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Intel To Cut IoT Jobs (electronicsweekly.com)

Posted by msmash on from the re-evaluation dept.

An anonymous reader shares a report: Intel is laying off people in its IoT group following its recent cuts to three of its IoT products -- the Joule, Edison and Galileo boards. 97 jobs are to be lost in Santa Clara and up to 40 more in Leixlip, Ireland. IoT accounts for less than 5% of Intel's sales.

2 of 107 comments (clear)

  1. Core Competency by AlanObject · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I learned my lesson long ago with Intel back in the i960 days or maybe before that. With them it is all about the CPU chips. No matter what they say. The one exception are their Network Interface chips

    Here is the pattern: They use their unlimited money+market position+PR machine to fund some kind of tech, pump up a bunch of customers, trade groups, get projects started with generous relationships ("partnerships"), make lots of press.

    A year or two down the road it gets de-funded, spun-out, quietly quashed. The numbers weren't what they wanted so the inevitable corporate-level decision is to return to our "core competency" and that of course is selling CPU chips.

    Anyone who was sucked into designing something with their switch chip product line knows what I am talking about. Remember SSI? If you didn't you dodged a bullet. Infiniband? Network Processors? FPGAs? Then Over 2+ decades (starting with the i186) every 3-4 years they would venture into the embedded controller market just to pull back out of it again. Not Intel Core? Not committed.

    However their current product lineup for embedded is actually pretty damn good. Not only are their designs better thought out but market and ecosystem conditions are fortuitous for them. Most of all, it is now all about selling Intel i3/i5/i7-family CPUs. That alone will keep that line it alive.

  2. Re:What is Up with Intel by thegarbz · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Intel could very simply make GPU cards

    Intel are the number one GPU company in the market.

    Oh you meant high-performance GPUs? Man now don't have a clue about the industry do you? Patents aside, you can't just turn around and plop a high performance GPU at a good cost out overnight. Or even overyear. There are many 10s of thousands of R&D manhours that go into GPUs and lots of those hours end up in the patent office preventing other people from using the same idea.