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Intel fights back against growing consensus picture that delays in manufacturing caused the 52-year-old chipmaker behind rivals such as Advanced Micro Devices.
Over the course of nearly three hours, Intel (ticker: INTC) engineers from various business departments talked in depth about various lines of semiconductors it has in the works, discussed the upcoming computing and graphics processing units, and revealed details about the next month’s release of Laptop Lake processors. It also discussed a new server chip.
Markets for the most part shot the news. The stock was down 0.4% to $ 48.99 on Thursday. The PHLX Semiconductor index fell 0.4%.
Intel stock has been under pressure since at least 2019, as the company struggled to produce enough chips and hit its own targets for smaller transistor sizes – critical to improving the performance of its microprocessors. Last year, Intel said it would develop the capacity to produce seven nanometer chips by 2021, but revealed in July that its next-generation manufacturing process would not be ready until at least 2022.
Shares of Intel have fallen 19% since July, as investors have downgraded their semiconductor market after losing some confidence in the competitive advantage Intel has gained from both designing and manufacturing his chips.
Given its problems with seven-nanometer manufacturing, the company has used another method to improve the performance of its microprocessors. Intel said Thursday that it has developed a new method for making transistors, called SuperFin.
Raja Koduri of Intel’s chief architect said in a blog post Thursday that the transistor technology enhancements performance will be equivalent to going to a smaller transistor size without actually making the switch. Intel has previously said it can achieve transistor density with its 10-nanometer process, which is roughly what its rivals have achieved with solar nanometer manufacturing techniques. During its presentation Thursday, Intel said that the profit performance of SuperFin’s manufacturing process is roughly 15% to 20%.
Intel’s problems have left an opening for rivals such as AMD (AMD), which does not make its own chips, and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing (TSM), whose customers include AMD and rival graphics chip maker Nvidia (NVDA).
Intel stock market has fallen 17% this year as the S&P 500 index advanced 5.9%. The PHLX has won 20% this year.
Write to Max A. Cherney at [email protected]
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