Re: But why does the first chip of a new generation need to be top of the range?
[Revised repeat of something I posted around here earlier in the week]
SemiAccurate published an article earlier this month, which I haven't seen in full, on the re-emergence of "contra revenue" [1] at Intel, and the lack of emergence of Intel 10nm parts into real products - even though 10nm was first scheduled to emerge in 2015 or so?! Highlights at
https://semiaccurate.com/2018/05/08/contra-revenue-comes-back-in-a-big-way-at-intel/
Related coverage at:
https://www.tomshardware.co.uk/intel-cpu-10nm-earnings-amd,news-58336.html (Article published 27 April 2018 after Intel's financial results included more details of 10nm delays)
See also Intel's admission in 2016 that their Tick Tock model was dead:
https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2016/03/intel-retires-tick-tock-development-model-extending-the-life-of-each-process/
See also: Intel recruit chip design expert Jim Keller (ex-AMD, ex-Apple, etc), widely reported in April 2018, e.g. [2]
https://www.anandtech.com/show/12689/cpu-design-guru-jim-keller-joins-intel
And see also Intel's CEO unexpectedly selling all the shares he could late last year (some time before some interesting news became public), and consequently rather upsetting the financial markets, e.g. [3]
https://www.forbes.com/sites/kenkam/2018/03/06/why-i-have-lost-confidence-in-intels-ceo/
Maybe, just maybe, Intel's cash pile and product pipeline isn't as secure as it used to be. Still, even if the legacy x86 (largely Wintel) market hits harder times, Intel still have... er, what is there, exactly?
It's worse than that, Intel's dead Jim. Dead, Jim.
Ooops.
[1] "Contra revenue": a name for Intel's incentive payments (er, subsidies) to system builders in markets where Intel would otherwise be a hopeless basket case, e.g. low power/mobile/SoC. Basically, anything which isn't legacy x86.
[2] "[...] The prolific microarchitectural engineer [Keller] has been involved in a number of high-profile CPU & SoC projects over the years, including AMD’s K8 and Zen CPUs and Apple’s early A-series SoCs. Now after a stint over as Tesla for the past couple of years, Intel has announced that they have hired Keller to lead their silicon engineering efforts. [...]"
[3] "[...]Krzanich acted with some urgency to sell every share he could and still keep his job as CEO about a month before the security vulnerabilities of Intel's processors became public knowledge.
Even though Intel's stock has recovered since the news broke, as an investor, I have lost confidence that Krzanich can put the company's interests ahead of his own during a crisis."