Monday, September 2nd 2024
Intel Considers Sale of Altera Business Amid Restructuring Plans, Foundry Business to Stay
Intel is reportedly exploring the sale of its Altera business, a move guided by CEO Pat Gelsinger as part of broader restructuring efforts. Acquired by Intel in 2015 for $16.7 billion, Altera, formerly known as the Programmable Solutions Group, has been a profitable segment. However, with Intel facing financial strain due to extensive spending, the company is now considering divesting its FPGA business to recoup capital. Currently, Altera operates as a separate entity within Intel, relying on the tech giant for R&D, sales, marketing, and support. Gelsinger is expected to propose the sale at a board meeting scheduled for mid-September, where he will outline his vision for Intel's future. This restructuring could also affect other parts of Intel's operations, including its Foundry business.
While previous reports suggested that Intel might spin off its Foundry unit or sell it to industry leaders like TSMC or Samsung, the latest information indicates that Intel plans to retain this division, albeit with scaled-back expansion efforts. The $32 billion factory in Germany, for example, may be scrapped, along with other capital-intensive projects, and other capital expansions may also be put on hold. Pat Gelsinger's vision still needs to be finalized and is still in the drafting phase, so until the mid-September board meeting, we have to wait to gain more information.
Source:
Reuters
While previous reports suggested that Intel might spin off its Foundry unit or sell it to industry leaders like TSMC or Samsung, the latest information indicates that Intel plans to retain this division, albeit with scaled-back expansion efforts. The $32 billion factory in Germany, for example, may be scrapped, along with other capital-intensive projects, and other capital expansions may also be put on hold. Pat Gelsinger's vision still needs to be finalized and is still in the drafting phase, so until the mid-September board meeting, we have to wait to gain more information.
37 Comments on Intel Considers Sale of Altera Business Amid Restructuring Plans, Foundry Business to Stay
You mean Pat Gelsinger’s failure.
The word vision usually involves positive thinking for the future of a company. What’s happening are plans being made to reduce Intel due to business failures.
Unlike AMD which got Xillinx in big part due to their attractive AI IP(Ryzen AI is essentially IP from Xillinx), they really do not have much of a need for Altera. The chips that were designed with Intel processes will continue to being made anyway, because FPGAs need to have that extended support, so they will have the foundry business aspect even if it spins off.
Altera is kinda attractive for AI since FPGAs are good for edge AI, so that at least will be worth quite a bit.He took over about 3 years ago? This is barely enough time to change a lot of things, specally in a gigant corporation like Intel. Most of the current projects being delivered were probably started under previous administrations.
What's more the free version of Altera's Quartus software has severe limitations on what FPGAs can be used with it compared to Xilinx's which they refuse to budge on. That means only large companies can develop stuff using anything but their lowest end FPGAs (the latest ones with transceivers are a decade old).
If you think of it, Intel really tried hard at making many core consumer CPUs but the reality is, I think, that they already knew that going past quad cores would be the beginning of the end for their Core architecture. It could not scale that well for that much. 6c12t was already trouble - delid required to really make them tick well - and it didn't last very long before they got forced to get much better bins generally used for 'Extreme' or Intel E- generations and server chips into the consumer stack. And even then, they had to increase TDP. Eventually they had to scale down the core and present an alternative to keep scaling. And now we're effectively back at a lot of consumer chips with '4 P cores' and a shitload of helpers that while efficient are lacking in instruction sets.
Perhaps AMD's Bulldozer is Intel's Big Little... minus the court case.. oh wait
And ohio really needs that fab too!!
If they cancel they should pay the govt back for all the chips act money!!
The problem runs much deeper than that, and using him as a scapegoat has grown quite old. The copium has gotta run out someday, sheesh.
As an example, they don`t have developed as much of the big fuss AI IP for FPGAs as Xillinx does(and which ended up being used for other AMD products).Considering how long those projects take, he probably had some influence on RDNA 1(and by extension RDNA 2 as RDNA 1 was essentially a prototype to it) which was pretty successful(with RDNA 2 being even more so).
But he will forever be remembered by his hype on Vega.
Plus Lisa Su is considered to be a Savior Saint and thus it couldn't possibly be (partly) her fault, so Raja it is.
But karma alone is doing this and fingers crossed they never recover.
I think the best option would be intrest free loan and having the project go ahead considering the wider geo political consequences.
www.theregister.com/2023/11/24/german_budget_woes_threaten_chip/
All I see is old boys networks and they suck harder by the year. Raja is a symptom, as is Pat, of a company and possibly a generation that has lost its touch.I think that storm has passed already hasnt it? It was mostly pointed at Ukraine support too. Or was the problem moved over to funding fabs now, I might have missedthat.