What They Say
Intel has had a horrible week after announcing last week that Mediatek would become a customer for its foundry business. (Intel and MediaTek Form Foundry Partnership)
First, the firm reported sales down 17% year on year and 22% QoQ at $15.3 billion, but with a drop in gross margin from 57.1% last year to 36.5%. That meant a loss of $500 million. Much of the business segments were down.
Separately, Toms Hardware reported that Intel is in trouble with drivers for its dedicated GPUs. The site said that Intel had tried to build its GPU drivers on the basis of its integrated GPU drivers, to meet the desire of hardware vendors to have a single driver for Intel’s chips. However, there are too many performance downsides, so from now the firm will create two drivers, one for new GPUs and another for older ones.
What We Think
Intel has been building its inventories of GPU chips ready for a Q3 launch.
Display Daily’s good friend, Jon Peddie, has written an article on what Intel should do and comes to the conclusion that Intel should think seriously about canning its discrete GPU business. He points out that since returning, Gelsinger has been prepared to take difficult decisions to close weak businesses in the group. He sees six start-ups in the area as well as Nvidia and AMD as competitors. (BR)
