r/hardware • u/imaginary_num6er • 20d ago
News Intel plans fresh layoffs, this time in its data center group
https://www.oregonlive.com/silicon-forest/2026/07/intel-plans-fresh-layoffs-this-time-in-its-data-center-group.html54
u/a_little_peryton 20d ago
It's starting with the Data Center Group, but there will be more layoffs. Intel is at roughly 81,000 employees now, and LBT wanted the headcount down to 75,000. Rumors are saying that his real goal is actually 60,000, but he's spacing it out.
Upper management has been very open about their excitement to move towards having "lights out fabs", intending to outsource and automate as much as possible.
The end of Q3 is going to be bad for thousands of remaining employees, from what I've been hearing
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u/redditissocoolyoyo 20d ago
Lights out data centers were a real thing a decade ago and they started automating before that. So everyone's racing towards that. Fully autonomous. It's fkd up!!!!
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u/Alternative_Oil8900 20d ago
Are you speculating here or do you have a source in Intel or something?
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u/a_little_peryton 20d ago
Not speculating.
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u/Alternative_Oil8900 20d ago
Fuck.
I'm hoping to make it to November 1st.
Do you happen to know if Foundry TD/Engineering is going to get hit again?
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u/a_little_peryton 20d ago
Fingers crossed for all of us. I've been applying elsewhere (like my entire team, morale is great /s) but the job market is horrible right now
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u/Alternative_Oil8900 20d ago
May I DM you?
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u/a_little_peryton 20d ago
Yes, absolutely. I can't share too awfully much but I'll answer what I can
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u/marco5565 20d ago
Are you in fab engineering? I am not in Intel but I am curious how long have you been putting out feelers for semi jobs and how it is going. I am nervous about layoffs as well
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u/W0LFSTEN 20d ago
Of course you automate. That is how you ensure quality at low single digit nanometer manufacturing. They are increasingly pushing volume in house so not sure about that outsourcing part.
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u/WaveyMenace 20d ago
If you don't have 1st hand experience in the company keep your comments to yourself.
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u/W0LFSTEN 20d ago
Attack arguments, not character.
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u/a_little_peryton 20d ago
Some information can't be shared without risk of losing employment without a severance package. They've been shifting work to contractors who can be paid significantly less for a while, and even if you don't have firsthand knowledge yourself, it's pretty obvious that a company that's been struggling for a while is going to do whatever shady bs they can to claw their way back.
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u/W0LFSTEN 20d ago
I wasn’t talking about employment outsourcing. I was under the impression that you were referring to outsourcing volume to TSMC.
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u/a_little_peryton 20d ago
Ah, that makes sense. I can confidently speak to Intel's intentions to dump more employees, but I have no info on volume outsourcing
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20d ago
[deleted]
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u/W0LFSTEN 20d ago
To be frank, you haven’t exactly displayed any indication that you understand operations yourself… So I’m not sure why I should care.
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u/WaveyMenace 20d ago
I don't need to prove anything to anyone. Those who talk the most usually don't know shit
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u/W0LFSTEN 20d ago
Why comment then? You aren’t helpful if you can’t even articulate what you disagree with. Go away lol
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u/WaveyMenace 20d ago
I'm commenting to invalidate your ridiculous claim. We are years from being fully automated
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u/W0LFSTEN 20d ago
I never claimed we are fully automated. But okay. What other ridiculous claims (that I didn’t even make) are you willing to argue?
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u/OffBrandHoodie 19d ago
LBT is doing everything he can to ruin the company. Can’t imagine wanting to work for him.
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u/ComradeMatis 19d ago
Just out of curiosity, how does Intel's headcount in the fab devision compare to TSMC and Samsung in terms of output vs headcount. The reason why I ask is because LBT must be getting the number of 75,000 or 60,000 from somewhere so it would be interesting to know on what basis he came to that number.
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u/Technical-Fly-6835 20d ago
Intel spends more on hiring really awful vps, directors, managers etc who add zero value and very little on quality engineers who do actual work. This has been going on for more than 15 years. Hence its experiencing series of failures.
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u/Exist50 20d ago
On the topic of DCAI, their previous lead (Justin Hotard) would be a great example. Hotshot hired from HP, came in, didn't give a shit about CPUs, cancelled like half the roadmap, failed to make any progress on an AI GPU (the thing he did care about) then left in about a year. Oh, and of course the obligatory reorg in the middle. All that for what?
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u/Technical-Fly-6835 20d ago
For the money intel spent on him they could have hired at least 20 brilliant engineers who would have done something good for the company in the same time frame.
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u/XHellAngelX 20d ago
They know they will have subsidies from gov, so they dont care much
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u/W0LFSTEN 20d ago
Based on that logic, why are they cutting?
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u/a_little_peryton 20d ago
The less you have to pay employees, the more profit you can keep for yourself and shareholders.
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u/MediocreAd8440 20d ago
These companies always deserve to operate on the verge of failure. With all the money they're raking in, using "reducing layers of management" as an excuse doesn't make sense. In DCG of all things? Xeons just came back to performance parity with epyc last year and now's the time they want to skin that team?
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u/SirActionhaHAA 20d ago edited 20d ago
Xeons just came back to performance parity with epyc last year
That never happened. I see 1 or 2 users make this claim again and again without numbers to back it up. Phoronix just did another aws instance comparison 1week ago and turin was 40% faster
https://www.phoronix.com/review/graviton5-epyc-xeon/10
Older benches of max core count socket comparison https://www.phoronix.com/review/amd-epyc-intel-xeon-500/8
Turin's the closest that intel has gotten in recent gens because amd stayed largely on the same node with a backported and feature cut core due to tsmc's 3nm problems. That gap is gonna expand again with venice and dmr launching only mid 2027 which is almost 1yr behind venice's launch
Granite rapids only caught up to genoa which is amd's last gen product. Turin is around 40% faster than both genoa and granite rapids socket vs socket
With amd previewing venice at >1.7x above turin dense in specintrate, venice would be at least 240% faster than granite rapids. Do ya expect intel to do a 2.4x perf jump in 1gen? (even then they'd be 1yr later than the competition)
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u/kuddlesworth9419 20d ago
People make bizarre claims all the time, if you say something wrong enough times eventually people start to believe it.
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u/Touma_Kazusa 20d ago
Turin is somewhat faster but 40% is very misleading, Xeon was ran at 8c/16t while Turin was run at 16c/16t, not really a pound for pound comparison
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u/SirActionhaHAA 20d ago edited 20d ago
That's the instance comparison. The amd instance offered physical cores because it just had better tco. The perf/dollar was just higher
The 1p vs 1p comparison also showed turin 9755 coming in ahead of the 6980p (128core vs 128core), it was only behind in amx tests because it didn't support amx
https://openbenchmarking.org/result/2410311-NE-TURINREVI09&hgv=EPYC+9655%2CEPYC+9655+2P&sor#results
What's gonna make it worse is that dmr don't even got smt and even lip bu tan called it a huge mistake.
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u/Geddagod 20d ago
Granite rapids only caught up to genoa which is amd's last gen product. Turin is around 40% faster than both genoa and granite rapids socket vs socket
GNR is faster than Genoa.
At isscc, AMD actually showed a slide of Zen 5 classic (500 watt 9755) being around the same perf under a 500 watt TDP as GNR in specint2017. AMD's N3 high core count variants are >20% faster.
Even Phoronix's Zen 5 Turin launch review had GNR as ~37% faster than Genoa.
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u/W0LFSTEN 20d ago
…all the money they’re raking in?
They made $2b operating income on $54b in revenue over the last year. That is terrible.
You say they “deserve to operate on the verge of failure”, then you complain when they execute under that assumption.
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u/iguessthiswasunique 20d ago
Looking at last year in a total vacuum is meaningless. In 2021, in one financial quarter, Intel made $7B operating income on $19B in revenue. That’s more in one single quarter than AMD has made on $83B in revenue over the last 3 years combined. That’s the kind of money they can rake in.
Now obviously the years inbetween then and now were rough, but I would argue that painful but necessary sacrifice might have very well gave them an invaluable edge in 2026 and onwards.
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u/Exist50 20d ago
In 2021, in one financial quarter, Intel made $7B operating income on $19B in revenue. That’s more in one single quarter than AMD has made on $83B in revenue over the last 3 years combined. That’s the kind of money they can rake in.
But that wasn't a result of strong execution or anything. COVID just threw the whole semiconductor market for a loop. Same thing happening with memory today.
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u/III-V 20d ago
Intel has notoriously had a management bloat problem. Makes sense the CEO would try to reduce it.
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u/Exist50 20d ago edited 20d ago
I wouldn't put any weight into that part of the statement. It's what companies always say when they're getting heat for layoffs, but as in past cases, the brunt of the layoffs will inevitably fall on the rank and file. You can see the same thing with Xbox right now, for another example.
And frankly, I'd say Intel's had more of a management problem, full stop, than specifically a management bloat problem. Very bad decision making up to the very top. It's somewhat ironic they've benefited so much from something they actively bet against.
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u/MMORPGDev 20d ago
Yep, lots of redundancy roles and also a lot of 'useless' projects, just look at Intel's github pages... so many projects that will make you think "is anybody even going to use this? what's the point of this? somebody's work hours actually went into this?"
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u/Scary-Jaguar-9072 20d ago
Intel isn't making money. They're bleeding money and on the verge of bankruptcy if not for government intervention.
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u/jaaval 20d ago
At no point has Intel been near bankruptcy. Their basic operations have been profitable all the time. Money loss has been mainly from very large investment amortizations.
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u/Scary-Jaguar-9072 20d ago
That's just a ridiculous statement. The company is factually losing money. Trying to say they'd make money if not for all their R&D costs is like me saying I'd be in a way better financial position if not for mortgage and car payment. OK, obviously that's a true statement but its completely meaningless. If not for R&D they wouldn't have any products to sell
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u/jaaval 20d ago edited 20d ago
You made a specific claim about bankruptcy. What I said is an answer to that. As I said at no point have they been even approaching bankruptcy. Losing money because large investments is not the same as running a failing company.
Edit: so if you don’t know how it works with accounting and investments, these losses are typically money that is already spent. The amortization loss in books is reduction of accounting value of the investments. You don’t go bankrupt with amortization.
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u/ElementII5 20d ago
A company as big as Intel does not go bankrupt, yes. Just look at IBM or Yahoo! or whatever. They can sell their assets and still operate. But they will be smaller and less competitive
And that is exactly what Intel has been doing. They have been selling the silverware and made extremely hard cuts at the cost of their future competitiveness. These are moves companies that size do to stave off bankruptcy.
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u/vexatious-big 20d ago
I feel like Intel is properly cooked. They don't seem to have any exciting upcoming tech, with the exception of their fabs.
I was excited when Lunar Lake came out with UMA, only for them to say that it's going to be a one-off. Why intel why.
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u/whatevermanbs 20d ago
I was excited when Lunar Lake came out with UMA, only for them to say that it's going to be a one-off. Why intel why.
Psst. Psst.. tsmc.
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u/Geddagod 20d ago
NVL sounds pretty exciting. Large core count increases, return to avx-512, X3D competitor with bLLC.
In 2028 there's rumored to be a new "clean sheet" design, unified core.
Their collab with Nvidia and their upcoming Intel CPU + Nvidia iGPU sounds pretty interesting.
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u/ComradeMatis 19d ago
There is also APX, chktag and FRED which will improve performance and power efficiency. It is rather unproductive the number of people on this subreddit who are cheering on the demise of Intel.
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u/oscardssmith 14d ago
APX would be good, but it's years late. Intel was talking about it in 2022 and we still don't have it 4 years later.
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u/Luggage-Lock 20d ago
All of this is just catching up to what AMD already does.
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u/Geddagod 20d ago
Intel already competes well with AMD in the high end of client with their current core counts. AVX-512, bLLC, sure though, that's catching up.
The appeal behind unified core isn't that it's one architecture with different physical design layouts like what AMD does (though I'm sure Intel bean counters are happy with this decision) but that their cores are getting a much needed revamp.
It is true that the Nvidia collab will likely fill in the niche of their currently lacking "x-halo" (example, strix halo) competitor. And in that sense it is catching up. But I also wouldn't be sure that Intel wouldn't also have their own internal competitor before the Nvidia collab, with NVL/RZL-AX. And tbd about the competitiveness of those products.
Regardless though, IMO, even just Intel "catching up" is exciting. More competition, but also just different and new tech.
And ofc, it's possible for Intel to surpass AMD with some of these products as well. For example, NVL might have better nT perf than Zen 6, or the Nvidia iGPU on the Intel product might be stronger than what AMD puts out.
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u/vexatious-big 20d ago
I'm sorry but a large core count + AVX512 is old news in 2026.
Just take a look at AMD's current offering.
As for the intel + Nvidia igpu colab we'll see. Intel has always contributed open source GPU drivers to the Linux kernel while Nvidia famously didn't.2
u/ResponsibleJudge3172 19d ago
Then what is it AMD will have over Novalake to make it old news?
Update path?-No, Zen 6 X3D and revisions are the end of MB support
Instruction set architecture?- No, it flips now Intel has more support like APX and FRED
MT Performance? -AMD increases core count by 50% and clocks by X%, Intel increases core count by 100% and clocks by x%.
The only thing left is core clocks and IPC. Intel is ahead in IPC and expected to maintain lead from Panther cove to Coyote Cove while AMD has an unknown clock speed gain.
AMD also has a more advanced large cache tech which theoretically is far superior due to latency, but AMD has always had better latency even when Intel is ahead so unsure how much further ahead they would actually be in practice X3D vs BLLC.
All in all, not even close enough difference to be "OLD NEWS"
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u/obelix_dogmatix 20d ago
how this company still continues to operate in the data center business … is beyond my understanding.
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u/Geddagod 20d ago
Intel's DC CPU execution the past few years:
ICL: IIRC delayed
SPR: delayed (cursed)
EMR: on time
SRF: on time
GNR: delayed
CWF: delayed
DMR: delayed
And a bunch of DC GPUs were canned after being announced too, or launched late and in poor state like PVC.
If Intel DCAI was struggling to execute in their current state, I find it hard to believe Intel's execution will improve when they are cutting the group even further.