today reported fourth-quarter and full-year 2022 financial results. The company also announced that its board of directors has declared a quarterly dividend of $0.365 per share on the company's common stock, which will be payable on March 1, 2023, to shareholders of record as of February 7, 2023.

"Despite the economic and market headwinds, we continued to make good progress on our strategic transformation in Q4, including advancing our product roadmap and improving our operational structure and processes to drive efficiencies while delivering at the low-end of our guided range," said Pat Gelsinger, Intel CEO. "In 2023, we will continue to navigate the short-term challenges while striving to meet our long-term commitments, including delivering leadership products anchored on open and secure platforms, powered by at-scale manufacturing and supercharged by our incredible team."

Intel Corporation today announced that Frank D. Yeary has been appointed as the new independent chair of its board of directors. This follows Dr. Omar Ishrak's decision to step down as chair. Ishrak will remain on Intel's board as an independent director and continue to serve on the audit and finance committee and corporate governance and nominating committee.

"I'm pleased to welcome Frank as chair of Intel's board. His expertise in unlocking stockholder value, focus on corporate governance and familiarity with Intel are powerful assets to both the board and the company as we execute our strategy," said Pat Gelsinger, CEO of Intel. "I also want to thank Omar for his tremendous contributions as chair. He was instrumental in bringing me back to the company as CEO and has fostered a high-impact working dynamic across the board and management team. I look forward to his continued service as a valued member of the board."

Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger, in an interview with CNN at WEF Davos, stated that semiconductor chip supply chains will have a greater influence on geopolitics than oil supply-chains over the next 50 years. Modern civilization is increasingly digitized, and most modern conveniences are "chipped" and connected in some form, which would put the chip-producing nations, or entities producing/supplying the chips at a distinct geopolitical advantage, similar to the oil-producing ones today. The location of "oil reserves [has] defined geopolitics for the last five decades," Gelsinger said; "where the technology supply chains are, and where semiconductors are built, is more important for the next 5 decades," he added.

We caught a taste of exactly what he meant when global semiconductor supply chains buckled around 2020-onward, hitting a multitude of other industries, including automobiles, construction, remote-work, consumer electronics, and much more. Unlike oil, which is a geographically constrained being a natural resource, chips can be manufactured almost anywhere, dictated only by geopolitical, trade, and IP barriers. Gelsinger calls for a much wider geographic spread of chip-production, so the supply-chains get resilient to disruptions due to unforeseen events. "We need this geographically balanced, resilient supply chain," he said. Gelsinger is at the forefront of advocating semiconductor manufacturing on U.S. soil to not only meet local demand, but also contribute to global supply-chain resilience. The CHIPS Act passed by U.S. Congress in 2022 will oversee more than $200 billion in public investments on semiconductor manufacturing and tech-research in the U.S.

Intel's third quarter financials that the company released yesterday, weren't exactly what you'd call stellar. This has put Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger in a bind, as he's been forced to announce cost cuts of US$3 billion annually, starting 2023, but that it'll grow to somewhere between US$8 to 10 billion by 2025. Although Gelsinger didn't reveal the specifics of what these cost cuts will entail, he did mention quite a few potentials, according to The Register. Gelisinger stated that Intel "need to balance increased investment in areas like leadership in [technology development], product, and capacity [at new plants under construction] in Ohio and Germany, with the efficiency measures elsewhere as we drive to have best in class structures."

Intel's CFO David Zinsner, told Barron's that the company will be cutting a "meaningful number" of employees from Intel's payroll. Zisner went on to say that Intel will also perform "portfolio cuts, right-sizing our support organizations, more stringent cost controls in all aspects of our spending, and improved sales and marketing efficiency". It sounds like almost no-one is safe at Intel, especially as portofolio cuts mean that some product lines will either be sold off, or simply just canned in favour of more profitable products. Intel is also betting hard on its IDM 2.0 strategy, where the company is decoupling its hardware and software design teams from its foundry business. Time will tell if this helps restart Intel as a business, but Gelsinger seems to believe that the changes he's implementing at Intel will help turn things around.

Intel Corporation today reported third-quarter 2022 financial results. "Despite the worsening economic conditions, we delivered solid results and made significant progress with our product and process execution during the quarter," said Pat Gelsinger, Intel CEO. "To position ourselves for this business cycle, we are aggressively addressing costs and driving efficiencies across the business to accelerate our IDM 2.0 flywheel for the digital future."

"As we usher in the next phase of IDM 2.0, we are focused on embracing an internal foundry model to allow our manufacturing group and business units to be more agile, make better decisions and establish a leadership cost structure," said David Zinsner, Intel CFO. "We remain committed to the strategy and long-term financial model communicated at our Investor Meeting."

Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger sent the following statement announcing creation of an internal foundry model for external customers and Intel product lines and the creation of the IDM 2.0 Acceleration Office, under the leadership of Stuart Pann, to all company employees on Oct. 11: When I returned to Intel in 2021, I introduced our IDM 2.0 strategy: a multiyear journey to regain unquestioned technology leadership, manufacturing scale and long-term growth. Today, we begin the next phase of our IDM 2.0 journey.

In the first phase of our transformation, we made significant progress on our process roadmaps and capacity. We remain on track to deliver five process nodes in four years, and we've invested in the capacity required to meet the industry's demand for semiconductors, bringing much-needed balance to the global supply chain.
The next phase of our IDM 2.0 journey requires a fundamental shift in mindset. We must embrace an internal foundry model, not only for our external customer commitments but also for our Intel product lines. This is a significant evolution in how we think and operate as a company, but the systems and infrastructure that served us well in the IDM 1.0 world will not enable us to achieve the full potential of IDM 2.0.

Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger in his InnovatiON keynote address exclaimed that Moore's Law is "alive and well," and that Intel is poised to be its faithful steward into this decade. Intel Foundry will "exhaust the periodic table" to find materials that advance silicon fabrication. The company plans to release four new semiconductor fabrication nodes in 5 years, and stated that the company's 18A node is close to building test chips on. The company hopes to see transistor-counts grow from nearly-100 billion transistors per package, to a trillion transistors per package in a decade. Gelsinger's statement comes hot on the heels of a statement by another tech giant—Jensen Huang of NVIDIA, who declared Moore's Law dead recently.

It appears that we're slowly getting closer and closer to the official launch of Intel's upcoming Arc A770 and Arc A750 graphics cards, as Intel's CEO, Pat Gelsinger, just became the proud owner of the first Arc A770 graphics card. According to a tweet by Pat, he "got a surprise delivery on a rainy Sunday evening from @RajaXG", the latter being Raja Koduri. Pat continued "We are now getting first batch of A770 cards ready for retail …excited!".

Intel has yet to reveal a firm launch date for the Arc A770 and Arc A750 graphics cards, but unless the company launches very soon, the boat might very well have sailed for its first generation of new graphics cards. Summer is already long gone (officially summer ends on the 23rd of September), although Intel has its Innovation event coming up on the 27th of this month and it's possible that the company will launch its higher-end Arc graphics cards then, alongside the it's 13th generation of Core desktop CPUs.

Today, President Joe Biden joins Intel, Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine and other federal, state and local officials to celebrate breaking ground in the Silicon Heartland on two of the world's most advanced chipmaking facilities. As part of Intel's commitment to develop a skilled talent pipeline for its two new leading-edge chip fabs, Intel also announced the first phase of funding for its Ohio Semiconductor Education and Research Program. During this first phase, Intel is providing $17.7 million for eight proposals from leading institutions and collaborators in Ohio to develop semiconductor-focused education and workforce programs.

"Today marks a pivotal moment in the journey to build a more geographically balanced and resilient semiconductor supply chain. The establishment of the Silicon Heartland is testament to the power of government incentives to unlock private investment, create thousands of high-paying jobs, and benefit U.S. economic and national security. We would not be here today without the support of leaders in the administration, Congress and the state of Ohio, who share a vision to help restore the United States to its rightful place as a leader in advanced chipmaking," said Pat Gelsinger, Intel CEO.

During Evercore ISI TMT conference, Intel announced that the company would continue to lose market share, with a possible bounce back in the coming years. According to the latest report, Intel's CEO Pat Gelsinger announced that he expects the company to continue to lose its market share to AMD as the competition has "too much momentum" going for it. AMD's Ryzen and EPYC processors continue to deliver power and efficiency performance figures, which drives customers towards the company. On the other hand, Intel expects a competing product, especially in the data center business with Sapphire Rapids Xeon processors, set to arrive in 2023. Pat Gelsinger noted, "Competition just has too much momentum, and we haven't executed well enough. So we expect that bottoming. The business will be growing, but we do expect that there continues to be some share losses. We're not keeping up with the overall TAM growth until we get later into '25 and '26 when we start regaining share, material share gains."

The only down years that are supposed to show a toll of solid competition are 2022 and 2023. As far as creating a bounceback, Intel targets 2025 and 2026. "Now, obviously, in 2024, we think we're competitive. 2025, we think we're back to unquestioned leadership with our transistors and process technology," noted CEO Gelsinger. Additionally, he had a say about the emerging Arm CPUs competing for the same server market share as Intel and AMD do so, stating that "Well, when we deliver the Forest product line, we deliver power performance leadership versus all Arm alternatives, as well. So now you go to a cloud service provider, and you say, 'Well, why would I go through that butt ugly, heavy software lift to an ARM architecture versus continuing on the x86 family?"

Jon Peddie Research (JPR) provides some of the most authoritative and informative market-research into the PC graphics hardware industry. The firm just published a scathing editorial on the future of Intel AXG (Accelerated Computing Systems and Graphics), the business tasked with development of competitive discrete GPU and HPC compute accelerators for Intel. Founded to much fanfare in 2016 and led by Raja Koduri since 2016; AXG has been in the news for the development of the Xe graphics and compute architecture, particularly with the Xe-HP "Ponte Vecchio" HPC accelerator; and the Arc brand of consumer discrete graphics solutions. JPR reports that Intel has invested several billions of Dollars into AXG, to little avail, with none of its product lines bringing in notable revenues for the company. Xe-LP based iGPUs do not count as they're integrated with client processors, and their revenues are clubbed with CCG (Client Computing Group).

Intel started reporting revenues from the AXG business since Q1-2021, around which time it started selling its first discrete GPUs as the Intel DG1 Xe MAX, based on the same Xe-LP architecture powering its iGPUs. The company's Xe-HPG architecture, designed for high-performance gaming, was marketed as its first definitive answer to NVIDIA GeForce and AMD Radeon. Since Q1-2021, Intel has lost $2.1 billion to AXG, with not much to show for. The JPR article suggests that Intel missed the bus both with its time-to-market and scale.

The US Congress hasn't been able to agree on passing what is known as the CHIPS Act, which consists of some US$52 billion in subsidies for semiconductor manufacturers and it appears that Intel isn't very pleased. As such, the company is said to have put the brakes on the groundbreaking ceremony for its planned Ohio fab, which was meant to take place on the 22nd of July. Intel allegedly sent out an email to various state and federal lawmakers that it has placed the ceremony on hold, indefinitely due to the lack of progress on the CHIPS Act. In an official response from Intel to the Register, the company said that the event hasn't been rescheduled, which the publications says means that there's no new date planned for the groundbreaking ceremony.

It will apparently still be held at some point, but the Intel spokesperson had no answer when questioned if the ceremony was contingent on the CHIPS Act. However, the Register was told that the planned construction start date remains unchanged, for now. That said, Intel also issued a statement saying "the scope and pace of our expansion in Ohio will depend heavily on funding from the CHIPS Act.", which was also part of the initial press release back in January when the fab plans were announced. If the CHIPS Act doesn't happen, Intel's plan seems to be to focus on countries outside of the US where the company is getting subsidies, although the Ohio fab is still likely to be built, just at a slower pace. Intel's CEO, Pat Gelsinger hasn't been mincing his words either, having told Congress "We've already wasted several quarters since the Senate acted last year, and now it's time for us to move forward rapidly," back in March.

Intel's revamped IDM 2.0 strategy has seen the company revise its stance in both in-house and outsourced silicon fabrication. While we're already seeing the fruits of Intel's collaboration with TSMC (albeit at the relatively slow pace of introduction for Intel's Arc Alchemist graphics), it seems that Intel is willing to go much farther than just TSMC as a source of chips for its product portfolio.

That's the backdrop to which Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger recently took a trip to South Korea's capital of Seoul. According to the Korea Herald, Gelsinger met several key Samsung executives, including Samsung Electronics Vice Chairman Lee Jae-yong, co-CEO and chip business boss Kyung Kye-hyun, and head of Samsung Mobile Roh Tae-moon. More than enough executive grunt to ignite talks of a deepening collaboration between both companies. While the reporting source doesn't provide any quotes or actionable intel from the meeting, Samsung remains one of the key semiconductor manufacturers alongside Intel itself and TSMC, with a particularly strong portfolio in memory-related technologies.