Intel: progress despite a drop in revenue this quarter

After a second quarter disrupted by bad announcements concerning 7nm, Intel announces progress on engraving, but this time with a drop in revenues.

Declining income, but good news.

For this third quarter, Intel recorded a turnover of 18.3 billion dollars, down 4% compared to the same quarter of the year 2019 and a drop of 7.6%compared to the previous quarter. In detail, the so-called PC-centric (“consumer”) sector remains stable, with a slight increase in revenue of 1%, but profits down 17%. The Data-centric sector (Data-centers, mémoire….etc), plunges with 7% less turnover and above all a consequent drop in profits of 39%.

Acceleration of the 10nm for 2021.

Concerning the various products, Intel plans to accelerate the production of 10nm; 100 designs for Tiger Lake are expected by the end of the year. Ice Lake SP is expected to arrive in Q12021. It is also this quarter that the brand launches its first dedicated GPU (forgetting the i740 ) named DG1 (or Xe MAX ). Available only on laptop, it should however arrive on desktop next year. All this is to the credit of the Arizona fab, finally finished and whose production of 10nm wafer should increase in the coming months. On the future processors and engraving process side, Alder Lake is scheduled for launch in Q3 2021, Sapphire Rapids will start being sampled from the end of the year, for release in early 2022. For 7nm, Intel is confident and announces that it has “fixed” the problems it was encountering. The company now claims to be making very good progress. Despite this, the brand does not yet know which engraving it will use in 2023. The question still arises of having recourse to a subcontractor if the internal capacity is not sufficient.

A $9 billion deal …

NAND memory business sold to SK Hynix

It is another market that Intel is abandoning, after having sold the 5G division to Apple, it is now the turn of the memory division (NAND) to be sold to SK Hynix for 9 billion dollars, thus putting an end to Intel’s classic SSDs. However, the brand keeps under its control its top-of-the-range technology: Optane. For more details, go to the Intel website.