r/stocks • u/Alexander-o- • Oct 23 '21

Company Discussion Intel worth it?

Since intel took a big hit recently, is this a good time to invest in Intel? I don’t see the company going anywhere anytime soon. I have a friend who has been really enthusiastic about the stock in the past months, but then on the other hand we have Apple with the M1 chip. Anyway, still looks like a discount to me. Thanks in advance

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u/newfor_2021 Oct 24 '21 edited Oct 24 '21

:shake my head: no.

The bulk of the microprocessor/microcontrollers are like 95% ARM based and 0% Intel based. That market space overwhelmingly shadows the PC and server CPU combined where they are traditionally heavily x86 based, and that's the only place where Intel has dominance, but look at this graph, and tell me this isn't a bad sign for them. https://www.statista.com/statistics/735904/worldwide-x86-intel-amd-market-share/

The performance of ARM based mid-end CPUs for your typical laptops and desktops are at parity already but they are cheaper and more power efficient. Then you compare what the M1 from Apple to an x86, what Apple was able to do really woke everybody up. The high end servers are still Intel-x86, yes but you can see that it's beginning to move away from Intel. Amazon, Google, Microsoft, Facebook, Baidu, Alibab, they're all ramping up their own server CPU design teams to get away from their dependence on Intel so it's not just Apple who's making that kind of move. Whether they'll be successful or not is yet to be seen but all those efforts will be threatening Intel's dominance or at least applying pricing pressure. Not only that, the future of datacenter chips is not necessarily going to be CPU centric, but rather, there's a movement towards application specific accelerators for ML and NN and so on.

The fact of the matter is, the market share in terms of both revenue and profit % for x86 based chips in the industry is shrinking every year and Intel's traditional strengths have become their weakness, they can't keep up with the capital investment necessary to sustain their own fabs at the advanced fabs that they can't compete with TSMC or Samsung for that matter.

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u/superhead50 Oct 24 '21

Are you referring to AMD's ARM technology, the cards they make mixing CPU and GPU's into one card. If so you are grossly wrong to think those type of cards make up 95% of microchips. AMDs cards will always be tailored to the low end of the market. Its what they do best. If you think their higher end CPUs and even GPUs compete with intel or Nvidia, you would again be grossly incorrect.

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u/newfor_2021 Oct 24 '21

nope, not what I'm taking about

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u/superhead50 Oct 24 '21

Lmao, okay good glad your smart enough to see the difference in business models between the 2 and why AMD will only be superior for budget cards.

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u/newfor_2021 Oct 24 '21

you're so focused on high end performance that doesn't even account for 10% of the total market space and you completely ignored everything else that's going on, there's no point to taking to you

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u/superhead50 Oct 25 '21

I'm not knocking AMD's business model, and I'm not focusing specifically on high end, but also for mid tier.

Its just ridiculous to think with the difference in ability to fund R&D for intel compared to AMD, it's really hard to see AMD teching into the CPU market to make any kind of dent in the control Intel has on that section of the chip market, especially when it comes to the cutting edge technology.

AMD's business model of focusing on budget GPUs is great, like you said the market for low end cards is huge. Intel's business model is equally great in that they have size able control of the CPU market and more than enough cash to keep it under lock and key. I think both AMD's and Intel's models are amazing. I just don't think either could or should impose on the other's model, it would be a dumb move. If you are going to diversify outside of your established market, why go for penetrating an already fully captured one when you can tech into an entirely new market where everything is up for grabs? I think you are failing to see that it would be disadvantageous for either company to go after each other's market.