The "paradox of the x86" is simply the classic Innovator's Dilemma. In fact the history of the last 20 years against ARM could be a case study right out of the book.
Worse for Intel, AMD flubbed it time and time again, but now Intel is too weak to defend against a resurgent AMD.
Meanwhile they are cutting headcount deeply yet only now suspended the dividend. Madness!
They should take a page out of AMD's book and spin off fab. That new company can then be flooded with "strategic" government aid, and maybe the rest of intel can catch up (or not) but it would at least give the shareholders a better chance. Right now the combination is acting like two anchors tied together.
> They should take a page out of AMD's book and spin off fab.
It's way too late for that now. But even with the benefit of hindsight if we go back by a few years abandoning their main potential advantage just to compete for limited capacity at TSMC with everyone else wouldn't have been the best decision IMHO..
> flooded with "strategic" government aid, and maybe the rest of intel can catch up (or not)
How could that ever possibly help Intel's foundries to catch up if Intel itself switched to TSMC? The "government" doesn't need leading edge nodes so they'd just end up in the same as spots as Global Foundries.
To be fair they did outsource their last gen low-power/laptops chips to TSMC which is probably why they now seem very competitive with AMD/Qualcomm.
One of Intel’s strengths in roughly the 90s and 00s was the tight coupling between its strong fab technology and its strong design team. This this was the model for Motorola, IBM, TI and everybody else.
But by now both sides are suffering, and management has to try to fix them both simultaneously.
As with other industries, semiconductors evolved as an integrated industry. But now both parts are fiendishly complex, and rather than integration being a strength, it’s more like a conglomerate.
You can’t just move your design from one process to another so a spun out fab would start with mostly Intel jobs, just as AMD, IBM etc did when they sold off their fabs. But the standalone fab would possibly find it easier to hire customer-oriented people and change its culture, and the two parts could concentrate better on their needs. It would give the shareholders a better chance too.
It’s not a great solution, but the current situation is dire.
Worse for Intel, AMD flubbed it time and time again, but now Intel is too weak to defend against a resurgent AMD.
Meanwhile they are cutting headcount deeply yet only now suspended the dividend. Madness!
They should take a page out of AMD's book and spin off fab. That new company can then be flooded with "strategic" government aid, and maybe the rest of intel can catch up (or not) but it would at least give the shareholders a better chance. Right now the combination is acting like two anchors tied together.