Intel Smashed The Pot To Sell Iron, Did Altera Become Abandoned?

recentIntel's operating pressure is very great. At the board meeting held this month, CEO Pat Kissinger will propose a specific plan to save the confidence of the company's business and the capital market.

According to reports, Morgan Stanley is helpingIntel is a financial adviser to formulate a detailed strategic plan, including possible options:

1. Dipping off non -necessary business and cutting capital expenditure, including the sale of the FPGA department Altera;

2. Frozen the new wafer fabry project in Germany, which is a project worth $ 32 billion;

3. Divide Intel into two, that is, the chip manufacturing is separated from the chip design, peels each other, and develops independently (the most radical solution).

There are some big problems in Intel. For example, if the mobile device cannot do the power consumption, it can actually do it.ARM.The second is that the GPU ability cannot meet the needs of AI, and it is not Nvaida.In the final analysis, Intel is just a PC and server CPU manufacturer today.Once split, it means that the business profit will be better, but in the long run, the foundation is gone.

Although Intel has a great career, but nowLarge and unlicensed, go back, you need to make painful choices. CEO Pat Kissinger recently shared the Bible scriptures on Twitter. This is not common in normal times.In particular, considering the company's recent large -scale layoffs and decision to stop paying dividends.Kissinger has always been a devout religious believer, but this time he quoted the scriptures with a deeper meaning.

About Intel spin -offAltera's analysis, I have written articles in October last year. At present, almost a year has passed, and there has been no change in the conclusion.At present, there are two potential sellers in the market,AMD and Marvell, I personally think that AMD is unlikely. One is that the possibility of antitrust passes is not high. The other is that AMD is already in the hands of digestion.

The following is my article last year:

On October 4th, Intel announced that it was stripped of its programmable solution department (PSG). It is expected that it will begin as an independent business operation on January 1, 2024. In the next two to three years, Intel intends to further IPO for PSG to accelerate the business to accelerate the businessThe growth of Intel retains most equity.

PSG was Altera, which was acquired by Intel for $ 16.7 billion in 2015. Last since, another FPGA giant Xilinx was acquired by AMD for $ 49 billion.

PSG's performance is actually good. From 2020-2021, Intel PSG increased by 16%. Intel disclosed in the second quarter of 2023, the income of its PSG business department increased by 35%year-on-year.New high.

So why did Intel choose to peel off at this timeWhat about FPGA business?

I think there are two main reasons:

1. Intel has failed to integrate Altera's goal.

At the beginning, Intel acquiredAltera, the ultimate goal is the data center business, which has been mentioned many times in my previous article.

Right now, this goal has obviously failed.

In the data center business, Nvidia'sThe GPU won a lot, and the combination of AMD/Xilinx also occupied a certain share. In addition, Google's TPU was used by itself, but Intel obviously did not meet the expected goals.

In the car business, Qualcomm's cockpit chip, Tesla's self -developed chip, Nvidia,Xilinx has a place, and Intel's MobileEye has been hovering in the urban -rural binding department of the autonomous driving market.

IntegrateIn the process of PSG, Intel triedWillAltera's placeThere are products to return from TSMC back to their own10 nanometer manufacturing, but due to the delay of its own manufacturing process, all Altera's products were severely affected and the market share was severely weakened.As a result, Altera's global market share has been reduced from 42%at that time to nearly 25%.

The original combination of happiness became a dual -losing situation,Altera's team is naturally unconvinced, and it will not be dragged to death.

2. Intel strategic direction major adjustment.

In 2021, Pat Gelsinger became Intel's CEO and proposed the IDM 2.0 strategy aimed at reviving the company's chip design and manufacturing capabilities.The strategy focuses on restoring Intel's manufacturing advantage and will be newly produced in process nodes in 2024.At the same time, Intel began to close or sell some non -core business to develop core business in concentrated energy.

So splitPSG is not an isolated operation. Intel has sold or independent a batch of marginal business. Intel had sold its memory chip department to SK Hynix earlier, and it listed part of the Mobileye autonomous driving car chip department.

You can see from this year's financial report,Intel is already selling assets in large quantities, and its business is also one by one, including Ao Teng's long-lasting memory, the TOFino switch chip of Barefoot's P4 language, and the RISC-V Pathfinder project, etc., has been directly directly.Cut it.

Direct reason, the landlord's house has no more than food, and he went to produce.Intel's manufacturing business is too burning, almost exhausted.

fromBeginning in 2021, Intel announced nearly $ 200 billion in investment plans in two years.

-In 2021, it was announced to invest $ 7 billion in Malaysia to build a chip sealing and testing plant;

-In the same year, it was announced that it invested $ 20 billion in Arizona and built two wafers.

-In 2022, it was announced that it invested $ 20 billion in OHIO and built two wafer factories, and the final investment will reach 100 billion;

-In the next ten years to invest 80 billion euros in Europe, the first stage of investment in Europe 33 billion euros in Europe, including the leading semiconductor wafer factory in Germany, new R & D and design centers in France, and in Ireland, Italy, Poland,And Spain's R & D, manufacturing and foundry services.

Intel's one -year revenueMore than 60 billion yuan, where is the money built?Relying on the US government subsidies, there are selling business.

Altera returns to FPGAMarket victory geometry?

Turning around and tossing, when the situation moved, a time passed.

On the surface,PSG can also bring about $ 500 million in revenue every quarter, but in my opinion, most of them are LEGACY business. In most emerging market areas, due to lack of innovative products, PSG has lost the opportunity.In my article, I also mentioned that XilinX's most sold is no longer a pure FPGA chip.In the stock market, Altera's old products are constantly being replaced.

And the domestic market is more obvious,Altera's market share has been reduced by more than half compared to the acquisition. Of course, some low -end stock markets have been eaten by our domestic production, and it is not so easy to come back.