Posted: 9/1/2006 8:10:19 AM EDT
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www.theregister.com/2006/08/31/intel_fire/ Intel to decimate workforce - report The AMD effect By Ashlee Vance in Mountain View ? More by this author Published Thursday 31st August 2006 22:10 GMT CNET has come out as the first organ willing to put a firm number on Intel's alleged upcoming mass layoff. The online rag reckons that up to 10,000 workers will be cleaved from Intel's payroll. Word of the layoffs should arrive next Tuesday after the stock markets close their regular trading sessions. Rumors of large layoffs at Intel have swirled ever since CEO Paul Otellini said he would examine all possible cost cutting options. So far, Intel has relieved itself of two business units and fired 1,000 managers. According to CNET, things will get worse for the Intel regulars next week when the company decimates its 100,000 strong workforce. The company has scheduled an internal web cast for Tuesday, which doesn't seem like an encouraging sign. "Intel CEO Paul Otellini will present employees a summary of Intel’s structure and efficiency analysis," the company told its staff, according to a note seen by El Reg. "We have said before that we will disclose the results of our structural review sometime in the third quarter," Intel spokesman Chuck Mulloy told us. "We won't comment on specific dates or plans or results." European papers as well as dailies in states such as Oregon have speculated that Intel would make large cuts in the next couple of weeks. Workers have apparently sensed that the axe is about to fall and fall hard. The reality of the situation though is that Intel cannot support its current workforce and expect to post glossy financial results. AMD has came out of nowhere to claim 25 per cent of the x86 server chip market and increased its desktop processor share. If these trends continue, Intel can expect to own 60- to 70 per cent of the x86 market as opposed to the 80- to 90 per cent that it's used to. |
Come out of nowhere? Yeah, uh huh. I have been building my own PCs for myself and family members for almost 10 years and have never used an Intel Proc. Most other people I know that build their own never use them either. AMD has been gaining market share on Intel for a decade, they didn't just form their company yesterday and decide to kick Intel's ass. |
Yep AMD has been slowing building its reputation for a long time… and more AMD desktop processors were sold last quarter than Intel desktop processors so AMD now has more than 50% of the desktop market, notebooks are keeping Intel’s head above water |
That may change with Conroe |
| Typical of most big companies hurting. Layoff the people so that you can keep the stock price high. But the problem is that Intel never regarded AMD as competition until it was way too late, now that AMD has got the momenteum rolling it will to pretty hard to stop. |
My last Intel build (for personal use) was a P-90  Went AMD after that (until I switched to Mac last year). Yup, Intel has been caught fat, dumb, happy and in total denial that anyone could overtake them until they saw AMD start to pull up along side. Businesses are so damned complacent and short sighted now. Yes, it leaves opportunities that others can take advantage of but still... 
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I don't think so... with AMDs price cuts they will still dominate the low and mid-range machines. Street price on a Athlon 64 3700+ CPU is less than $100, that is a lot of CPU value for the money and more processing power than most people need. And Dell has ordered a bunch of AMD desktop stuff going on sale starting this fall... If anything it may get much worse for Intel before it gets better. |
| AS a Intel employee I have to say Im scared. My manager was cut in the 1000 management jobs along with some managers Ive had in the past. However, My factory is currently responsible for 65% of Intels profits and I just dont see them cutting the workforce that makes the most money for them. However I must be realistic and realize that its a possible. Anyone out there looking for someone with 5 years exp in the semi-conductor industry in dry etch and parts clean? |
| I would say that the latest Intel Processors are better and faster than the current AMD processors. But then again, so what.. For the majority of people, the 5% difference in CPU processing speeds wont amount to squat. This aint the old days where you really had to wait to the CPU to catch up. Most people would prefer to save money and never know or realize that decoding that video file took an extra 20 seconds. Even savy gamers realize that a better video card and more memory will give more bang for the buck than a new CPU/motherboard. |
I have to agree with M_M on this one. my Athlon 64 4000+ that i paid just under $400 for about a year ago, is now $135. still a smok'in processor. mmk |
A Conroe E6700 will beat AMD's fastest for half the price, in 35 out of 37 tests........ |
Texas Instruments just finished a new fab dedicated to making DSP's and DLP's and other bleeding edge product in Richardson, TX. We should ( read hopefully) start staffing it in 1st or 2nd Quarter. I'm not a manager or HR but out of curiosity are you an Engineer, a Tech or an Operator? Plasma, Epi or metal ?? I'm an equipment tech in multiprobe. |
Allright, I'll stick with best perfomance to price ratio, hey we'll both be happy... 
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Good GOD there's OTHER wafer-fab nerds in here!  If I lost my job right now (Operator - vacuum dep) I'd probably just get out of the industry altogether. I've been doing it for 10 years and it seems the more time passes the more jobs like mine go overseas and the less attractive the pay looks here in the states. Best of luck my Intel kin! Fearless |
Uh.... if you knew about the *server* market.... the statement above is pretty much correct. AMD has come out of nowhere... 5 years ago anyone would have laughed if you said AMD CPU's would be in business critical servers..... AMD has had a very spotty past... if you have been doing this 10 years... you would know how bad some of their early chips were... like the K5's. AMD has turned it around, and really been kicking ass lately tho. In the server market, they have pretty much come outa nowhere. |
Hmm... K5's were "early chips"? What about my 8 MHz AMD 8088, or my 16 MHz AMD 80286? Those aren't the early ones?  -Troy |
Earlier *popular* ones of their own design.... I suppose. AMD has been making all kinds of chips, for a long time.... but they were a second source to Intel's licensed designs back then in the CPU market. I never saw widespread popularity until their 386DX line came out. Those were ROCK solid, and 20% faster than intel's at the time.... but then, they were pretty much an exact copy, too. My point was - the K5's were the first mainstream chips from AMD that were completely a competitive architecture... and they sucked. Heat, stability, all kinds of problems. Cyrix back then was having the same troubles. Intel dominated the stability platform. AMD changed when they bought Nexgen, and the K6 line came out. But too many builders felt burned by the earlier CPU's and got stuck on Intel. Since then, MB chipset manufacturers have gotten better, and so have AMD's chips. |
So? That is irrelevant to 85% of the market… the average home user could care less if a “Conroe E6700 will beat AMD's fastest for half the price” a 4 year old 2Ghz chip will do everything they need. These users don’t know the difference between a Conroe and a slice of bread and they don’t want to know or care. All they want is a cheap usable computer. They do care about the bottom line purchases price and AMD is still going to own that ground. |
| This type of drawdown is typical in any commoditized market. Businesses are always cyclical when looking at a product's lifecycle; introduction, growth, maintain, decline. Definite market saturation when it comes to processors and the marginal increases in performance aren't worth the cost of upgrades to many corporations. Most server systems run idle and wouldn't leverage any increase in CPU performance. |
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I wasted 10 years of my life working for Inhel. Quitting that shithole and going back to school was the best thing I've ever done. They have layoffs almost every year, and end up rehiring the same people at a later date. One day, and it's going to be soon, all Inhel products will come from overseas facilities. |
While Intel's chips might be faster at the moment than AMD's, Motherboards for the Intel chips are far more expensive than for AMD. For now on expect AMD and Intel to leapfrog each other every 6 months or so. AMD will be rolling out chips utilizing the DDR2 RAM in the not so distant future and with four cores to boot. |
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Ive been working as a vendor at an Intel fab in Oregon for the last 5 years. I'm glad to see them squirming. They are the most morally backrupt fuckers I have ever had the pleasure of working with. I have 18 years working on process equipment and have never seen a more poorly run Fab anywhere. They are way top heavy. They micro manage eveything they do. They treat vendors (me) like third class citizens. It's nice to see these over educated dumbasses waiting to see if their number comes up, it great. I'm not worried about my job because these asses don't know which end of a screwdriver to use and are not smart enough to fix anything themselves. Intel is currently building a new fab in Isarel and just finished retooling one in AZ and are retooling another now. I don't understand this, most of the product sits in the warehouse be because they can't sell it. Intel has capacity to produce more chips than AMD but they know AMD makes better/cheaper chips and I have heard them say it more than once. Well. this turned into a RANT but o-well. I'll actually looking forward to going to work this week to see who gets canned.  |
Pretty much… AMD already has chips that utilize DDR2 RAM, the newer Socket AM2 CPUs, the quad core CPUs ought to be tasty. |
Texas Instruments. |