What's going on with Intel?

[Tab]

It seems to be biting the dust. Anyone know what's going on? Or do we basically all have a substantial enough processing power that we're not spending for more? (which may totally be the case).

[Deja Q]

1. Didn't they just come out with the i7?

AMD is biting the dust thanks to Intel's greater horsepower...

[Tab]

4. AMD was always second fiddle

So I'm not surprised by them, and Motorola lost the Apple to Intel, but suddenly Intel is in the news with major problems, so curious. I'm a little out of the loop for medical reasons, but something like this I would have known about, so I'm trying to figure out what's going on.

More importantly, I'm trying to figure out which of my dogs did what where, because someone did something in the house. You have to set priorities.

But yeah, what the heck is going on with Intel?

[Shardik]

7. AMD finally got its 45 nanometer processors out.

AMD Phenom II X4 940 Deneb 3.0GHz 4 x 512KB L2 Cache 6MB L3 Cache Socket AM2+ 125W Quad-Core Black Edition Processor

It's cheaper than the Intel Core i7 940 Nehalem 2.93GHz 4 x 256KB L2 Cache 8MB L3 Cache LGA 1366 130W Quad-Core Processor by half and you can use an existing MB and won't have to upgrade to DDR3.

AMD is FAR from biting the dust and we need them to stay alive to keep the competition going.

[Greyskye]

2. Intel's customers are ordering less product than forcast

You can make great product, but if your customers can't afford to buy it...

The economic depression is making itself felt all over. And if you think Intel is doing poorly right now, take a look at AMD's stock.

[customerserviceguy]

10. Yep,

two years ago, I was working in a computer chip factory that was going great guns, and my old buddies from there told me at Thanksgiving that they were being forced to take six days (those are 12-hour days, by the way!) off without pay, or they could burn up their accumulated vacation-sick-personal days.

When people don't buy as many toys, the manufacturers of those gizmos don't need as many chips. Let's face it, my last computer was purchased in October 2004, if I can get by with it (I can upgrade it myself), then most businesses are not going to buy newer machines either.

[Deja Q]

11. Why are people using the generic term "product"? It's annoying and soulless.

Mind you... :D

And if a person can make a great product but the customers can't afford it, then there are other problems at work - problems the government is hardly to blame for...

[Greyskye]

12. I use 'product' because that's what we called it.

It's a little difficult to get more specific when you are talking not only about microprocessors; but hundreds of different flavors of Flash memory chips, motherboards, etc.

Let's talk memory chips, as that's what I'm most familiar with.

Say you manufacture a 1Gig Flash memory chip. It costs you (for example) $2.00 a chip to manufacture, assemble, and test each one. You sell these chips to, say Nokia, in order for them to make cell phones that include your chip. Nokia pays you $4.00 for these chips, giving you a $2.00 profit per chip. Now, last quarter Nokia forecast that they would buy 10K units of this chip this quarter. So you manufactured enough that would satisfy that demand.

Oops. Circuit City, Best Buy, and all of Nokia's other customers that buy cell phones to sell are now telling Nokia that they are cutting their orders to Nokia in half, in order to match reduced demand. Nokia in turn tells you that they don't need 10K chips any more, they only need 5K. AND they've changed their minds about needing that custom chip you've been designing for them for the past year as well.

But guess what? You've already made those 10K chips, and they are sitting in a warehouse getting ready to be shipped to Nokia. And you've already invested a year on an R&D team that was making that custom chip. Oh well, better luck next time.

That's what is happening in the industry these days. A lousy economy hurts everyone, big or small.

[slackmaster]

3. My home computer is 16 months old today, and running strong

My builds typically last five years before they need replacement. That's been consistently the case since I started in the early '90s.

Computers used in businesses are typically depreciated on a five-year schedule. As a systems admin, I can tell you that only the top-end stuff doesn't start getting long in the tooth in five years.

Sales are soft because companies are downsizing, and holding off on spending. You can usually stretch the live of an old machine if you need to. It's really that simple. The longer the recession lasts, the crummier machines businesses will be nursing along.

A day will come when the recession is over, and Intel finds itself unable to keep up with demand. It's the same story as with cars - Eventually they do wear out and you have to replace them.

[Tab]

5. I suspect we've reached a level of "maturity" in the business dept.

I ran a software development company for many years and I'm used to overpaying for CPU, but now I can go into Wal-Mart and get a machine for $598 that I would have once had to have paid $10,000 for. I'm sure it's leveling off, but the news seems to be pretty abrupt, so I'm wondering what was going on. I'm not sure when they clear their fiscal year, though. It could follow the calendar, as December (or actually November) would traditionally be a big-ticket time for home purchases, and January would be a big month for companies starting a fresh budget year.

[slackmaster]

6. January is when the new budget kicks in where I work

I've been directed to consolidate Web sites and applications into a VMWare cluster we bought hast year, so as to free up older unitary servers and blades so they can be handed down to our software development and testing teams.

There's money to buy new servers but only for major capital investment type projects. We're starting a process to upgrade our big databases to SQL Server 2008.

[Greyskye]

8. Intel's fiscal year

Intel's fiscal year runs from April 1, till March 31.

I worked for Intel for almost 24 years, and made the move to a new company last year.

[dkofos]

9. Mine is 8 years old and still going strong.

Maybe if I unretire I can afford a new one.