Intel is reportedly looking to sell its connected home unit, which makes chips for home Internet devices like routers, Bloomberg reported this week. The story, which cites anonymous sources, says that the company has a financial adviser on hand and is searching for buyers. The company declined to comment to Bloomberg, but the connected home division has annual sales of roughly $450 million, per the report. In July, Intel sold its 5G smartphone modem business to Apple in a $1 billion transaction, leaving competitors like Qualcomm with more influence in the sphere. Qualcomm and Broadcom are among those making chips for routers and modems. It appears that Intel CEO Bob Swan is attempting to trim down parts of the business where it isn't as competitive as its semiconductor arm, which he has stated as a goal during his tenure. Read More Report: Intel Looking to Sell Connected Home Chip Division - Tom's Hardware : https://ift.tt/37EJFbX
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Intel Corp. may become the Grinch who stole Christmas from large PC makers. HP Inc. HPQ, -0.45% and Dell Technologies Inc. DELL, -3.40% both admitted Tuesday that they expect a negative impact on their future results as a result of chip shortages for which Intel apologized last week. Dell laid bare that the chip giant’s shortages have gotten worse, an issue that was not clear in the apology, since Intel INTC, +0.15% reiterated its stronger-than-expected guidance for the fourth quarter. “Intel CPU shortages have worsened quarter-over-quarter, the shortages are now impacting our commercial PC and premium consumer PC Q4 forecasted shipments,” Dell Vice Chairman Jeff Clarke said in an earnings conference call Tuesday afternoon. Dell cut its forecast for fiscal 2020, which includes two months in the current calendar fourth quarter, typically the industry’s busiest quarter of the year, thanks to holiday shopping. Dell stock took a hit, falling from slight gains to a decline of 4% in after-hours trading. HP’s PC business had revenue growth of 4% in the fiscal fourth quarter reported on Tuesday, which was slightly ahead of the industry growth rate, but HP said the supply shortages will “constrain” its sales in the current quarter, which will include two months of the holiday shopping season “So we are assuming that the CPU supply will constrain our revenue in Q1, and if you think about it on a sequential basis, certainly in the personal systems business, we would expect to have declines from Q4 to Q1 above the normal seasonal patterns,” Steven Fieler, HP Chief Financial Officer, said in response to an analyst’s question. “That being said...this is more of a revenue impact than profit impact for the quarter, as we expect our mix should be better.” HP still managed to hold on to its after-hours stock gains Tuesday, mostly because investors’ attention may be diverted to an unwanted takeover bid from Xerox Holdings Corp. XRX, -1.19% On the call, executives declined to discuss the $22-a-share offer from Xerox, which its board has rejected, and told analysts they would not answer any questions about Xerox. Investors should be much more focused on CPU shortages than ridiculous acquisition attempts from a smaller company dreaming of a different future for its sinking printing business, though. Shortages of CPUs have hurt PC makers previously, and higher prices for memory chips two holiday seasons ago put a major damper on margins for electronics companies across the spectrum. But the investors who should really worry right now are Intel’s. Advanced Micro Devices Inc. AMD, -2.01% has already proved itself to be a more worthy rival to Intel than in its previous attempts to challenge the larger chip company, and any inability to service the two biggest American PC manufacturers in their most important period for sales could drive HP and Dell right into AMD’s waiting arms. Right now, the concern is that Intel could give Dell and HP coal in their Christmas stockings, but the result could be a new Santa Claus next year for the PC makers. Read More Intel sticks some coal in Dell and HP’s Christmas stockings - MarketWatch : https://ift.tt/2OR14WBIntel Corp. may become the Grinch who stole Christmas from large PC makers. HP Inc. HPQ, -0.45% and Dell Technologies Inc. DELL, -3.40% both admitted Tuesday that they expect a negative impact on their future results as a result of chip shortages for which Intel apologized last week. Dell laid bare that the chip giant’s shortages have gotten worse, an issue that was not clear in the apology, since Intel INTC, +0.15% reiterated its stronger-than-expected guidance for the fourth quarter. “Intel CPU shortages have worsened quarter-over-quarter, the shortages are now impacting our commercial PC and premium consumer PC Q4 forecasted shipments,” Dell Vice Chairman Jeff Clarke said in an earnings conference call Tuesday afternoon. Dell cut its forecast for fiscal 2020, which includes two months in the current calendar fourth quarter, typically the industry’s busiest quarter of the year, thanks to holiday shopping. Dell stock took a hit, falling from slight gains to a decline of 4% in after-hours trading. HP’s PC business had revenue growth of 4% in the fiscal fourth quarter reported on Tuesday, which was slightly ahead of the industry growth rate, but HP said the supply shortages will “constrain” its sales in the current quarter, which will include two months of the holiday shopping season “So we are assuming that the CPU supply will constrain our revenue in Q1, and if you think about it on a sequential basis, certainly in the personal systems business, we would expect to have declines from Q4 to Q1 above the normal seasonal patterns,” Steven Fieler, HP Chief Financial Officer, said in response to an analyst’s question. “That being said...this is more of a revenue impact than profit impact for the quarter, as we expect our mix should be better.” HP still managed to hold on to its after-hours stock gains Tuesday, mostly because investors’ attention may be diverted to an unwanted takeover bid from Xerox Holdings Corp. XRX, -1.19% On the call, executives declined to discuss the $22-a-share offer from Xerox, which its board has rejected, and told analysts they would not answer any questions about Xerox. Investors should be much more focused on CPU shortages than ridiculous acquisition attempts from a smaller company dreaming of a different future for its sinking printing business, though. Shortages of CPUs have hurt PC makers previously, and higher prices for memory chips two holiday seasons ago put a major damper on margins for electronics companies across the spectrum. But the investors who should really worry right now are Intel’s. Advanced Micro Devices Inc. AMD, -2.01% has already proved itself to be a more worthy rival to Intel than in its previous attempts to challenge the larger chip company, and any inability to service the two biggest American PC manufacturers in their most important period for sales could drive HP and Dell right into AMD’s waiting arms. Right now, the concern is that Intel could give Dell and HP coal in their Christmas stockings, but the result could be a new Santa Claus next year for the PC makers. Read More Intel sticks some coal in Dell and HP’s Christmas stockings - MarketWatch : https://ift.tt/2P0vyWfDell Technologies Inc. DELL, -3.40% shares lost a post-earnings bump and dove to a decline of more than 5% in after-hours trading Tuesday after the PC manufacturer cut its revenue guidance and cited a shortage of chips from Intel Corp. INTC, +0.15% Dell cuts its revenue forecast for the full year to a range of $91.8 billion to $92.5 billion, after previously stating a range of $93 billion to $94 billion. "Intel CPU shortages have worsened quarter-over-quarter," Vice Chairman Jeffrey Clarke said in a conference call Tuesday afternoon. "The shortages are now impacting our commercial PC and premium consumer PC Q4 forecasted shipments." Intel admitted in a regulatory filing last week that CPU shortages were cropping up again, a problem from which the company has suffered for much of the year. Dell rival HP Inc. HPQ, -0.45% also briefly mentioned Intel CPU shortages in its earnings conference call, which was also held Tuesday afternoon, but HP maintained its after-hours gains. Read More Dell stock slides after cutting guidance, citing Intel CPU shortage - MarketWatch : https://ift.tt/34qXoRYIntel seems to be building its own version of the DualShock 4 controller that may harness the powers of cloud gaming. According to a design patent filed by Intel Corporation and published by United States Patent Office (via LetsGoDigital), the company is working on a "game controller having a game controller touchpad". The designs attached show a controller very similar to Sony's DualShock 4 controller, with symmetrical sticks, a D-pad on the left, four buttons on the right, a button in the middle and two more on either side of the a touch pad at the top of its face. There are also trigger buttons at the top as well as a micro USB port. The controller looks very similar to the DualShock 4, but it does seems to be a bit chunkier than Sony's offering, with a few more buttons at the bottom. There's also likely to be one major difference: cloud gaming capabilities. Cloud controlThis isn't the first time Intel has released a controller; the company launched the Universal Wireless controller to accompany the failed On Live cloud gaming service back in 2011, and it seems to have cloud gaming in its sights again this time. Intel is currently involved in both Google Stadia and parent company Tencent's new cloud gaming service Start. With its fingers in so many cloud gaming pies, it would make sense for Intel to release its own cloud gaming controller for all these services. The controller patent was registered in China first, suggesting it is (or was) intended for the mass Chinese market where Tencent focuses its operations. It was then registered in the US last year, suggesting the company may be looking to release the controller for other cloud gaming services it has ties with. This is all speculation so far, but it seems that Intel is dipping a toe into the game pad market again. TechRadar has contacted the company for comment. Read More Intel is building its own Dualshock 4 controller - TechRadar India : https://ift.tt/2pSJWah[unable to retrieve full-text content] Intel may sell home connectivity unit that brings in $450M annually Silicon Valley Business Journal Read More Intel may sell home connectivity unit that brings in $450M annually - Silicon Valley Business Journal : https://ift.tt/34od6NCIntel Core i9-10980XEa step forward for AI a step back for everything else - Ars Technica11/26/2019 Intel's new i9-10980XE, debuting on the same day as AMD's new Threadripper line, occupies a strange market segment: the "budget high-end desktop." Its 18 cores and 36 threads sound pretty exciting compared to Intel's top-end gaming CPU, the i9-9900KS—but they pale in comparison to Threadripper 3970x's 32 cores and 64 threads. Making things worse, despite having more than double the cores, i9-10980XE has trouble differentiating itself even from the much less expensive i9-9900KS in many benchmarks. This leaves the new part falling back on what it does have going for it—cost, both initial and operational. If you can't use the full performance output of a Threadripper, the i9-10980XE will give you roughly half the performance for roughly half of the cost, and it extends that savings into ongoing electrical costs as well. PowerOur i9-10980XE test rig was a lot easier to share an office with than the competing Threadripper 3970x rig. Its EVGA X399 Dark motherboard didn't make it look like a scene from Poltergeist was playing out in the office, and it drew a lot less power and threw off a lot less palpable heat. To be completely fair, some of the Threadripper rig's obnoxiousness probably could have been mitigated with motherboard settings—our NZXT Kraken x62 cooler's fans were in full-on leafblower mode the entire time the Threadripper was running, even while idling. While the Threadripper system did idle at an eye-watering 163W to the i9-10980XE system's 69W, that's not enough to explain the difference in fan RPMs. The i9-10980XE system didn't spin the fans up to obnoxious levels even under its full 257W benchmarking load. No matter how many excuses we make for the Threadripper based on its ROG motherboard's aggressive default fan settings, though, we're still looking at 69W vs 163W system draw at desktop idle and 257W vs 403W system draw under full load. In the current HEDT segment, the i9-10980XE is definitely the more frugal part to live with—particularly for those of us who live in Southern climes where July starts some time in April and doesn't end until late October. Performance
If you haven't spent the entirety of 2019 under a rock, it shouldn't be any surprise that Intel's i9-10980XE comes up short when compared to AMD's Threadripper 3970x, which also released this Monday. The i9-10980XE is an 18-core / 36-thread part to the Threadripper's 32 cores and 64 threads, and AMD's 7nm process has ended any offsetting performance-per-core advantages Intel once had. What's more surprising is that the i9-10980XE fell generally short of its elder brother, last year's i9-9980XE. Its best general-purpose benchmarking result—Cinebench R20—placed it within the margin of error of the older part. Worse, both single-threaded and multi-threaded Passmark ratings strongly favored the older chip. We also compared the i9-10980XE to its gaming sibling, the i9-9900KS. Although the i9-10980XE scored significantly higher in Cinebench R20, it didn't score significantly better in the more general-purpose Passmark test, despite having more than twice the cores—and costing twice as much. Meanwhile, in single-threaded Passmark, the 9900KS was 39 percent faster—and once again, the i9-10980XE fell behind its older sibling, the i9-9980XE. Then again—following a pattern we're all learning to recognize—the i9-10980XE is half the cost of the i9-9980XE, which sits in $2,000 territory alongside the much more powerful Threadripper 3970x. We feel sorry for any retailers sitting on existing purchased i9-9980XE stock, because while the older part is slightly more performant for general-purpose workloads, the difference certainly isn't worth double the cost. AI inference workloadsArtificial Intelligence workloads are the one place the i9-10980XE shines in its own right. Intel has been investing a lot of engineering effort into AI workload optimization, and the i9-10980XE features its Deep Learning Boost x86 extension instructions. With compilers that can take advantage of the new instruction set, Intel has been telling us that AI workloads can easily double their throughput. We ran AIXPRT's reference benchmarking workloads to test this claim. Sure enough, the i9-10980 more than doubled the otherwise more-performant i9-9980's throughput in OpenVINO image recognition work. It's worth noting that OpenVINO itself is an Intel initiative and it's unlikely to be as optimized for AMD processors as Intel. This lack of optimization can explain some of the performance delta between the Threadripper 3970x and the i9-10980XE, but it's difficult to come up with anything but Deep Learning Boost as the rationale for blowing the doors off Intel's own i9-9980XE. And yes, inference workload performance on CPUs really does matter. To explain why, let's first make sure we're clear on some basic terminology. A neural network can be operated in one of two modes—training or inference. In training mode, the neural network is essentially doing a drunkard's walk through a problem space, adjusting values and weights until it has "learned" the best way to navigate that problem space. Inference mode is much lighter weight; instead of having to traverse the entire space repeatedly, the neural network just examines one problem within the space and gives you its best answer, based on what it's learned during training. When doing significant amounts of training, you want a high-end GPU (or a bank of high-end GPUs), full stop. They can easily outperform general-purpose CPUs by an order of magnitude or more, saving both training time and operational power. Inference, however, is a different story—although the GPU may still significantly outperform a CPU, if the CPU's operational throughput and latency suffice for real-time interaction, it's much more convenient to let it do the work. Running inference workloads on general-purpose CPUs makes it possible to widely deploy them as tools that can be used in the field, on relatively generic hardware, and without the need for an always-on internet connection. This can also alleviate both privacy and latency concerns involved in sending data off to the cloud for remote inference processing. Some examples of real-world, modern AI inference processing include voice recognition, image recognition, and pattern analysis. While much of this is currently being done in the cloud, we expect increasing demand for local processing capabilities. Digital personal assistants such as Cortana are one obvious application, but AI can go even further than that. Right now, the Insider edition of Office365 allows you to type "what was the highest selling product in Q4?" into a text box and immediately have the appropriate chart produced for you... but that's only if you're willing to offload your data to the cloud. Without local inference processing chops, working with confidential data that can't leave the site where it's produced will feel more and more restrictive. Intel's betting a lot of its future on recognizing that fact—and being at the head of the pack when the rest of us do, too. Listing image by Jim Salter Read More Intel Core i9-10980XE—a step forward for AI, a step back for everything else - Ars Technica : https://ift.tt/33ptax8Intel reportedly is looking to sell its home connectivity business that supplies router and gateway manufacturers with Wi-Fi-enabling chips. Bloomberg reported that the Santa Clara, Calif.-based chipmaker has enlisted a financial adviser to assist with the sale of the business, which competes with Qualcomm and Broadcom. The news organization cited unnamed sources familiar with the matter. [Related: Solution Providers: $1B Apple-Intel Smartphone Modem Deal Undermines Qualcomm] Intel did not respond to a request for comment by press time. This would mark the second business unit put on the market by Intel CEO Bob Swan since he was appointed to the role in January. Most recently, the semiconductor giant sold a majority of its smartphone modem business to Apple for $1 billion, putting an end to the company's 5G smartphone ambitions. The home business unit, whose portfolio ranges from systems on a chip and Wi-Fi chipsets to Ethernet and voice products, brings in about $450 million in annual revenue, according to Bloomberg. Michael Oh, president and founder of TSP, a Cambridge, Mass.-based smart home solution provider, said it's possible Intel is looking to get out of a business focused on commodity hardware where it's difficult to differentiate enough against competitors. "I think it's a sensible move for them in the sense that if I was running Intel, this doesn’t make any sense," he said, pointing to how the home connectivity unit's revenue is a tiny fraction of Intel's largest businesses, such as its $37 billion PC chip business. Oh said Broadcom and Qualcomm have created tough competition in the home connectivity space, especially in light of the former's deal to supply chips for Comcast's Xfinity X1 platform. "Nothing on this website about their connected home says to me they have found the blue ocean of new opportunities," he said. While Intel did ink a new deal with Comcast in January to provide chips for home connectivity devices that enable 10-Gbps broadband and Wi-Fi 6, it's probably not enough to push the needle in in a way that puts the unit on the same level of Intel's growth businesses, according to Oh. "It has to be a crowded market because you're essentially competing against the Broadcoms and the Qualcomms of the world," he said. Read More Intel Hires Financial Adviser To Sell Home Connectivity Unit: Report - CRN: The Biggest Tech News For Partners And The IT Channel : https://ift.tt/2XMOCexIf you’ve heard of MediaTek, it’s probably been in relation to a midrange smartphone like the Motorola One Maco or Oppo Reno Z; but this Taiwanese chip-maker is everywhere; or more specifically, everywhere there’s an Amazon Echo device… so, basically, everywhere. Not content with infiltrating homes around the world, MediaTek now has its sights set on 5G laptops and flagship 5G smartphones as 2019 draws to a close. Kicking off with laptops and MediaTek is poised to hit the PC market, having announced a partnership with Intel. MediaTek will be offering up its 5G modems to Intel, and in turn, laptop makers, with the fruits of the partnership expected to hit the market around 2021. This isn’t the first time we’ve seen computers loaded up with cellular connectivity - Qualcomm’s chips connected devices like the HP Envy X2 back in 2018, for example. After reviewing that generation of Windows 10 on Snapdragon devices, however, it was clear that connectivity came at the cost of performance. Time to get excited?Why MediaTek’s partnership is different - and in turn, exciting, is because, by just supplying the 5G modem and letting Intel get on with making its tried and tested processors, there could be less margin for error. This could mean full-fat Windows and blisteringly fast data-speeds wherever you have 5G signal - so long tethering and WiFi hunting, as well as latency-free on-the-go online gaming. Dell and HP are expected to be amongst the first to make laptops packing Intel chips with MediaTek modems, so watch this space. 5G smartphonesSmartphones are getting the 5G treatment too, with MediaTek’s new 5G chipset, the Dimensity 1000 also announced. This could herald a wave of lower-cost 5G flagships, if the company’s value-centric history is anything to go by. What’s cool about this 5G chipset is that it supports 5G dual-carrier aggregation; in English, that means it can grab two 5G networks and pool their speeds together, enabling downloads of up to 4.7Gbps. That means a 100GB 4K movie could download in just over 21 seconds! With its 7nm architecture, MediaTek is claiming that the Dimensity 1000 delivers greater power efficiency than other 5G SoC, as well as support for 80MP camera sensors and AI image processing too. It’s also the world’s first chip to pack an Arm Mali-G77 GPU, so is expected to deliver flagship-grade gaming on displays with refresh rates of up to 120Hz. Luckily, we don’t have to wait until 2021 to get our Dimensity on, with 5G phones powered by MediaTek’s flagship processor expected to launch in Q1 2020. While we don’t know which smartphones will be getting the Dimensity 1000, current MediaTek partners include Motorola, Oppo and Sony, so our best guess lies with them. Read More Your next Intel laptop could be 5G-ready thanks to MediaTek - TechRadar India : https://ift.tt/35EoO78Intel (INTC - Get Report) is seeking buyers for its connected home division, according to a report from Bloomberg. The giant chipmaker has hired a financial adviser and is seeking to sell the unit that makes chips used in home internet access gear and has annual sales of about $450 million, Bloomberg reported, citing people familiar with the matter. Intel shares closed Monday at $58.81, up 2.08% during the session. The stock was inactive in premarket trading. The company's connected home business makes semiconductors that provide wireless connections for WiFi technologies and routers. Competitors include Broadcom (AVGO - Get Report) and Qualcomm (QCOM - Get Report) , Bloomberg noted. Intel late last month posted third-quarter earnings and sales that topped expectations, and the chipmaker raised its fourth-quarter guidance. Revenue in the quarter was $19.2 billion, and the company's Internet of Things division had sales of $1 billion, a gain of 9% from a year earlier. Data center revenue in the third quarter was $6.4 billion, up from $5.6 billion in the year-earlier quarter. Intel CEO Bob Swan described the quarter as the "best quarter in our company's history," with "data-centric" lines of businesses making up more than half of the overall revenue for the quarter. Within the data center group, Intel said that its cloud and comms segment - a services segment that the company has aggressively sought to expand amid wavering demand in other areas of its business - makes up over two-thirds of the group's revenue. On a shareholder call, Intel management acknowledged a more competitive environment in data center businesses, and elsewhere, but said that it's not complacent heading into 2020. "We do know that going into next year that our role is to dramatically expand the role we play in our customers' success, so we're expanding the product, the architecture, the packaging technologies, the process capabilities, and the software that we build so we can continue to deliver better and better product performance for our customers," Swan said. Read More Intel Reportedly Seeking Buyers for Its Connected Home Division - TheStreet.com : https://ift.tt/2QVvo4P |
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