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Comment by colinmhayes | Hacker News Reader

Intel is currently worth less than AMD even though Intel's profit is quite a bit higher than AMDs entire revenue. I recognize that Intel has huge problems to solve but they absolutely seem undervalued currently.

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Intel have been making balls-out plays (i.e. they could've just sold the fab business and MBA-ed themselves to death) and making good money but their stock is 30% or so down from last year so I am inclined to agree.

They'll never have a run like they did from Nehalem through to Zen's launch, but I think they're about to prove that they still have it and that they know how to sell chips.

But they have mba'd themselves to death.

Not really. Intel’s two core issues are engineering failures — process technology and processor architecture

Are they having architecture issues? I guess I could criticize them for too-aggressively pursuing small microachitectural advantages leading to failures like Meltdown and making them spend more engineering-years than AMD for products that aren't that much better but, baring Meltdown, the end architectural results have been pretty good. My gripes would all be with the process, management decisions about how to respond to the process problem, or fusing off features for product segmentation reasons.

By architecture, I’m referring to trade offs then made for single thread performance vs core count and memory channels

I have a basis peak in my desk that says otherwise.

Has nothing to do with Intel’s problems

it was an intel product when it was shut down because of the wrist expositions.

I know what it is, but does that have to do with Intel’s problems? Sohail and Dadi probably did not think about Basis Peak for more than 10 minutes over the entire period Intel operated the brand

I just mention that as a way to illustrate they they were not reinvesting their capital into verification/quality and R&D or focusing on their core competency.

this was during the period when intel was riding the IOT hype train and made some dumb purchases.

see here for more

https://www.businessinsider.com/intel-is-probably-the-worst-...

I am very well aware of the history here. Again, Intels misadventures in IOT have absolutely nothing to do with their challenges today, which are rooted in a handful of poor engineering decisions

AMD spun off their fab business, they didn't MBA themselves to death so I'm not sure why that's the only possible end result you see?

The bad CEO (Hector Ruiz) who probably would have done it left, and AMD eventually got a much much better CEO (Lisa Su).

Given how Global Foundries has essentially given up in regards to moving to better nodes, it seems like spinning the fabs off and going to contract manufacturing was absolutely the right call. AMD was already a gen or so behind and falling back further due to lack of investment in it's fabs.

MBA-ed to deadth hehe

German "Tod durch BWLer".

If a company suffered from this it is IBM. They sold they're hardware business with long term earnings and the entry path to many customers was lost. Now there is Red Hat with the IBM-Letter attached to it. At least we see improving support for ThinkPads through Red Hat. Apple, Microsoft, Amazon instead invested in hardware with software. Siemens is another exampled for dead by MBA, thanks for ruining Siemens Nixdorf. How you can even think about focusing a company on one single market with a "Profit Center", you loss the broad base and flexibility. No other part can sustain you till you adapt to a change.

AMD is way more nimble than Intel though, since they're fabless.

That puts them more at the mercy of their suppliers. Replace "nimble" with "not in control".

And I'm more nimble than both because I'm fabless and designless.

This seems like a strategic drawback.

Why? Plenty of chip companies are fabless. Apple is fabless, Nvidia is fabless.

Neither Apple nor Nvidia compete with TSMC, while Intel does

Intel competing with TSMC will not be a problem for Intel or TSMC until the chip shortage is well and truly behind us.

The argument was that being fabless is a strategically bad move. I don't see how Intel competing with TSMC refutes that? What am I missing here?

I agree they are undervalued. That said, AMD is growing quickly in terms of earnings, and intel is not. I think it’s a matter of time and impeccable execution before Intel is winning again.

A quick search shows INTC market cap is 184B and AMD is 135B. AMD is worth 73% of Intel.

My quick google search shows AMDs cap at 183B. So maybe not more valuable, but equally. Apparently AMD was worth more yesterday though https://finance.yahoo.com/news/amd-is-now-worth-more-than-ri...

They are both a bit over 180B, that AMD number is prior to the XLNX acquisition which was done by issuing stock.

As of a few minutes ago... AMD: 181.86B INTC: 183.97B

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