How Intel is coping with the crisis and what development plan the company is preparing
By The Forex Review - 21 / January / 22 656
Dominick Bell
Despite global component supply problems, Intel will continue to meet demand for its microprocessors by increasing manufacturing capacity by 10 percent.
During the traditional meeting with the press after the Christmas break, Intel has offered an update on its strategy and its line of products planned for 2022.
The arrival of Pat Gelsinger as the head of the company marked a before and after, with his IDM 2.0 strategy marking the path for the coming years.
It is about Integrated Design Manufacturer, which Norberto Mateos himself, director of the Corporate Sector in the EMEA territory and general director of Intel in Spain, explained to us in an exclusive interview for Silicon a few months ago. Under these acronyms, the company becomes the only one capable of designing and manufacturing its own semiconductors without relying on third-party foundries, something that was not very clear in the roadmap prior to Gelsinger's arrival.
But it was one of the priority decisions of the former CEO of VMware: Intel wants to have control of the entire life cycle of the microprocessors that govern a good part of the PCs and servers on the planet.
Furthermore, Intel will also become the reference manufacturer for those companies that require the use of its technologies and manufacturing processes, so it will manufacture for other companies in the sector. It will achieve this through heavy investment in new facilities, including for the first time the factories it will build in the European Union. It must be remembered that the Old Continent does not have any so far, so this movement is part of the talks between Brussels and the semiconductor giant to invest 80,000 million euros in the region in the next 10 years.
Norberto Mateos Intel
Norberto Mateos, director of the Corporate Sector in the EMEA territory and general director of Intel in Spain
While these agreements materialize (in the coming months there will be news about it), Mateos assures that the industry will not suffer a shortage of Intel chips despite the growing demand that is taking place in sectors such as the automotive industry. On the one hand, Intel will increase its production capacity by 10 percent during 2022 (last year it was 15 percent). On the other hand, these sectors are looking for designs that are not state-of-the-art, “those in which we are not investing”, in clear reference to less powerful semiconductors to cover a computing demand that is not intensive.
Therefore, in the PC and server segments there will be no Intel chip supply problems.
Accelerating innovation
Regarding the roadmap set for future microchips, Mateos stresses that they are at a time when the transition to new manufacturing processes and architectures has accelerated enormously: “it is the fastest and most extensive in history”.
He explains to the director the cases of Intel 7, Intel 4, Intel 3 and Intel 20A (which will mark a new era in chip manufacturing); the processes that we will see during the next four years and that he also broke down in our interview.
On the other hand, Mateos makes clear Intel's strategy in terms of open hardware and software platforms, which allows the entire ecosystem to get the most out of its technology. Not surprisingly, it is part of more than 100 operating systems worldwide, while Intel is the main contributor to the development of the Linux kernel and is among the top three contributors to Chromium OS, Google's alternative.
Good health in the consumer market
The global pandemic changed the world, but it was technology that saved it from a true catastrophe. Without it, millions of people would not have been able to continue working from home, among many other cases. This caused a record growth in PC sales in 2020, a trend that has continued in 2021, with the gaming market marking an increase in sales of 25% and that of premium equipment by 15%, according to data offered by the company itself. company.
It is also interesting to see how the average purchase age has dropped by 5 years: users who buy a PC are getting younger, but they are also spending 11% more on average, which means they are looking for more powerful computers to cover different needs beyond work.
In 2021, sales grew 5% compared to the year before the pandemic, 2019. According to a survey conducted by Intel, 7 million households consider that they should change their PC in the future, with a purchase intention for this year of more than 2 million units and an average price of €731.
Undoubtedly, there are also good prospects for the consumer market in 2022.
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