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2021-05-13

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Intel: The Empire Strikes Back

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Up n up 🚀🚀🚀 Link n comment!!!","highlighted":1,"essential":1,"paper":1,"likeSize":1,"commentSize":1,"repostSize":0,"favoriteSize":0,"link":"https://laohu8.com/post/191414698","repostId":1106677605,"repostType":4,"repost":{"id":"1106677605","kind":"news","pubTimestamp":1620889592,"share":"https://www.laohu8.com/m/news/1106677605?lang=&edition=full","pubTime":"2021-05-13 15:06","market":"us","language":"en","title":"Intel: The Empire Strikes Back","url":"https://stock-news.laohu8.com/highlight/detail?id=1106677605","media":"seekingalpha","summary":"SummaryIntel’s historic stumbles over the last years have made it a potential story stock of one of ","content":"Summary<ul><li>Intel’s historic stumbles over the last years have made it a potential story stock of one of the greatest comebacks in U.S. technology history.</li><li>This is confirmed by an equally historic array of events in the last months in the wake of the CEO transition.</li><li>Intel is outsourcing its CPUs, while also building a foundry business itself (licensing its x86 CPUs). Intel has both TSMC and Arm in the crosshairs.</li><li>Intel could be a generational wealth building opportunity for investors. As Pat Gelsinger said, however, this will require execution, execution, and execution to capitalize.</li></ul>Investment ThesisThe quite historic Intel(NASDAQ:INTC)Unleashed event has beencoveredbyseveralotherSeeking Alpha contributors. This article represents my take (including some of the further developments since then).For some background, initially I was actually quite \"neutral\" on the CEO transition, which several Twitter followers found quite suspicious at the time. However, the short thesis is that Pat Gelsinger has proven me wrong in a matter of just weeks. Pat's ability to revitalize Intel (on the global semiconductor landscape) in just a few weeks should be considered extremely impressive.For a more substantive comment, the headline announcement was obviously the Intel Foundry Services rabbit that Pat Gelsinger pulled out of his hat. If Pat can really pull this off, then he would undoubtedly leave a large mark on Intel's legacy. The \"if\" is quite important, though, as there are obviously some caveats that apply.OverviewIn what is already a year full of landmark evolutions in Intel's history, Pat Gelsinger at the highly anticipated Intel Unleashed event announced Intel's latest salvo of actions towards its quest to regain industry leadership.Intel will become a foundry. It will be a fully separate business unit. This time no half-baked Intel Custom Foundry, but Intel instead is putting its money where its mouth is and is building two new fabs at its Arizona campus for the Intel Foundry Services business, worth $20B. Intel announced industry-wide support for this new unit, becoming the third major competitor at the leading edge of the foundry market, including from Qualcomm (QCOM), Amazon (AMZN) and Microsoft (MSFT). If that wasn't enough already, Intel is also putting all of its IP behind the effort, offering customers a range of industry-standard EDA tools as well as IP including Arm, RISC-V and even its very own in-house x86 CPUs and non-CPU IP (including graphics, display, AI, etc.). Intel has both TSMC (TSM) and Arm (NVDA) in the crosshairs with this combined offering. Intel will also readily tell that its industry-leading 2.5D and 3D packaging and chiplet capabilities are another unique, unmatched differentiator.Since the CEO transition, most had agreed that any changes that Pat Gelsinger would bring to the table, would take years to develop. Indeed, the 2023 roadmap was already baked (and delayed from 2022), and the Arizona fabs are targeted at 2024.However, just a few months in, and Pat is already putting his stamp on the company's future with these blockbuster announcements. For example, Intel will likely already be manufacturing automotive chips by the end of the year (the most impacted segment by the chip shortages).Still, a survey of commentaries shows that little has changed: the bears continue to point at Intel's lagging process execution, while the bulls praise Intel for becoming a U.S.- andE.U.-based leading edge semiconductor foundry, and are willing to provide Pat and Intel some credit in their quest to re-establish Intel's dominance. Let's dig deeper.Seizing the Foundry OpportunityIntel said it estimates the foundry opportunity to be worth $100B by 2025 (with about half or so of that at leading edge nodes). In the last few years, Intel has liked to talk up its TAM as its largest opportunity ever, so this makes that $300B number even higher. For a full pitch of Intel Foundry Services, see this Intel page:Intel Foundry Services. In short, Intel notes that demand for semiconductors is at all-time highs, and Intel also notes that it has the fab capacity in the E.U. and U.S. to meet those fabless customers' needs.As indicated, Intel is building a focused organization around its foundry business, led by a semiconductor veteran. Intel also provided almost two dozen quotes of industry support - which is a bit reminiscent to the numerous support quotes Qualcomm recently put out when it acquired Nuvia. Intel is also investing to build two new fabs (in part) dedicated to this foundry mission, worth $20B.One thing in that regard that I haven't seen much discussed is that Intel mentioned a few times the phrase \"committed capacity\". This makes one wonder if Intel has already secured major customer wins. In any case, Pat Gelsinger certainly wasn't shy about name-dropping potential customers, such as the cloud providers as well as possibly Apple (AAPL). During the Q1 call, Intel disclosed already engaging with over 50 potential customers.In other words, this truly will be a standalone business unit focused on the full industry - not just a few select customers like back in the Intel Custom Foundry days. (Speaking of which, while Intel's foundry efforts took a major hit due to the 10nm fiasco, this does mean Intel obviously already has vital experience in running a foundry business, so the learning curve shouldn't be large.)But Intel is going even further. Besides the fab capacity and dedicated organization under Pat's oversighting, Intel is also putting all of its IP behind this effort to further differentiate its position in the marketplace. This means Intel is offering foundry customers access to industry-standard EDA tools (to overall offer a similar experience as being a TSMC customer), which also includes access to Arm and even RISC-V IP. But even further, Intel also has what certainly must be one of largest portfolios of world-class logic IP, through its own in-house silicon engineering. Intel is also offering this IP to its Intel Foundry Services customers. This means access to things such as Intel's x86 cores, but also other IP such as display, AI, graphics, interconnect, etc.As Pat Gelsinger said, this is a really powerful strategy. Since RISC-V is still small, Intel is effectively becoming a competitor to Arm by licensing its x86 cores. All the arguments that have weighed on Intel's stock for years, about the dominance of Arm, suddenly have to be revised.For example, if a cloud service provider wanted to take Intel's x86 cores and create their own chips based on these cores, this would be completely possible - in the process effectively sidestepping the Intel client or data center business. This could hence be seen as an alternative to Arm's Neoverse effort. Whether this eventually results in x86-based AWS Graviton instances remains to be seen. But it does provide a clear, perhaps even visionary, response to some of the concerns of those players developing their own (Arm-based) silicon, at least in principle.Last but not least, while Intel has been falling behind in process technology (the exact extent of which could be debated), Intel remains at the forefront of the advent of modern 2.5D and 3D packaging. Intel's packaging capabilities such as EMIB and Foveros remain unmatched. Intel for example remains the only company with a true (multi-foundry, inter-company) chiplet ecosystem.This provides yet another quite compelling value proposition and could further proliferate Intel's chiplet strategy. For example, while Google(NASDAQ:GOOGL)(NASDAQ:GOOG)just a day ahead of Intel's Unleashed said that the SoC is becoming the new motherboard, Intel effectively said that the SiP (System-in-Package) is becoming the new SoC.Intel also notes that geographically, in current times of geopolitical issues, 80% of semiconductor manufacturing occurs in Asian. For some (like government customer), that might be another selling point.This only leaves the key question: will Intel Foundry Services succeed? Thebearswill obviously (a priori) say no, for example pointing to Intel lagging TSMC in key areas. However, investors should not be blind sighted to believe that leading edge manufacturing is a binary switch. TSMC, for example, continues to make substantial revenue on N-1 and even N-2 nodes. For a part this is because the process of moving to the leading edge is not a one-off event either. For example, while Apple was TSMC's first 5nm customer in Q3'20, AMD (AMD) likely won't (start to) transition to 5nm until the second half of 2022, a full two years later.Additionally, investors should also take note of the long list of customer/industry support Intel Foundry Services has received, which includes: Amazon (AMZN), Cisco (CSCO), Ericsson, Google, Qualcomm and others. Sure, these are just PR statements, but Pat's ability to revitalize Intel on the global semiconductor landscape in just a few weeks should be considered extremely impressive. Pat Gelsinger: \"I'm committed to making this [Intel Foundry Services] a huge success for Intel, it's a key piece of our IDM 2.0 strategy.\"Ultimately, fact of the matter is that Intel's move comesat a time when semiconductor supply chains have been elevated to even a political matter.Meteor Lake, 7nmThere was also another update on the 7nm process. This is now targeted at Intel's 2023 roadmap (as known since mid-2020), effectively representing a full one-year delay. Fact is that Meteor Lake was a 2022 product, and this has been shifted by a full year. This can only degrade its competitiveness (but as indicated this is not news anymore).Still, this may remind one of the sagas in early 2018 when Intel announced a similar slip of 10nm from 2018 to 2019. Note that summing these two one-year delays really implies a full two-year delay of the roadmap.On the flipside,Intel's progresssince mid-2020 should, in all honesty, leave investors with little doubt of Intel being able to deliver on this, delayed, roadmap.In any case, the update was that Meteor Lake will tape-in in Q2. Or rather, its compute tile will tape-in, as Intel announced that Meteor Lake will use Intel's 3D stacking Foveros packaging to mix and match IP. In particular, Intel also formally announced that it would outsource the compute tile, so as also expected there should be some products in 2023 based on TSMC-manufactured CPU cores.Note that the rumor mill had indicated Intel would leverage 3nm, while AMD's will likely move to 3nm only in 2024. As another reminder, Intel's 7nm in technical capabilities should be seen as about a TSMC 4nm process (somewhere between TSMC's N5 and N3).Intel provided quite a revealing explanation for the 7nm saga. Although Intel had initially advertised 7nm to investors as a learning from the 10nm issues, the issue with 7nm seems to be that it, too, was being developed while the outlook on EUV was still quite uncertain. Hence, Intel's initial 7nm seems to have used EUV quite conservatively, in relatively few layers. Intel said the new 7nm process flow (as it has been developed since mid-2020) uses over 100% more EUV. \"We have now fully embraced EUV\", Pat Gelsinger said.These are major, but highly welcome changes this late in the development cycle of 7nm.Overall, Intel message had been that 7nm was intended to be the culmination of its learnings from the prior delays, with flawless execution. Instead, 7nm itself seems to have had several issues. On the other hand, investors must also recognize theleadership/management changesIntel/Bob Swan announced in mid-2020, and the resulting progress on 7nm since that timeframe (in merely two to three quarters); Intel is building up a mini-track record again at a pace not even the bulls would have expected.Intel announced it would provide more details on its process and packaging later this year, perhaps at its upcoming Investor Meeting or Intel On event. With 7nm now being on track for 2023, investor attention should shift towards 5nm. Pat Gelsinger suggested he wanted to see an annual cadence from Technology Development.IDM 2.0In the aftermath of the 7nm delay and the outsourcing and other manufacturing questions Intel got, Bob Swan put what he called the \"modern IDM\" on the agenda. This meant a model in which Intel, driven by its modular (disaggregated, chiplet) architecture, has the ability to mix and match IP from various process technologies and foundries into a single product. Additionally, given its various acquisitions, Intel had already been increasingly using foundries anyway.Although some struggle with this, it is really quite simple: while Intel continues to clean up the mess it has from its process development, Intel has decided that using the best process technology (which for the time being isn't quite at Intel) could provide additional value for its CPUs. While it may be only for a limited number of CPUs, this should be seen as another tool in the Intel IDM toolbox to maintain the highest possible competitiveness.For example, I already mentioned the possible 3nm CPU in 2023 to leapfrog AMD.Swan called it \"modern IDM\", Pat Gelsinger now calls it \"IDM 2.0\". Ultimately, investors should recognize that the goal is the product that Intel will sell, not necessarily where and how it is manufactured.(And as discussed, Pat also added a third ingredient: Intel becoming a foundry itself.)IBM PartnershipFirst, this is not just some patent licensing agreement. Intel and IBM (IBM) clearly said their engineers would collaborate in New York.Secondly, while some may doubt about the value of this partnership, the proof is in the pudding. While IBM has sold its fabs years ago, it stillparticipates in quite fundamental research with regards to process technology. While I continue to believe Intel still has a world-class research organization on its own, some of the proof is nevertheless also here in the pudding of the past years of (lack of) execution.Financial UpdateIntel also used the event to update its financial guidance, asdiscussed here. For example, Intel provided a record capex guidance for $19-20B. While not quite matching TSMC, note that Intel has already been expanding its fabs for several years, already doubling its capacity from 2017 through 2020.Words of CautionI initially had a quite elaborate section here discussing the numerous 10nm and 7nm delays, to discuss some of the risks that cannot necessarily be neglected yet. But in short, the main observation is that given all the delays, 7nm Meteor Lake will launch a full four years (late 2019 -&gt; late 2023) after 10nm Ice Lake. That's double the usual Moore's Law cadence (and obviously Ice Lake itself was already delayed by 1-2 years).In other words, while Intel was keen to point out that \"Intel is back\",in reality Intel is still very far from back. That is indeed whatPat later confirmed, as he expects it will take several years to truly and fully catch up. (Note that Intel's execution has become so worrisome that both analysts and press had already started to doubt whether Intel willeverbe able to catch up.) For a part, though, that is exactly the investment thesis: Intel regaining industry-leadership.The Empire Strikes BackOne quite interesting illustration of this is Intel capitalizing on TSMC's supply constraints that have caused global shortages, kickstarting the Intel Foundry Services business.<img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/5ba4edfad5adcf0da83ea5d4d9dc6d1b\" tg-width=\"574\" tg-height=\"705\">RisksAs oft-quoted, thethree-headed dragon that composes Intel's main riskconsists ofAMD,NvidiArmandTSMC.That explains why this article is bullish. Intel Foundry Services 'attacks' TSMC, while its licensing of x86 disposes of the Arm threat.Investor TakeawaySo what does this leave for investors? First, clearly the easy money has already been made on the stock. The bargain was very obvious when Intel was sub-$50. The CEO switch has, however, brought a new wind of energy inside the company, as well as outside towards investors.This, secondly, does leave a lot more upside on the table however: the stock rallied to (nearly) multi-year highs simply on investor optimism (driven by the CEO transition), although it has already cooled off a bit since. Still, even after the rally Intel still has a (much) lower market cap than the likes of Nvidia (NVDA) and TSMC (TSM). Hence, I would argue that in case of successful execution, even the current investor optimism doesn't fully bake in the ultimate potential upside.In other words, if Pat Gelsinger and his army of tens of thousands of engineers really delivers on the path he and Intel are setting, Intel could be a generational wealth building opportunity for investors (just like other best-of-breed stocks such as Microsoft, etc.), as the rally could carry Intel stock a lot higher still. This may be similar, albeit obviously to a much smaller extent, to AMD when AMD was dirt cheap back in its near-bankruptcy days: the stock gives investors a story of Intel returning to its glory days under the new CEO.However, as the 7nm discussion in this article was meant to caution investors, any wealth by investing in Intel won't arise quickly. This is something that will take many years - even decades - to play out. This isn't GameStop (GME). From that view, short term traders might perhaps view the recent rally as an exit point to take profits.In the grand scheme of things (i.e. tech history), however, a few years really isn't all that much. Pat Gelsinger is doubling down to return Intel back to its glory days of industry leadership as the golden standard in semiconductors. As a long-time Intel bull, this is laudable, and Intel Foundry Services is the icing on the cake. But it will take execution, execution, execution.","source":"seekingalpha","collect":0,"html":"<!DOCTYPE html>\n<html>\n<head>\n<meta http-equiv=\"Content-Type\" content=\"text/html; charset=utf-8\" />\n<meta name=\"viewport\" content=\"width=device-width,initial-scale=1.0,minimum-scale=1.0,maximum-scale=1.0,user-scalable=no\"/>\n<meta name=\"format-detection\" content=\"telephone=no,email=no,address=no\" />\n<title>Intel: The Empire Strikes Back</title>\n<style type=\"text/css\">\na,abbr,acronym,address,applet,article,aside,audio,b,big,blockquote,body,canvas,caption,center,cite,code,dd,del,details,dfn,div,dl,dt,\nem,embed,fieldset,figcaption,figure,footer,form,h1,h2,h3,h4,h5,h6,header,hgroup,html,i,iframe,img,ins,kbd,label,legend,li,mark,menu,nav,\nobject,ol,output,p,pre,q,ruby,s,samp,section,small,span,strike,strong,sub,summary,sup,table,tbody,td,tfoot,th,thead,time,tr,tt,u,ul,var,video{ font:inherit;margin:0;padding:0;vertical-align:baseline;border:0 }\nbody{ font-size:16px; line-height:1.5; color:#999; background:transparent; }\n.wrapper{ overflow:hidden;word-break:break-all;padding:10px; }\nh1,h2{ font-weight:normal; line-height:1.35; margin-bottom:.6em; }\nh3,h4,h5,h6{ line-height:1.35; margin-bottom:1em; }\nh1{ font-size:24px; }\nh2{ font-size:20px; }\nh3{ font-size:18px; }\nh4{ font-size:16px; }\nh5{ font-size:14px; }\nh6{ font-size:12px; }\np,ul,ol,blockquote,dl,table{ margin:1.2em 0; }\nul,ol{ margin-left:2em; }\nul{ list-style:disc; }\nol{ list-style:decimal; }\nli,li p{ margin:10px 0;}\nimg{ max-width:100%;display:block;margin:0 auto 1em; }\nblockquote{ color:#B5B2B1; border-left:3px solid #aaa; padding:1em; }\nstrong,b{font-weight:bold;}\nem,i{font-style:italic;}\ntable{ width:100%;border-collapse:collapse;border-spacing:1px;margin:1em 0;font-size:.9em; }\nth,td{ padding:5px;text-align:left;border:1px solid #aaa; }\nth{ font-weight:bold;background:#5d5d5d; }\n.symbol-link{font-weight:bold;}\n/* header{ border-bottom:1px solid #494756; } */\n.title{ margin:0 0 8px;line-height:1.3;color:#ddd; }\n.meta {color:#5e5c6d;font-size:13px;margin:0 0 .5em; }\na{text-decoration:none; color:#2a4b87;}\n.meta .head { display: inline-block; overflow: hidden}\n.head .h-thumb { width: 30px; height: 30px; margin: 0; padding: 0; border-radius: 50%; float: left;}\n.head .h-content { margin: 0; padding: 0 0 0 9px; float: left;}\n.head .h-name {font-size: 13px; color: #eee; margin: 0;}\n.head .h-time {font-size: 11px; color: #7E829C; margin: 0;line-height: 11px;}\n.small {font-size: 12.5px; display: inline-block; transform: scale(0.9); -webkit-transform: scale(0.9); transform-origin: left; -webkit-transform-origin: left;}\n.smaller {font-size: 12.5px; display: inline-block; transform: scale(0.8); -webkit-transform: scale(0.8); transform-origin: left; -webkit-transform-origin: left;}\n.bt-text {font-size: 12px;margin: 1.5em 0 0 0}\n.bt-text p {margin: 0}\n</style>\n</head>\n<body>\n<div class=\"wrapper\">\n<header>\n<h2 class=\"title\">\nIntel: The Empire Strikes Back\n</h2>\n\n<h4 class=\"meta\">\n\n\n2021-05-13 15:06 GMT+8&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<a href=https://seekingalpha.com/article/4427816-intel-the-empire-strikes-back>seekingalpha</a>\n\n\n</h4>\n\n</header>\n<article>\n<div>\nSummaryIntel’s historic stumbles over the last years have made it a potential story stock of one of the greatest comebacks in U.S. technology history.This is confirmed by an equally historic array of ...\n\n<a href=\"https://seekingalpha.com/article/4427816-intel-the-empire-strikes-back\">Web Link</a>\n\n</div>\n\n\n</article>\n</div>\n</body>\n</html>\n","type":0,"thumbnail":"","relate_stocks":{"INTC":"英特尔"},"source_url":"https://seekingalpha.com/article/4427816-intel-the-empire-strikes-back","is_english":true,"share_image_url":"https://static.laohu8.com/5a36db9d73b4222bc376d24ccc48c8a4","article_id":"1106677605","content_text":"SummaryIntel’s historic stumbles over the last years have made it a potential story stock of one of the greatest comebacks in U.S. technology history.This is confirmed by an equally historic array of events in the last months in the wake of the CEO transition.Intel is outsourcing its CPUs, while also building a foundry business itself (licensing its x86 CPUs). Intel has both TSMC and Arm in the crosshairs.Intel could be a generational wealth building opportunity for investors. As Pat Gelsinger said, however, this will require execution, execution, and execution to capitalize.Investment ThesisThe quite historic Intel(NASDAQ:INTC)Unleashed event has beencoveredbyseveralotherSeeking Alpha contributors. This article represents my take (including some of the further developments since then).For some background, initially I was actually quite \"neutral\" on the CEO transition, which several Twitter followers found quite suspicious at the time. However, the short thesis is that Pat Gelsinger has proven me wrong in a matter of just weeks. Pat's ability to revitalize Intel (on the global semiconductor landscape) in just a few weeks should be considered extremely impressive.For a more substantive comment, the headline announcement was obviously the Intel Foundry Services rabbit that Pat Gelsinger pulled out of his hat. If Pat can really pull this off, then he would undoubtedly leave a large mark on Intel's legacy. The \"if\" is quite important, though, as there are obviously some caveats that apply.OverviewIn what is already a year full of landmark evolutions in Intel's history, Pat Gelsinger at the highly anticipated Intel Unleashed event announced Intel's latest salvo of actions towards its quest to regain industry leadership.Intel will become a foundry. It will be a fully separate business unit. This time no half-baked Intel Custom Foundry, but Intel instead is putting its money where its mouth is and is building two new fabs at its Arizona campus for the Intel Foundry Services business, worth $20B. Intel announced industry-wide support for this new unit, becoming the third major competitor at the leading edge of the foundry market, including from Qualcomm (QCOM), Amazon (AMZN) and Microsoft (MSFT). If that wasn't enough already, Intel is also putting all of its IP behind the effort, offering customers a range of industry-standard EDA tools as well as IP including Arm, RISC-V and even its very own in-house x86 CPUs and non-CPU IP (including graphics, display, AI, etc.). Intel has both TSMC (TSM) and Arm (NVDA) in the crosshairs with this combined offering. Intel will also readily tell that its industry-leading 2.5D and 3D packaging and chiplet capabilities are another unique, unmatched differentiator.Since the CEO transition, most had agreed that any changes that Pat Gelsinger would bring to the table, would take years to develop. Indeed, the 2023 roadmap was already baked (and delayed from 2022), and the Arizona fabs are targeted at 2024.However, just a few months in, and Pat is already putting his stamp on the company's future with these blockbuster announcements. For example, Intel will likely already be manufacturing automotive chips by the end of the year (the most impacted segment by the chip shortages).Still, a survey of commentaries shows that little has changed: the bears continue to point at Intel's lagging process execution, while the bulls praise Intel for becoming a U.S.- andE.U.-based leading edge semiconductor foundry, and are willing to provide Pat and Intel some credit in their quest to re-establish Intel's dominance. Let's dig deeper.Seizing the Foundry OpportunityIntel said it estimates the foundry opportunity to be worth $100B by 2025 (with about half or so of that at leading edge nodes). In the last few years, Intel has liked to talk up its TAM as its largest opportunity ever, so this makes that $300B number even higher. For a full pitch of Intel Foundry Services, see this Intel page:Intel Foundry Services. In short, Intel notes that demand for semiconductors is at all-time highs, and Intel also notes that it has the fab capacity in the E.U. and U.S. to meet those fabless customers' needs.As indicated, Intel is building a focused organization around its foundry business, led by a semiconductor veteran. Intel also provided almost two dozen quotes of industry support - which is a bit reminiscent to the numerous support quotes Qualcomm recently put out when it acquired Nuvia. Intel is also investing to build two new fabs (in part) dedicated to this foundry mission, worth $20B.One thing in that regard that I haven't seen much discussed is that Intel mentioned a few times the phrase \"committed capacity\". This makes one wonder if Intel has already secured major customer wins. In any case, Pat Gelsinger certainly wasn't shy about name-dropping potential customers, such as the cloud providers as well as possibly Apple (AAPL). During the Q1 call, Intel disclosed already engaging with over 50 potential customers.In other words, this truly will be a standalone business unit focused on the full industry - not just a few select customers like back in the Intel Custom Foundry days. (Speaking of which, while Intel's foundry efforts took a major hit due to the 10nm fiasco, this does mean Intel obviously already has vital experience in running a foundry business, so the learning curve shouldn't be large.)But Intel is going even further. Besides the fab capacity and dedicated organization under Pat's oversighting, Intel is also putting all of its IP behind this effort to further differentiate its position in the marketplace. This means Intel is offering foundry customers access to industry-standard EDA tools (to overall offer a similar experience as being a TSMC customer), which also includes access to Arm and even RISC-V IP. But even further, Intel also has what certainly must be one of largest portfolios of world-class logic IP, through its own in-house silicon engineering. Intel is also offering this IP to its Intel Foundry Services customers. This means access to things such as Intel's x86 cores, but also other IP such as display, AI, graphics, interconnect, etc.As Pat Gelsinger said, this is a really powerful strategy. Since RISC-V is still small, Intel is effectively becoming a competitor to Arm by licensing its x86 cores. All the arguments that have weighed on Intel's stock for years, about the dominance of Arm, suddenly have to be revised.For example, if a cloud service provider wanted to take Intel's x86 cores and create their own chips based on these cores, this would be completely possible - in the process effectively sidestepping the Intel client or data center business. This could hence be seen as an alternative to Arm's Neoverse effort. Whether this eventually results in x86-based AWS Graviton instances remains to be seen. But it does provide a clear, perhaps even visionary, response to some of the concerns of those players developing their own (Arm-based) silicon, at least in principle.Last but not least, while Intel has been falling behind in process technology (the exact extent of which could be debated), Intel remains at the forefront of the advent of modern 2.5D and 3D packaging. Intel's packaging capabilities such as EMIB and Foveros remain unmatched. Intel for example remains the only company with a true (multi-foundry, inter-company) chiplet ecosystem.This provides yet another quite compelling value proposition and could further proliferate Intel's chiplet strategy. For example, while Google(NASDAQ:GOOGL)(NASDAQ:GOOG)just a day ahead of Intel's Unleashed said that the SoC is becoming the new motherboard, Intel effectively said that the SiP (System-in-Package) is becoming the new SoC.Intel also notes that geographically, in current times of geopolitical issues, 80% of semiconductor manufacturing occurs in Asian. For some (like government customer), that might be another selling point.This only leaves the key question: will Intel Foundry Services succeed? Thebearswill obviously (a priori) say no, for example pointing to Intel lagging TSMC in key areas. However, investors should not be blind sighted to believe that leading edge manufacturing is a binary switch. TSMC, for example, continues to make substantial revenue on N-1 and even N-2 nodes. For a part this is because the process of moving to the leading edge is not a one-off event either. For example, while Apple was TSMC's first 5nm customer in Q3'20, AMD (AMD) likely won't (start to) transition to 5nm until the second half of 2022, a full two years later.Additionally, investors should also take note of the long list of customer/industry support Intel Foundry Services has received, which includes: Amazon (AMZN), Cisco (CSCO), Ericsson, Google, Qualcomm and others. Sure, these are just PR statements, but Pat's ability to revitalize Intel on the global semiconductor landscape in just a few weeks should be considered extremely impressive. Pat Gelsinger: \"I'm committed to making this [Intel Foundry Services] a huge success for Intel, it's a key piece of our IDM 2.0 strategy.\"Ultimately, fact of the matter is that Intel's move comesat a time when semiconductor supply chains have been elevated to even a political matter.Meteor Lake, 7nmThere was also another update on the 7nm process. This is now targeted at Intel's 2023 roadmap (as known since mid-2020), effectively representing a full one-year delay. Fact is that Meteor Lake was a 2022 product, and this has been shifted by a full year. This can only degrade its competitiveness (but as indicated this is not news anymore).Still, this may remind one of the sagas in early 2018 when Intel announced a similar slip of 10nm from 2018 to 2019. Note that summing these two one-year delays really implies a full two-year delay of the roadmap.On the flipside,Intel's progresssince mid-2020 should, in all honesty, leave investors with little doubt of Intel being able to deliver on this, delayed, roadmap.In any case, the update was that Meteor Lake will tape-in in Q2. Or rather, its compute tile will tape-in, as Intel announced that Meteor Lake will use Intel's 3D stacking Foveros packaging to mix and match IP. In particular, Intel also formally announced that it would outsource the compute tile, so as also expected there should be some products in 2023 based on TSMC-manufactured CPU cores.Note that the rumor mill had indicated Intel would leverage 3nm, while AMD's will likely move to 3nm only in 2024. As another reminder, Intel's 7nm in technical capabilities should be seen as about a TSMC 4nm process (somewhere between TSMC's N5 and N3).Intel provided quite a revealing explanation for the 7nm saga. Although Intel had initially advertised 7nm to investors as a learning from the 10nm issues, the issue with 7nm seems to be that it, too, was being developed while the outlook on EUV was still quite uncertain. Hence, Intel's initial 7nm seems to have used EUV quite conservatively, in relatively few layers. Intel said the new 7nm process flow (as it has been developed since mid-2020) uses over 100% more EUV. \"We have now fully embraced EUV\", Pat Gelsinger said.These are major, but highly welcome changes this late in the development cycle of 7nm.Overall, Intel message had been that 7nm was intended to be the culmination of its learnings from the prior delays, with flawless execution. Instead, 7nm itself seems to have had several issues. On the other hand, investors must also recognize theleadership/management changesIntel/Bob Swan announced in mid-2020, and the resulting progress on 7nm since that timeframe (in merely two to three quarters); Intel is building up a mini-track record again at a pace not even the bulls would have expected.Intel announced it would provide more details on its process and packaging later this year, perhaps at its upcoming Investor Meeting or Intel On event. With 7nm now being on track for 2023, investor attention should shift towards 5nm. Pat Gelsinger suggested he wanted to see an annual cadence from Technology Development.IDM 2.0In the aftermath of the 7nm delay and the outsourcing and other manufacturing questions Intel got, Bob Swan put what he called the \"modern IDM\" on the agenda. This meant a model in which Intel, driven by its modular (disaggregated, chiplet) architecture, has the ability to mix and match IP from various process technologies and foundries into a single product. Additionally, given its various acquisitions, Intel had already been increasingly using foundries anyway.Although some struggle with this, it is really quite simple: while Intel continues to clean up the mess it has from its process development, Intel has decided that using the best process technology (which for the time being isn't quite at Intel) could provide additional value for its CPUs. While it may be only for a limited number of CPUs, this should be seen as another tool in the Intel IDM toolbox to maintain the highest possible competitiveness.For example, I already mentioned the possible 3nm CPU in 2023 to leapfrog AMD.Swan called it \"modern IDM\", Pat Gelsinger now calls it \"IDM 2.0\". Ultimately, investors should recognize that the goal is the product that Intel will sell, not necessarily where and how it is manufactured.(And as discussed, Pat also added a third ingredient: Intel becoming a foundry itself.)IBM PartnershipFirst, this is not just some patent licensing agreement. Intel and IBM (IBM) clearly said their engineers would collaborate in New York.Secondly, while some may doubt about the value of this partnership, the proof is in the pudding. While IBM has sold its fabs years ago, it stillparticipates in quite fundamental research with regards to process technology. While I continue to believe Intel still has a world-class research organization on its own, some of the proof is nevertheless also here in the pudding of the past years of (lack of) execution.Financial UpdateIntel also used the event to update its financial guidance, asdiscussed here. For example, Intel provided a record capex guidance for $19-20B. While not quite matching TSMC, note that Intel has already been expanding its fabs for several years, already doubling its capacity from 2017 through 2020.Words of CautionI initially had a quite elaborate section here discussing the numerous 10nm and 7nm delays, to discuss some of the risks that cannot necessarily be neglected yet. But in short, the main observation is that given all the delays, 7nm Meteor Lake will launch a full four years (late 2019 -> late 2023) after 10nm Ice Lake. That's double the usual Moore's Law cadence (and obviously Ice Lake itself was already delayed by 1-2 years).In other words, while Intel was keen to point out that \"Intel is back\",in reality Intel is still very far from back. That is indeed whatPat later confirmed, as he expects it will take several years to truly and fully catch up. (Note that Intel's execution has become so worrisome that both analysts and press had already started to doubt whether Intel willeverbe able to catch up.) For a part, though, that is exactly the investment thesis: Intel regaining industry-leadership.The Empire Strikes BackOne quite interesting illustration of this is Intel capitalizing on TSMC's supply constraints that have caused global shortages, kickstarting the Intel Foundry Services business.RisksAs oft-quoted, thethree-headed dragon that composes Intel's main riskconsists ofAMD,NvidiArmandTSMC.That explains why this article is bullish. Intel Foundry Services 'attacks' TSMC, while its licensing of x86 disposes of the Arm threat.Investor TakeawaySo what does this leave for investors? First, clearly the easy money has already been made on the stock. The bargain was very obvious when Intel was sub-$50. The CEO switch has, however, brought a new wind of energy inside the company, as well as outside towards investors.This, secondly, does leave a lot more upside on the table however: the stock rallied to (nearly) multi-year highs simply on investor optimism (driven by the CEO transition), although it has already cooled off a bit since. Still, even after the rally Intel still has a (much) lower market cap than the likes of Nvidia (NVDA) and TSMC (TSM). Hence, I would argue that in case of successful execution, even the current investor optimism doesn't fully bake in the ultimate potential upside.In other words, if Pat Gelsinger and his army of tens of thousands of engineers really delivers on the path he and Intel are setting, Intel could be a generational wealth building opportunity for investors (just like other best-of-breed stocks such as Microsoft, etc.), as the rally could carry Intel stock a lot higher still. This may be similar, albeit obviously to a much smaller extent, to AMD when AMD was dirt cheap back in its near-bankruptcy days: the stock gives investors a story of Intel returning to its glory days under the new CEO.However, as the 7nm discussion in this article was meant to caution investors, any wealth by investing in Intel won't arise quickly. This is something that will take many years - even decades - to play out. This isn't GameStop (GME). From that view, short term traders might perhaps view the recent rally as an exit point to take profits.In the grand scheme of things (i.e. tech history), however, a few years really isn't all that much. Pat Gelsinger is doubling down to return Intel back to its glory days of industry leadership as the golden standard in semiconductors. As a long-time Intel bull, this is laudable, and Intel Foundry Services is the icing on the cake. But it will take execution, execution, execution.","news_type":1},"isVote":1,"tweetType":1,"viewCount":121,"commentLimit":10,"likeStatus":false,"favoriteStatus":false,"reportStatus":false,"symbols":["08237"],"verified":2,"subType":0,"readableState":1,"langContent":"EN","currentLanguage":"EN","warmUpFlag":false,"orderFlag":false,"shareable":true,"causeOfNotShareable":"","featuresForAnalytics":[],"commentAndTweetFlag":false,"andRepostAutoSelectedFlag":false,"upFlag":false,"length":38,"xxTargetLangEnum":"ORIG"},"commentList":[],"isCommentEnd":true,"isTiger":false,"isWeiXinMini":false,"url":"/m/post/191414698"}