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![]() Intel has published a letter confirming its own supply issues in Q3 of this year, while simultaneously affirming its overall guidance for Q4. The letter, from Michelle Johnston Holthaus, GM of the Sales, Marketing, and Communications Group at Intel, acknowledges and apologizes for the yearlong PC supply shortage that Intel’s OEM customers have been grappling with. The letter indicates that shipping delays for PC parts have become worse in recent weeks and that Intel is still struggling to ship. “Despite our best efforts, we have not yet resolved this challenge,” the letter reads. It refers to the “recent” impact PC CPU shipment delays may have had on Intel’s partners, with references later in the letter implying that production variability in Q3 has made it harder for Intel to deliver CPUs on time. Intel, I want to note, is serious about this letter. Serious enough that when I visited the company’s financial page (to review what its Q4 guidance was), I actually saw this notification: This is a bit more aggressive than one would normally expect for a supplier update. The letter states that Intel has invested record amounts of cash in expanding 14nm production this year at the same time it’s ramping 10nm, but notes that continued demand constraints are pinching Intel fabs. We haven’t seen Intel struggle like this for fab production for a long time, but there are several potential explanations. First, there’s the fact that Intel has historically carefully managed production, bringing fabs online and deploying new processes, while older fabs transition to manufacturing secondary parts on older nodes. The long delay to 10nm blew this strategy up. Intel deployed multiple generations of products on 14nm, but this time it had to sharply increase core counts without the density improvements it would have otherwise gained. Yield issues are another place where Intel may be pinched at the moment. New nodes always suffer from lower yield than full-fledged mature products, and Intel’s 14nm manufacturing should be in an excellent place right now. But after so many years of delay, and with a need to make certain it hit its “Holidays 2019” forecast for 10nm, Intel may have been forced to put the node into wider production at a lower yield than it would have otherwise done, had the delays not happened in the first place. Allocating more fab space for production on a low-yielding node would also hit overall manufacturing capability — you’re using fab lines to build lower-yielding 10nm parts rather than higher-yielding 14nm ones. This is partially offset by the fact that the 10nm chips are all mobile quad-cores at the moment, but clearly Intel is still struggling to bring its CPU shortage completely under control. The company letter states that Intel is “increasing our use of foundries,” implying that the rumors we heard about Intel outsourcing some chipset or non-CPU work to companies like TSMC were true. Depending on exactly which work Intel wants to outsource, it could theoretically partner with GF or Samsung as well. Holthaus says that Intel increased CPU To date, Intel has taken the impact of its shortage at the low end of the market, choosing to emphasize high-end shipments to maximize revenue. This has paid dividends — the company’s performance in Q3 2019 set a record, even as the shortage continued to grip the market. It may also be paying dividends for AMD, however, which has been gaining market share partly as a result of Intel’s difficulty with shipments. Intel’s guidance for Q4 is as follows: Approximately $19.2B in revenue, with an operating margin of 31.5 percent (Intel’s gross margin, which is what we normally discuss, is much higher), a tax rate of 15 percent, and earnings per share of $1.28. Revenue in Intel’s CCG (PC) group was $9.7B in Q3 2019, down 5 percent. Overall revenue in Q3 2019 was up 6 percent compared with Q3 2018, however, thanks to growth in data center, IoT, Mobileye, networking, and FPGA. Now Read:
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![]() New Chip Has Higher Compute Density Than Nvidia's T4 GPU Intel artificial intelligence executive Gadi Singer said the chipmaker's channel partners will play a "crucial" role in the success of the new Nervana NNP-I chips for deep learning inference workloads. "The first wave of engagements that we have are with some of the large cloud service providers, because they are very advanced users of that and they use it by scale," Singer, a 36-year company veteran, told CRN in an interview. "But as we are working with them, we are also bringing it to a point where [...] it will be available for larger scale, and this is where our partners are crucial for success." [Related: Nvidia's Jetson Xavier NX Is 'World's Smallest Supercomputer' For AI ] As vice president of Intel's Artificial Intelligence Products Group and the newly formed Inference Products Group, Singer has played a central role in development of the NNP-I1000, which was revealed alongside the Nervana NNP-T1000 chip for deep learning training at the Intel AI Summit on Tuesday. Inference is a critical part of deep learning applications, taking neural networks that have been trained on large data sets and bringing them into the real world for on-the-fly decision making. This has created an opening for Intel and other companies to create specialized deep learning chips — a market that is forecast to reach $66.3 billion in value by 2025, according to research firm Tractica. From a competitive standpoint, the chipmaker said a 1U server rack containing 32 of its NNP-I chips provide nearly four times the compute density of a 4U rack with 20 Nvidia T4 inference GPUs. In a live demo at the summit, the NNP-I rack was processing 74,432 images per second per rack unit while the Nvidia T4 rack was processing 20,255 images per second per rack unit. "The fact that it's high power efficiency allows us to reach density and very good total cost of ownership," Singer said. What follows is an edited transcript of CRN's interview with Singer, who talked about the NNP-I's target use cases, how Intel plans to accelerate adoption, what pain points it plans to address for businesses running deep learning workloads and how it differs from Xeon's deep learning capabilities. Read More Intel AI Exec Gadi Singer: Partners 'Crucial' To Nervana NNP-I's Success - CRN: The Biggest Tech News For Partners And The IT Channel : https://ift.tt/2s4KKcNSouth Korea's government says it will stay in the General Security of Military Information Agreement, or GSOMIA, with Japan, reversing course hours before a midnight deadline. Here, a protest banner about the plan is seen in Seoul on Friday. Ahn Young-joon/AP hide caption South Korea has reversed its decision to scrap a military intelligence-sharing agreement with Japan, hours before the move was to become official at midnight Friday. South Korea had said in August that it would leave the pact, after Japan removed the country from its "whitelist" of favored trade partners. The eleventh-hour reversal salvages a 2016 pact brokered by the Obama administration that has allowed South Korea and Japan to share valuable information about their neighbors, most notably North Korea and China. "Six hours before the pact was due to expire, Presidential National Security Deputy Director Kim You-geun told reporters that Seoul would remain in the pact for now but could leave at any time," NPR's Anthony Kuhn reports from Seoul. "The U.S. sees the General Security of Military Information Agreement, or GSOMIA, as essential to dealing with nuclear and missile threats from North Korea." South Korea's pivot on GSOMIA follows progress on trade, with Japan agreeing to resume talks about export controls and Seoul pledging to drop a World Trade Organization action against Japan. The U.S. has been urging its two close allies to preserve the deal and tone down their disputes, which are rooted in lingering disagreements over Japan's decades-long colonization of Korea and its occupation of the country during World War II. As NPR has reported:
As the U.S. worked to preserve the intelligence pact, Secretary of Defense Mark Esper visited South Korea and spoke with President Moon Jae-in about GSOMIA last week. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo also discussed the deal with his South Korean counterpart, Foreign Minister Kang Kyung-wha, on Thursday night. Kang arrived in Japan on Friday night for the Group of 20 meeting of foreign ministers, which is being held on Friday and Saturday in Nagoya. Moon's decision to leave GSOMIA has been a polarizing issue in South Korea, where protesters demonstrated both in favor of and against the deal. The president's critics are now saying Moon gave in to U.S. pressure to mend ties with Japan. "Washington says that it is a matter for the two countries to settle, but its demand that Seoul remain in the GSOMIA falls nothing short of taking sides with Tokyo," opinion columnist Oh Young-jin writes in The Korea Times. As news of the partial thaw emerged, South Korea's Yonhap news agency reports that Moon and Japan's Prime Minister Shinzo Abe "may hold one-on-one summit talks" next month. Read More South Korea Says It Won't Pull Out Of Japan Intel-Sharing Pact — For Now - NPR : https://ift.tt/33bEPQj
DENVER, Nov. 22, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- At the SC 2019 in Denver, Inspur released an HPC system based on Intel Xeon Platinum 9200 processors in collaboration with Intel. The system supports up to 112 cores, 9.3 TFLOPS of FP64 performance and 24 memory channels per node, a maximum of four nodes on a 2U server, and on-board liquid cooling. It will provide a cost-efficient, intensive and green supercomputing platform for global HPC users. With data size and computing load surging, HPC applications need higher operation performance, memory bandwidth and data throughput. Massive HPC systems present new challenges on intensity and cooling modes of computing devices. The HPC system released by Inspur answers to the increasing demands on computation performance from massive parallel HPC applications to help HPC users better solve major scientific problems featuring increasingly larger-scale computation. The system, equipped with the Intel Xeon Platinum 9200 processors designed for intensive computation, supports up to dual 56-core CPUs with built-in AI acceleration fueled by Intel Deep Learning Boost and 24 DDR4 2933MHz memory banks per computing node. Its FP64 performance reaches 9.3 TFLOPS per node at the maximum, making it the highest-performing processor in Intel's 2nd generation Xeon Scalable processor family. Interconnected and scalable through the Intel OmniPath Architecture high-speed network, the system enables easy cluster expansion to thousands of nodes. It is particularly suitable for HPC, big data, image and video processing, virtual applications and other computation-intensive scenarios. Tests on a single-node Intel Xeon Scalable 9242 platform show that with 24 32GB of 2933MHz memory, the system can deliver a memory bandwidth of up to 300 GB/s when running a WRF application; when the system is used to run a VASP application, its memory bandwidth reaches as high as 450 GB/s, with the performance standing at 4,000 GFLOPS. In addition, the system integrates Inspur's ClusterEngine - a cluster management platform, and Teye - a HPC application performance monitoring and analysis system, to effectively address management and application optimization challenges for massive HPC clusters. Specifically, ClusterEngine enables comprehensive management of HPC clusters. Teye provides scientific and effective guidance for application bottleneck investigation, application algorithm improvement and parallel computing efficiency increase. Meanwhile, Inspur's HPC experts have more than 10 years of experience in application optimization and nearly 300 application databases in more than 10 industries. This enables Inspur to provide customized services for application optimization and effectively enhance computing efficiency. About Inspur Inspur is a leading provider of data center infrastructure, cloud computing, and AI solutions, ranking among the world's top 3 server manufacturers. Through engineering and innovation, Inspur delivers cutting-edge computing hardware design and extensive product offerings to address important technology arenas like open computing, cloud data center, AI and deep learning. Performance-optimized and purpose-built, our world-class solutions empower customers to tackle specific workloads and real-world challenges. To learn more, please go to www.inspursystems.com. Intel, the Intel logo, Xeon and OmniPath are trademarks of Intel Corporation in the United States and/or other countries. SOURCE Inspur Electronic Information Industry Co., Ltd ![]() Related LinksRead More Inspur Releases Intel Xeon Platinum 9200-based HPC System at SC19 - PRNewswire : https://ift.tt/2pFGJL6It’s beginning to look like a really interesting market. After years of essentially one player taking all the spoils, we now have a significant second that has the technology to make a difference. The incumbent is of course Intel INTC, which just apologized to customers for continued supply constraints, despite double-digit growth in supply from the first half to the second while maintaining its raised guidance (fourth-quarter revenue of $19.2 billion and EPS of $1.28 and full-year revenue of $71 billion and EPS of $4.42). Unanticipated increase in PC demand is not the only issue however. Intel is also trying to maintain 14nm production while ramping up 10nm. It’s building out capacity and one might argue why this wasn’t done before while there were all the product delays. But supply-demand parity hasn’t been achieved yet and management hasn’t said anything about when it will be. So that’s that. On the other side, we have challenger Advanced Micro Devices AMD, which is announcing one breakthrough device after another, significant partnerships with companies like Alphabet’s GOOGL Google and Amazon AMZN and manufacturing alliances with leading edge foundry Taiwan Semiconductor TSM, which is making its 7nm chips. It’s true that NVIDIA NVDA is also a player, but it doesn’t have x86 at the core and is instead focused on GPUs and the largescale parallel processing they enable. This is making waves at HPC and the data center in general (especially after the Mellanox acquisition). But NVIDIA doesn’t play in all the x86 categories like PCs, mobile computing and data center the way AMD does. So Intel and AMD are the main rivals. Just for perspective, let’s see what the two companies brought in last quarter. Intel generated $19.19 billion in revenue and $1.42 in EPS (up $27 million and 2 cents a share, respectively, or more or less level with year-ago revenue and EPS in percentage terms). AMD brought in $1.80 billion in revenue and $0.14 in EPS (up $148 million (9.0%) and 4 cents a share (40%), respectively from last year). So AMD’s revenue and per share earnings are about 9% of Intel’s, making it almost like a David-Goliath situation. Moreover, Intel has $12.025 billion on its balance sheet while AMD has a mere $1.209 billion. AMD also generates a small fraction of the cash flow that Intel does. The difference in financial position between the two companies, despite the fact that AMD is growing much faster, means that Intel has significant resources to go into a very aggressive price war that AMD will find it harder to sustain. This can especially hurt the company as it preps to target mid and high-range segments (especially in mobile computing). Intel will no doubt adopt this strategy as its design teams have fallen behind and semiconductor designs take years to develop, which is followed by qualifying the production process, ramping production and bringing to market. Intel being the foundry for its own chips has the added difficulty that it doesn’t rely on expertise that’s already available (it may however do this if necessary). Intel’s management team is also not what it used to be. Given these difficulties and the fact that current management has admitted to a likelihood of share losses to AMD, all the traditional Intel partners have their Plan B, which is AMD. So they have at least some AMD-powered models and systems. But what about the valuation? At 12.29X forward twelve months’ earnings, INTC shares are trading in a tight range, but below its median value over the past year. They’re also trading below the S&P 500’s 17.97X. So Intel shares are undervalued. AMD on the other hand is trading at 48.02X, which is close to the high end of the range over the past year, so it’s obviously overvalued. That would be unless it consistently beats estimates over the next year by a significant margin. So for comparison, let’s take a look at its surprise history. The company has met estimated earnings in each of the last two quarters, it beat by 21% in the quarter prior to that and missed by 11% before that, averaging a 2.2% gain in the last four quarters. This doesn’t look too significant. If AMD doesn’t significantly top expectations in the next year, the current valuation looks untenable. That’s why we have a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold) on AMD shares and a Zacks Rank #2 (Buy) on INTC shares. You can see the complete list of today’s Zacks #1 Rank (Strong Buy) stocks here.
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Intel late yesterday disclosed in a Securities and Exchange Commission filing that the company is experiencing shipment delays in personal computer microprocessors, while noting that it is adding capacity to meet strong demand. The chip giant also affirmed its previous fourth-quarter guidance. The disclosure came in the form of a letter Intel (ticker: INTC) sent to customers and partners and signed by Michelle Johnston Holthaus, executive VP and general manager of the company’s sales, marketing and communications group. “Supply remains extremely tight in our PC business where we are operating with limited inventory buffers,” Holthaus said in the letter. “This makes us less able to absorb the impact of any production variability, which we have experienced in the quarter. This has resulted in the shipment delays you are experiencing, which we appreciate is creating significant challenges for your business.” Editor's ChoiceFor the fourth quarter, Intel continues to project $19.2 billion in revenue and earnings of $1.28 a share, or $1.24 a share on a non-GAAP basis. Intel shares are up 0.3% to $58.06 in late morning trading Thursday. Here is the full text of the letter: November 20, 2019 To our customers and partners, I’d like to acknowledge and sincerely apologize for the impact recent PC CPU shipment delays are having on your business and to thank you for your continued partnership. I also want to update you on our actions and investments to improve supply-demand balance and support you with performance-leading Intel products. Despite our best efforts, we have not yet resolved this challenge. In response to continued strong demand, we have invested record levels of Capex increasing our 14nm wafer capacity this year while also ramping 10nm production. In addition to expanding Intel’s own manufacturing capability, we are increasing our use of foundries to enable Intel’s differentiated manufacturing to produce more Intel CPU products. The added capacity allowed us to increase our second-half PC CPU supply by double digits compared with the first half of this year. However, sustained market growth in 2019 has outpaced our efforts and exceeded third-party forecasts. Supply remains extremely tight in our PC business where we are operating with limited inventory buffers. This makes us less able to absorb the impact of any production variability, which we have experienced in the quarter. This has resulted in the shipment delays you are experiencing, which we appreciate is creating significant challenges for your business. Because the impact and revised shipment schedules vary, Intel representatives are reaching out with additional information and to answer your questions. We will continue working tirelessly to provide you with Intel products to support your innovation and growth. Sincerely, Michelle Johnston Holthaus Executive Vice President General Manager, Sales, Marketing and Communications Group Write to Eric J. Savitz at [email protected] Intel apologizes for CPU shortages which remain a problem (AMD will be glad to hear) - TechRadar11/21/2019 ![]() Intel has apologized for the CPU shortages which have plagued would-be buyers of its processors for some time now, in a letter published via its online newsroom. The letter, written by Michelle Johnston Holthaus, executive VP and GM of Sales, Marketing and Communications at Intel, begins: “I’d like to acknowledge and sincerely apologize for the impact recent PC CPU shipment delays are having on your business and to thank you for your continued partnership. “I also want to update you on our actions and investments to improve supply-demand balance and support you with performance-leading Intel products. Despite our best efforts, we have not yet resolved this challenge.” As you’re probably aware, issues around stock shortages have blighted Intel for some time now, and the chip giant’s problems in producing enough 14nm CPUs to meet demand have been ongoing since way back last year (tied in with even more prolonged struggles to get 10nm to be viable in terms of mass production). In the letter, Intel further observed that it has invested ‘record’ levels of capital in increasing 14nm wafer capacity throughout the course of 2019 (while also ramping up 10nm). The company also said it had expanded its own manufacturing capability, and increased the use of foundries to produce more Intel processors, efforts which have all led to boosting its PC CPU supply by ‘double digits’ in the second half of this year compared to H1 2019. But Holthaus then notes: “However, sustained market growth [in PCs] in 2019 has outpaced our efforts and exceeded third-party forecasts.” The demand for CPUs is such that Intel still cannot meet it, despite all these efforts, is essentially the long and short of the situation as it stands. With supply remaining tight, Intel says that it’s “less able to absorb the impact of any production variability, which we have experienced in the quarter”. 2020 visionWe recently heard rumors (from Intel partners including big-name laptop manufacturers) that the CPU shortages could continue well into 2020, for at least another quarter or two, and that speculation would seem to marry with Intel’s latest comments on the matter. Meanwhile, Intel faces further pressures from AMD which is kicking up a storm with its latest Ryzen 3000 processors, not to mention Epyc server chips. And this leaves Intel in a strange and uncomfortable position whereby it is staring down the barrel of an intense supply/demand conundrum, while simultaneously facing major pressures from AMD that has meant Intel has been forced to slash prices on some CPUs despite the shaky supply lines. Intel, then, is being pulled one way and another by stock shortages and demands of a different kind on the price-cutting front. Meanwhile, the dominance of Ryzen 3000 desktop CPUs is making further demands in terms of the urgency for Intel to push out new 10th-gen Comet Lake processors – a further refinement of 14nm which, admittedly, are looking impressive from the recent leaks we’ve seen. Read More Intel apologizes for CPU shortages – which remain a problem (AMD will be glad to hear) - TechRadar : https://ift.tt/37s3rYn[unable to retrieve full-text content]
The Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJINDICES:^DJI) was down 0.07% at 1:55 p.m. EST Thursday as trade deal negotiations and the impeachment inquiry in the House of Representatives generated plenty of noise. Shares of Intel (NASDAQ:INTC) managed a small gain despite the company's admission that it has yet to solve its supply problems. And ExxonMobil (NYSE:XOM) was up strongly following a report of an acceleration of asset sales. Intel still dealing with supply issuesA long delay getting its 10nm manufacturing process ready for volume production has created some serious problems for Intel. Partly because of the push-out of the 10nm process, Intel has been unable to supply enough chips to meet demand. Prioritizing higher-end PC and data center chips has led to shortages in the low-end PC market. This situation has been going on since last year, and the company confirmed in an open letter to its customers on Wednesday that it's still a problem. The company apologized to its customers in the letter for recent PC CPU shipment delays, and it said that supply remains tight, because market growth has outpaced its efforts to ramp up production. ![]() Image source: Intel. Intel is increasing investment in 14nm capacity to reduce the impact of these shortages, and it's successfully boosted its PC CPU supply by a double-digit percentage in the second half of this year. But that hasn't been enough to satisfy the market for its chips. This prolonged shortage gives rival Advanced Micro Devices (NASDAQ:AMD) an opportunity to steal more market share away from Intel. AMD launched its third-generation Ryzen PC CPUs in July, built on a 7nm process from a third-party foundry. In the desktop PC CPU market, AMD has gained 5 percentage points of market share from Intel over the past year. Intel will eventually solve its supply issues. But until it does, the company is handing AMD market share on a silver platter. Intel stock was up 0.2% despite the news. Exxon targets $25 billion of asset salesOil major ExxonMobil was already planning to divest $15 billion of assets by 2021. The company is aiming to dispose of less-desirable noncore assets, using the proceeds to invest in projects that offer higher returns on investment. Exxon announced a deal to sell $4.5 billion of Norwegian assets in September as part of this plan. Reuters reported on Thursday that Exxon has accelerated its asset sale program. The company now reportedly plans to divest up to $25 billion of assets in Europe, Asia, and Africa. The plan includes:
Shares of Exxon are essentially flat this year. The stock was up 1.9% on the asset sale news. Read More Dow Jones News: Intel Shortages Continue; ExxonMobil Ramps Up Asset Sales - Motley Fool : https://ift.tt/2s6lenISAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Apple Inc (AAPL.O) and Intel Corp (INTC.O) on Wednesday filed an antitrust lawsuit against Fortress Investment Group, alleging the SoftBank Group Corp (9984.T) unit stockpiled patents to hold up tech firms with lawsuits demanding as much as $5.1 billion. FILE PHOTO: The Apple Inc. logo is seen hanging at the Apple store on 5th Avenue in Manhattan, New York, U.S., October 16, 2019. REUTERS/Mike Segar/File Photo The lawsuit follows an earlier case that Intel filed against Fortress in October. Intel withdrew that lawsuit and on Wednesday filed a new version in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California with Apple joining as a plaintiff. Intel and Apple allege that Fortress and firms it either owned or whose patent portfolios it effectively controlled - and which do not make any technology products - stockpiled patents for the primary purpose of suing technology companies and did so in a manner that violated U.S. antitrust laws. “Apple has suffered economic harm in the form of litigation costs and diversion of resources away from innovation to respond to these entities’ serial nuisance suits,” Apple wrote in the complaint. SoftBank declined to comment. “We do not comment on the specifics of pending litigation, but we remain confident in our business practices and our legal position,” Gordon Runté, managing director at Fortress, told Reuters in an email. “We view this lawsuit as meritless and look forward to a court’s decision on the matter.” In the filing on Wednesday, Apple said firms connected to Fortress had filed at least 25 lawsuits against the iPhone maker demanding $2.6 billion to $5.1 billion in damages. One of the suits, Apple wrote in its filing, alleged that Apple violated a step-counting patent in its devices with health-tracking apps. Two Fortress-connected firms, Uniloc USA and Uniloc Luxembourg, “have disclosed that they believe they are entitled to damages of between $1.41 and $2.75 per Apple product, for total damages in the range of $375 to $732 million,” Apple wrote in its complaint. “The apparent precision of the per-unit damages request is a facade; Uniloc USA and Uniloc Luxembourg simply adopted the amounts that Apple sought from Samsung in litigation for Apple’s patents,” Apple wrote, referring to South Korea’s Samsung Electronics Co Ltd (005930.KS). Intel said it could not comment beyond the court filing. Apple, which invested in SoftBank’s first Vision Fund and in July was listed among organizations pledging to contribute to a second fund, did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Reporting by Stephen Nellis; Additional reporting by Sam Nussey; Editing by Sandra Maler, Christopher Cushing, James Drummond and Richard Chang
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Read More Apple, Intel file antitrust case vs SoftBank-owned firm over patent practices - Reuters : https://ift.tt/2QHUILA
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