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Yahoo
07-05-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Intel's AI PC chips aren't selling well — instead, old Raptor Lake chips boom
When you buy through links on our articles, Future and its syndication partners may earn a commission. Credit: Intel Times are already tough for Intel, but now it turns out its new, heavily-promoted AI PC chips aren't selling as well as expected, thus creating a shortage of production capacity for its older chips. The news comes as the CEO announced looming layoffs and a poor financial report sent the company's stock tumbling. Intel says its customers are buying less expensive previous-generation Raptor Lake chips instead of the new, and significantly more expensive, AI PC models like the Lunar Lake and Meteor Lake chips for laptops. During the earnings call, Intel announced that it currently faces a shortage of production capacity for its 'Intel 7' process node, and the company expects this shortage to "persist for the foreseeable future." That's an unexpected shortage to have, as Intel's current-gen chips use newer process nodes from TSMC instead of Intel's older 'Intel 7' node. Intel is a master at production capacity planning, so its disclosure points to an unexpected surge in sales of the older 'Intel 7' products. Intel explained that the shortage of its 7nm production capacity is due to an unexpected surge in demand for its "N-1 and N-2" products, a reference to its two prior-generation chip families. This trend is occurring in both the consumer and data center markets. "What we're really seeing is much greater demand from our customers for n-1 and n-2 products so that they can continue to deliver system price points that consumers are really demanding," explained Intel's Michelle Johnston Holthaus. "As we've all talked about, the macroeconomic concerns and tariffs have everybody kind of hedging their bets and what they need to have from an inventory perspective. And Raptor Lake is a great part. Meteor Lake and Lunar Lake are great as well, but come with a much higher cost structure, not only for us, but at the system ASP price points for our OEMs as well." Bernstein Research's Stacy Rasgon pressed Holtahaus about the implications for the company's upcoming Panther Lake chips, which are set to launch at the end of the year, especially given that the looming tariff disruptions have not yet occurred. Holthaus said the Panther Lake launch remains on track and the company expects continued success in the commercial market, which she said typically precedes broader consumer adoption. Notably, she did not directly address the company's expected next-gen AI PC adoption for consumer laptops. Regardless, the company also continues its expansive work to promote and cultivate a growing developer ecosystem to unleash the power of its AI wares.
Yahoo
29-04-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Tariffs Are Impacting Intel in an Unexpected Way
While there are some ways semiconductor giant Intel (NASDAQ: INTC) could benefit from the Trump administration's tariff policies and push to bring manufacturing back to the United States, the company is unlikely to be a trade war winner. Economic uncertainty could push down demand for PCs and lead data center operators to pull back on capital spending, bad news for Intel's core CPU business. Intel's guidance for the second quarter reflects the high level of uncertainty surrounding demand for its products. The company sees revenue coming within a wide range between $11.2 billion and $12.4 billion, down from the $12.7 billion in revenue produced in the first quarter. CFO Davis Zinsner noted in the first-quarter earnings call that the risk of a recession was growing amid the trade turmoil. Where to invest $1,000 right now? Our analyst team just revealed what they believe are the 10 best stocks to buy right now. Continue » One surprise that came out of Intel's first-quarter report was a shift in demand in the laptop market to models powered by Intel's older products. In the consumer laptop market, the company is seeing an uptick in demand for Raptor Lake systems and a weakening in demand for Meteor Lake and Lunar Lake systems. Intel's Meteor Lake and Lunar Lake chips are more efficient and enable longer battery lives than their predecessors, but systems built around these chips also have higher price points. Intel noted that OEMs are focusing on lower-priced systems to counter the uncertain economic environment. There's a silver lining to this shift in demand to older laptop CPUs: A boost to the gross margin. Intel's Raptor Lake chips are manufactured in-house on the mature Intel 7 process node, which is derived from Intel's 10nm technology. In contrast, Meteor Lake uses the newer Intel 4 process, the ramping of which hurt margins as the company moved production to Ireland. Lunar Lake is even worse for the bottom line because it's largely outsourced to Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company and includes integrated memory. The downside is that Intel only has so much Intel 7 production capacity. Running those production lines at full capacity makes the company's foundries more efficient and helps with the gross margin, but Intel just can't produce enough of its older Raptor Lake chips to meet demand. Zinsner expects Intel 7 capacity constraints to persist "for the foreseeable future." Laptops with Intel's newer chips are doing better in the commercial PC market, where the end of Windows 10 support is driving demand for new systems. The company expects this strong demand to eventually flow into the consumer market, but the state of the economy is a wildcard. How this demand dynamic in the consumer market impacts the upcoming launch of Panther Lake remains to be seen. Intel plans to launch some of its Panther Lake SKUs before the end of the year, built on its new Intel 18A process node, with the rest coming in early 2026. Panther Lake is meant to be both powerful and efficient, and it will benefit from Intel's most advanced manufacturing process. Since Panther Lake will shift more production in-house, the gross margin situation should be improved compared to Lunar Lake. However, the gross margin for the product will also depend on how well the Intel 18A ramp goes and the yields the company is able to achieve. If economic conditions deteriorate in the lead up to Panther Lake's launch, Panther Lake-based systems will need to be able to span a wide range of price points to succeed in what will likely be a tough consumer PC market. While the increase in demand for Intel's older laptop CPUs is helping the bottom line, the company needs Panther Lake to be a success as it tries to turn around its products business and make its nascent foundry a success. A lot is riding on the Intel 18A process node, and the Trump administration's tariff policies are making Intel's turnaround more difficult. Before you buy stock in Intel, consider this: The Motley Fool Stock Advisor analyst team just identified what they believe are the for investors to buy now… and Intel wasn't one of them. The 10 stocks that made the cut could produce monster returns in the coming years. Consider when Netflix made this list on December 17, 2004... if you invested $1,000 at the time of our recommendation, you'd have $594,046!* Or when Nvidia made this list on April 15, 2005... if you invested $1,000 at the time of our recommendation, you'd have $680,390!* Now, it's worth noting Stock Advisor's total average return is 872% — a market-crushing outperformance compared to 160% for the S&P 500. Don't miss out on the latest top 10 list, available when you join . See the 10 stocks » *Stock Advisor returns as of April 28, 2025 Timothy Green has positions in Intel. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Intel and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing. The Motley Fool recommends the following options: short May 2025 $30 calls on Intel. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy. Tariffs Are Impacting Intel in an Unexpected Way was originally published by The Motley Fool Sign in to access your portfolio
Yahoo
22-02-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Newsflash: Intel's all-important 18A node is officially 'ready' but what exactly happened to the 'five nodes in four years' thing?
When you buy through links on our articles, Future and its syndication partners may earn a commission. "Intel 18A is now ready." So proclaims a new landing page on Intel's website for the company's all-important new 18A chip production node. But what does it mean for the PC? We already knew that Intel's next laptop chip, Panther Lake, is due to be made, at least in part, on the new 18A node. That's supposed to be going into volume production later this year, though we're not expecting 18A-powered laptops until early 2026. Intel's next desktop CPU, codenamed Nova Lake, is likewise a 2026 product according to Intel. So, what to make of Intel's claims of immediate 18A readiness? The new web portal is arguably more aimed at customers for its nascent foundry business than bigging up its own chips. "Intel 18A is now ready for customer projects with the tape outs beginning in the first half of 2025," the website says. In terms of in-house chips, Intel does call out the Clearwater Forest server CPU as an example of "18A in action" on the new website. Clearwater Forest was originally on Intel's roadmaps as a 2025 product. However, at the end of January, Intel pushed Clearwater Forest back to the first half of 2026, which doesn't exactly seem like a huge vote of confidence in 18A. Of course, 18A is the final part of Intel's bold "five nodes in four years" plan (also known as 5N4Y), which kicked off with Intel 7, then went to Intel 4 as used in the Meteor Lake mobile CPU, followed by Intel 3, Intel 20A and finally Intel 18A. It was mid-2021 when Intel's then-new-but-now-departed CEO Pat Gelsinger floated the idea. That means 18A needs to be ready for summer 2025 to be on track. With that in mind, the cynic might conclude that 18A's announced readiness for customers, all the while Intel doesn't seem to be able to get one of its own chips on 18A ready, is something of a PR stunt. Arguably, you might conclude that about 5N4Y in general. Looking at each of the nodes in turn, Intel 7 is a version of the same 10nm technology that Intel had been struggling with for a decade, so not really a new node. Intel 4 was certainly new, albeit a rebrand of the planned 7nm node. Calling Intel 3 a new node is a bit of a stretch, being as it is a revised on Intel 4. You could say the same about Intel 20A and 18A, but Intel cancelled 20A in any case. So, at the very least, Intel is down to four nodes in four years. But taken in the round, of the five "new" nodes, only Intel 4 and Intel 18A are unambiguously new. And it remains to be seen whether any chips on 18A are actually available within Intel's self-imposed time frame. Still, if 18A is as good as Intel is cracking it up to be, whether it's complete "ready" now or early next year probably doesn't matter. It'll be a great node that will not only enable some really competitive chips for Intel, but surely have customers queuing up to have their chips manufactured by the only real alternative to Taiwanese mega-foundry TSMC. Among other advantages and refinements of the 18A node, Intel is making the following claims: Up to 15% better performance per watt and 30% better chip density vs. the Intel 3 process node. The earliest available sub-2nm advanced node manufactured in North America, offering a resilient supply alternative for customers. Industry-first PowerVia backside-power delivery technology, improving density and cell utilization by 5 to 10 percent and reducing resistive power delivery droop, resulting in up to 4 percent ISO-power performance improvement and greatly reduced inherent resistance (IR) drop vs. front-side power designs. RibbonFET gate-all-around (GAA) transistor technology, enabling precise control of electrical current. RibbonFET allows further miniaturization of chip components while reducing power leakage, a critical concern for increasingly-dense chips. If 18A really does deliver on all that, it'll certainly be highly competitive with anything TSMC has to offer. Broadly, Intel 18A is thought to be less dense in terms of logic gates than TSMC's upcoming N2 node and more akin by that metric to the N3 node that TSMC has been banging out for about 18 months now. However, another key measure is SRAM density. SRAM cells are used to provide critical on-chip cache memory. It was thought until recently that 18A was at best on par with TSMC N3 for SRAM density. However, it's recently emerged that Intel 18A in fact offers pretty much exactly the same claimed SRAM density as TSMC N2. Meanwhile, TSMC is not planning to include backside power delivery until its own A16 node. Long story short, backside power relocates the power interconnects from the top of the chip to the underside of the silicon layer, thereby separating it from signal interconnects. This reduces interference and shortens the distance power has to travel, which improves efficiency and performance. As above, Intel 18A has backside power, which could be a big advantage over TSMC N2. Ultimately, we'll have to wait and see. But we absolutely have our fingers and toes crossed that 18A works out. The alternative could be very bad for Intel. Gelsinger did say, after all, that he had "bet the whole company on 18A." And the way the chip industry is going these days, "very bad for Intel" could quickly turn into even more expensive chips for the PC. We need as much competition in the industry as we can get. So, we generally agree with the sentiments an Intel engineer posted and then removed from Linkedin earlier this week, which basically boil down to not giving up on Intel just as it is about to turn things around with 18A. Best CPU for gaming: Top chips from Intel and gaming motherboard: The right graphics card: Your perfect pixel-pusher SSD for gaming: Get into the game first.
