Both of you ignore the obvious. Intel is a company in terminal decline. You're right that won't belly up, but only because it's "too big to fail." Kind of like Sears. All it's going to take is an activist CEO to break it up and sell it off for parts.
I don’t think they are necessarily in terminal decline. I think under previous management they were living a lifestyle that was killing them. It was as if they were eating too much and not exercising — focused only on short run pleasure not long run health. They were kind of like Rocky at the start of Rocky 3, but worse (imagine Rocky 50 pounds over weight eating pizza and drinking beer all the time).
I think Gelsinger is trying to get this fighter back in shape and restore the eye of the tiger. There’s no guarantee he will succeed, but I think it’s at least possible that he might.
I hope he does because it would mean we get better manufacturing nodes faster. And apple could use Intel to fab apple silicon.
It's not looking good. Intel stock reached all-time high of $73.19 on July 14, 2000. It closed Friday, 23 years later at $28.19, roughly a third of that long-ago high. The movement pattern I've identified shows that share price increases leading up to earnings releases, and then crashes on disappointing results. This has held true on virtually EVERY quarterly earnings report. The latest, from this week, was the worst in both earnings and forward-looking projections, made by the company itself.
Intel has no chance whatsoever under its present business model, leadership or technology. They'll have to scrap everything and start from the ground up, or break up and sell off the parts. It truly makes me sad to contemplate, both as a (former) shareholder and as a product user.
That brings up an interesting question; sell the parts to whom? The first in line with the most money would be from China. Domestic politics would (quite rightly) stop that. Same goes for most other foreign buyers. But who in the US or even the G20 would have the deep pockets needed, and would be deemed trustworthy enough to own the big American Chip Company’s design, and fab facilities?
This was always the strength of Apple Silicon, they had 5x better performance-per-watt than Intel when they switched. Fractionally better performance numbers are meaningless if the computer sounds like a hairdryer and lasts 60 minutes on battery.
<snip>
^^^This. Forget the whining about butterfly keyboards. I could NOT stand how the fans constantly ran on my previous MacBook Pro while doing nothing! I have yet to hear the fans on MacBook Pro as ALL Apple computer use to be and are again, SILENT!!!!!!!!!!!!
Both of you ignore the obvious. Intel is a company in terminal decline. You're right that won't belly up, but only because it's "too big to fail." Kind of like Sears. All it's going to take is an activist CEO to break it up and sell it off for parts.
I don’t think they are necessarily in terminal decline. I think under previous management they were living a lifestyle that was killing them. It was as if they were eating too much and not exercising — focused only on short run pleasure not long run health. They were kind of like Rocky at the start of Rocky 3, but worse (imagine Rocky 50 pounds over weight eating pizza and drinking beer all the time).
I think Gelsinger is trying to get this fighter back in shape and restore the eye of the tiger. There’s no guarantee he will succeed, but I think it’s at least possible that he might.
I hope he does because it would mean we get better manufacturing nodes faster. And apple could use Intel to fab apple silicon.
It's not looking good. Intel stock reached all-time high of $73.19 on July 14, 2000. It closed Friday, 23 years later at $28.19, roughly a third of that long-ago high. The movement pattern I've identified shows that share price increases leading up to earnings releases, and then crashes on disappointing results. This has held true on virtually EVERY quarterly earnings report. The latest, from this week, was the worst in both earnings and forward-looking projections, made by the company itself.
Intel has no chance whatsoever under its present business model, leadership or technology. They'll have to scrap everything and start from the ground up, or break up and sell off the parts. It truly makes me sad to contemplate, both as a (former) shareholder and as a product user.
This sounds like what Michael Dell said about Apple back in the 90s. Also, AMD seemed hopeless 10 years ago. Point being — recoveries are possible. Of course, DEC, SGI, and Sun are gone, so failure is also possible.
I think Intel has to regain the manufacturing lead — that’s their core competency. With US government support, I think they *might* be able to do it. Then get apple and nvidia as foundry customers and they could be back in the saddle.
The thing they have to realize (and I think maybe they do) is that x86 sucks. They just have to milk x86 for whatever they can to support the transition to being a foundry. And I think they are doing that. The current crop of ‘lemonade’ CPUs reminds me in some ways os MacOS 8 and 9 — a return to competency in their main legacy product that keeps them in the game until they complete their transition to the NeXT big thing. For apple, that was OSX. For Intel, it will hopefully be new process nodes.
Both of you ignore the obvious. Intel is a company in terminal decline. You're right that won't belly up, but only because it's "too big to fail." Kind of like Sears. All it's going to take is an activist CEO to break it up and sell it off for parts.
I don’t think they are necessarily in terminal decline. I think under previous management they were living a lifestyle that was killing them. It was as if they were eating too much and not exercising — focused only on short run pleasure not long run health. They were kind of like Rocky at the start of Rocky 3, but worse (imagine Rocky 50 pounds over weight eating pizza and drinking beer all the time).
I think Gelsinger is trying to get this fighter back in shape and restore the eye of the tiger. There’s no guarantee he will succeed, but I think it’s at least possible that he might.
I hope he does because it would mean we get better manufacturing nodes faster. And apple could use Intel to fab apple silicon.
It's not looking good. Intel stock reached all-time high of $73.19 on July 14, 2000. It closed Friday, 23 years later at $28.19, roughly a third of that long-ago high. The movement pattern I've identified shows that share price increases leading up to earnings releases, and then crashes on disappointing results. This has held true on virtually EVERY quarterly earnings report. The latest, from this week, was the worst in both earnings and forward-looking projections, made by the company itself.
Intel has no chance whatsoever under its present business model, leadership or technology. They'll have to scrap everything and start from the ground up, or break up and sell off the parts. It truly makes me sad to contemplate, both as a (former) shareholder and as a product user.
This sounds like what Michael Dell said about Apple back in the 90s. Also, AMD seemed hopeless 10 years ago. Point being — recoveries are possible. Of course, DEC, SGI, and Sun are gone, so failure is also possible.
I think Intel has to regain the manufacturing lead — that’s their core competency. With US government support, I think they *might* be able to do it. Then get apple and nvidia as foundry customers and they could be back in the saddle.
The thing they have to realize (and I think maybe they do) is that x86 sucks. They just have to milk x86 for whatever they can to support the transition to being a foundry. And I think they are doing that. The current crop of ‘lemonade’ CPUs reminds me in some ways os MacOS 8 and 9 — a return to competency in their main legacy product that keeps them in the game until they complete their transition to the NeXT big thing. For apple, that was OSX. For Intel, it will hopefully be new process nodes.
DEC, Sun, SGI, had OS’s to go with their hardware but they just gave up (refused to change) in the face of the seemingly overpowering Wintel duopoly. You are right without OS X and Steve Jobs Apple would’ve been dead. Steve seem to have learned on his second go round (after Pixar/Next) is that you just needed to build a good products that people wanted to buy and be profitable at it. You didn’t necessarily need to be the biggest computer company even though later, Apple became one of the biggest because of those products.
Intel, AMD and Nvidia are in the same position chipmakers without a in house OS. It is just a matter of time the fusion of a in house OS to go along with in-house hardware is just too strong with a motivated company because of the flexibility of changing direction and designing new devices for the future, which is where Apple has typically been strongest.
Recently, there have been more rumors about Qualcomm, and Broadcom, in regards to modems and Wi-Fi type chips, and Apple, I think it’s nothing personal, just business, but Apple probably or is working on new devices or is iterating on existing devices, and that is the main motivation behind them leaving those two companies behind probably because they want to incorporate or make something smaller, how do you make everything fit in a pair of eyeglass frames? both those companies are happy to supply existing chips or are happy to collect money on patents from you, but they’re not gonna do the hard work to miniaturize anything for a new Apple device which is why Apple probably is looking to replace them in their designs.
Both of you ignore the obvious. Intel is a company in terminal decline. You're right that won't belly up, but only because it's "too big to fail." Kind of like Sears. All it's going to take is an activist CEO to break it up and sell it off for parts.
I don’t think they are necessarily in terminal decline. I think under previous management they were living a lifestyle that was killing them. It was as if they were eating too much and not exercising — focused only on short run pleasure not long run health. They were kind of like Rocky at the start of Rocky 3, but worse (imagine Rocky 50 pounds over weight eating pizza and drinking beer all the time).
I think Gelsinger is trying to get this fighter back in shape and restore the eye of the tiger. There’s no guarantee he will succeed, but I think it’s at least possible that he might.
I hope he does because it would mean we get better manufacturing nodes faster. And apple could use Intel to fab apple silicon.
It's not looking good. Intel stock reached all-time high of $73.19 on July 14, 2000. It closed Friday, 23 years later at $28.19, roughly a third of that long-ago high. The movement pattern I've identified shows that share price increases leading up to earnings releases, and then crashes on disappointing results. This has held true on virtually EVERY quarterly earnings report. The latest, from this week, was the worst in both earnings and forward-looking projections, made by the company itself.
Intel has no chance whatsoever under its present business model, leadership or technology. They'll have to scrap everything and start from the ground up, or break up and sell off the parts. It truly makes me sad to contemplate, both as a (former) shareholder and as a product user.
This sounds like what Michael Dell said about Apple back in the 90s. Also, AMD seemed hopeless 10 years ago. Point being — recoveries are possible. Of course, DEC, SGI, and Sun are gone, so failure is also possible.
I think Intel has to regain the manufacturing lead — that’s their core competency. With US government support, I think they *might* be able to do it. Then get apple and nvidia as foundry customers and they could be back in the saddle.
The thing they have to realize (and I think maybe they do) is that x86 sucks. They just have to milk x86 for whatever they can to support the transition to being a foundry. And I think they are doing that. The current crop of ‘lemonade’ CPUs reminds me in some ways os MacOS 8 and 9 — a return to competency in their main legacy product that keeps them in the game until they complete their transition to the NeXT big thing. For apple, that was OSX. For Intel, it will hopefully be new process nodes.
DEC, Sun, SGI, had OS’s to go with their hardware but they just gave up (refused to change) in the face of the seemingly overpowering Wintel duopoly. You are right without OS X and Steve Jobs Apple would’ve been dead. Steve seem to have learned on his second go round (after Pixar/Next) is that you just needed to build a good products that people wanted to buy and be profitable at it. You didn’t necessarily need to be the biggest computer company even though later, Apple became one of the biggest because of those products.
Intel, AMD and Nvidia are in the same position chipmakers without a in house OS. It is just a matter of time the fusion of a in house OS to go along with in-house hardware is just too strong with a motivated company because of the flexibility of changing direction and designing new devices for the future, which is where Apple has typically been strongest.
Having lived through the era, I don't think there was anything that the workstation vendors could have done to survive. I think the only reason Apple survived was because Microsoft Office and Adobe CC made the transition to Mac OS X. Without that, Apple would either be dead or is remembered as an iPod and maybe iPhone company. Having MS Office was critical to an OS in the PC market. If you didn't have Office, you could not survive in the PC market. Zero chance. The one good that the MS antitrust case did was probably giving MS a reason not to stop developing Office for Mac.
As for the workstation vendors, Linux, Windows NT and Moore's law killed them. I don't know how they could have survived. You need money to develop the next fab node. Every next fab node (basically defined as a doubling in transistor density per unit area) required 2x the money as the old fab node. Intel owned the PC space, and it continually ate into all adjacent markets, resulting in Intel accruing all the money to go to the next fab node, and starving RISC workstation vendors of money to get to the next fab node.
Then, the Unix derived platforms were locked into the workstation niche. They couldn't grow out of it without Office software, without games, etc. And, Linux came along and made them irrelevant. Hard to compete against free and some company selling services to a free OS running on commodity hardware. And, NT was more than good enough to grow into the workstation market, and it had Office software and integrated with MS server platforms fine.
Intel is now a victim of Moore's law. The thing that favored them is now threatening them with an existential crisis because Otellini said no to making smartphone chips at the wrong time. The smartphone market has more money in it than the PC market. I don't think the US gov't will let them go fabless. The USA will subsidize their fabs until there is something different from CMOS semiconductor manufacturing. The only way the USA lets Intel go fabless, or possibly out of business, is if TSMC and Samsung agreed to put equivalent fabs in the USA.
Both of you ignore the obvious. Intel is a company in terminal decline. You're right that won't belly up, but only because it's "too big to fail." Kind of like Sears. All it's going to take is an activist CEO to break it up and sell it off for parts.
I don’t think they are necessarily in terminal decline. I think under previous management they were living a lifestyle that was killing them. It was as if they were eating too much and not exercising — focused only on short run pleasure not long run health. They were kind of like Rocky at the start of Rocky 3, but worse (imagine Rocky 50 pounds over weight eating pizza and drinking beer all the time).
I think Gelsinger is trying to get this fighter back in shape and restore the eye of the tiger. There’s no guarantee he will succeed, but I think it’s at least possible that he might.
I hope he does because it would mean we get better manufacturing nodes faster. And apple could use Intel to fab apple silicon.
It's not looking good. Intel stock reached all-time high of $73.19 on July 14, 2000. It closed Friday, 23 years later at $28.19, roughly a third of that long-ago high. The movement pattern I've identified shows that share price increases leading up to earnings releases, and then crashes on disappointing results. This has held true on virtually EVERY quarterly earnings report. The latest, from this week, was the worst in both earnings and forward-looking projections, made by the company itself.
Intel has no chance whatsoever under its present business model, leadership or technology. They'll have to scrap everything and start from the ground up, or break up and sell off the parts. It truly makes me sad to contemplate, both as a (former) shareholder and as a product user.
This sounds like what Michael Dell said about Apple back in the 90s. Also, AMD seemed hopeless 10 years ago. Point being — recoveries are possible. Of course, DEC, SGI, and Sun are gone, so failure is also possible.
I think Intel has to regain the manufacturing lead — that’s their core competency. With US government support, I think they *might* be able to do it. Then get apple and nvidia as foundry customers and they could be back in the saddle.
The thing they have to realize (and I think maybe they do) is that x86 sucks. They just have to milk x86 for whatever they can to support the transition to being a foundry. And I think they are doing that. The current crop of ‘lemonade’ CPUs reminds me in some ways os MacOS 8 and 9 — a return to competency in their main legacy product that keeps them in the game until they complete their transition to the NeXT big thing. For apple, that was OSX. For Intel, it will hopefully be new process nodes.
DEC, Sun, SGI, had OS’s to go with their hardware but they just gave up (refused to change) in the face of the seemingly overpowering Wintel duopoly. You are right without OS X and Steve Jobs Apple would’ve been dead. Steve seem to have learned on his second go round (after Pixar/Next) is that you just needed to build a good products that people wanted to buy and be profitable at it. You didn’t necessarily need to be the biggest computer company even though later, Apple became one of the biggest because of those products.
Intel, AMD and Nvidia are in the same position chipmakers without a in house OS. It is just a matter of time the fusion of a in house OS to go along with in-house hardware is just too strong with a motivated company because of the flexibility of changing direction and designing new devices for the future, which is where Apple has typically been strongest.
Having lived through the era, I don't think there was anything that the workstation vendors could have done to survive. I think the only reason Apple survived was because Microsoft Office and Adobe CC made the transition to Mac OS X. Without that, Apple would either be dead or is remembered as an iPod and maybe iPhone company. Having MS Office was critical to an OS in the PC market. If you didn't have Office, you could not survive in the PC market. Zero chance. The one good that the MS antitrust case did was probably giving MS a reason not to stop developing Office for Mac.
As for the workstation vendors, Linux, Windows NT and Moore's law killed them. I don't know how they could have survived. You need money to develop the next fab node. Every next fab node (basically defined as a doubling in transistor density per unit area) required 2x the money as the old fab node. Intel owned the PC space, and it continually ate into all adjacent markets, resulting in Intel accruing all the money to go to the next fab node, and starving RISC workstation vendors of money to get to the next fab node.
Then, the Unix derived platforms were locked into the workstation niche. They couldn't grow out of it without Office software, without games, etc. And, Linux came along and made them irrelevant. Hard to compete against free and some company selling services to a free OS running on commodity hardware. And, NT was more than good enough to grow into the workstation market, and it had Office software and integrated with MS server platforms fine.
Intel is now a victim of Moore's law. The thing that favored them is now threatening them with an existential crisis because Otellini said no to making smartphone chips at the wrong time. The smartphone market has more money in it than the PC market. I don't think the US gov't will let them go fabless. The USA will subsidize their fabs until there is something different from CMOS semiconductor manufacturing. The only way the USA lets Intel go fabless, or possibly out of business, is if TSMC and Samsung agreed to put equivalent fabs in the USA.
I agree with all the economies of scale stuff. But I think there was a path to survival for the workstation guys — all go Alpha and consolidate manufacturing with AMD and IBM.
The reason I think that could have happened is that in a way it did — lots of Alpha tech ended up in K7 and K8, and AMD partnered with IBM on fabs.
One huge mistake the workstation guys made was believing the Itanium hype. They all just rolled over and died from Intel huffing and puffing.
I agree with all the economies of scale stuff. But I think there was a path to survival for the workstation guys — all go Alpha and consolidate manufacturing with AMD and IBM.
The reason I think that could have happened is that in a way it did — lots of Alpha tech ended up in K7 and K8, and AMD partnered with IBM on fabs.
One huge mistake the workstation guys made was believing the Itanium hype. They all just rolled over and died from Intel huffing and puffing.
I would have to go back and find who was fabbing chips for the workstation vendors. Motorola, Texas Instruments, IBM, Hitachi? Who was fabbing for DEC? It is very much a money play. Not only do the workstation vendors, all of them, had to collaborate on architectures and software, the foundries had to share resource and technology too. Interesting that IBM PowerPC is the last one standing, though probably because they live in their own niche that Intel can't touch for some reason. Long term enterprise IBM customers? Hmm, is there still a Fujitsu SPARC system that still comes out?
Both of you ignore the obvious. Intel is a company in terminal decline. You're right that won't belly up, but only because it's "too big to fail." Kind of like Sears. All it's going to take is an activist CEO to break it up and sell it off for parts.
I don’t think they are necessarily in terminal decline. I think under previous management they were living a lifestyle that was killing them. It was as if they were eating too much and not exercising — focused only on short run pleasure not long run health. They were kind of like Rocky at the start of Rocky 3, but worse (imagine Rocky 50 pounds over weight eating pizza and drinking beer all the time).
I think Gelsinger is trying to get this fighter back in shape and restore the eye of the tiger. There’s no guarantee he will succeed, but I think it’s at least possible that he might.
I hope he does because it would mean we get better manufacturing nodes faster. And apple could use Intel to fab apple silicon.
It's not looking good. Intel stock reached all-time high of $73.19 on July 14, 2000. It closed Friday, 23 years later at $28.19, roughly a third of that long-ago high. The movement pattern I've identified shows that share price increases leading up to earnings releases, and then crashes on disappointing results. This has held true on virtually EVERY quarterly earnings report. The latest, from this week, was the worst in both earnings and forward-looking projections, made by the company itself.
Intel has no chance whatsoever under its present business model, leadership or technology. They'll have to scrap everything and start from the ground up, or break up and sell off the parts. It truly makes me sad to contemplate, both as a (former) shareholder and as a product user.
This sounds like what Michael Dell said about Apple back in the 90s. Also, AMD seemed hopeless 10 years ago. Point being — recoveries are possible. Of course, DEC, SGI, and Sun are gone, so failure is also possible.
I think Intel has to regain the manufacturing lead — that’s their core competency. With US government support, I think they *might* be able to do it. Then get apple and nvidia as foundry customers and they could be back in the saddle.
The thing they have to realize (and I think maybe they do) is that x86 sucks. They just have to milk x86 for whatever they can to support the transition to being a foundry. And I think they are doing that. The current crop of ‘lemonade’ CPUs reminds me in some ways os MacOS 8 and 9 — a return to competency in their main legacy product that keeps them in the game until they complete their transition to the NeXT big thing. For apple, that was OSX. For Intel, it will hopefully be new process nodes.
DEC, Sun, SGI, had OS’s to go with their hardware but they just gave up (refused to change) in the face of the seemingly overpowering Wintel duopoly. You are right without OS X and Steve Jobs Apple would’ve been dead. Steve seem to have learned on his second go round (after Pixar/Next) is that you just needed to build a good products that people wanted to buy and be profitable at it. You didn’t necessarily need to be the biggest computer company even though later, Apple became one of the biggest because of those products.
Intel, AMD and Nvidia are in the same position chipmakers without a in house OS. It is just a matter of time the fusion of a in house OS to go along with in-house hardware is just too strong with a motivated company because of the flexibility of changing direction and designing new devices for the future, which is where Apple has typically been strongest.
Having lived through the era, I don't think there was anything that the workstation vendors could have done to survive. I think the only reason Apple survived was because Microsoft Office and Adobe CC made the transition to Mac OS X. Without that, Apple would either be dead or is remembered as an iPod and maybe iPhone company. Having MS Office was critical to an OS in the PC market. If you didn't have Office, you could not survive in the PC market. Zero chance. The one good that the MS antitrust case did was probably giving MS a reason not to stop developing Office for Mac.
As for the workstation vendors, Linux, Windows NT and Moore's law killed them. I don't know how they could have survived. You need money to develop the next fab node. Every next fab node (basically defined as a doubling in transistor density per unit area) required 2x the money as the old fab node. Intel owned the PC space, and it continually ate into all adjacent markets, resulting in Intel accruing all the money to go to the next fab node, and starving RISC workstation vendors of money to get to the next fab node.
Then, the Unix derived platforms were locked into the workstation niche. They couldn't grow out of it without Office software, without games, etc. And, Linux came along and made them irrelevant. Hard to compete against free and some company selling services to a free OS running on commodity hardware. And, NT was more than good enough to grow into the workstation market, and it had Office software and integrated with MS server platforms fine.
Intel is now a victim of Moore's law. The thing that favored them is now threatening them with an existential crisis because Otellini said no to making smartphone chips at the wrong time. The smartphone market has more money in it than the PC market. I don't think the US gov't will let them go fabless. The USA will subsidize their fabs until there is something different from CMOS semiconductor manufacturing. The only way the USA lets Intel go fabless, or possibly out of business, is if TSMC and Samsung agreed to put equivalent fabs in the USA.
It is not hard or expensive for Microsoft developing Office for Mac.
I agree with all the economies of scale stuff. But I think there was a path to survival for the workstation guys — all go Alpha and consolidate manufacturing with AMD and IBM.
The reason I think that could have happened is that in a way it did — lots of Alpha tech ended up in K7 and K8, and AMD partnered with IBM on fabs.
One huge mistake the workstation guys made was believing the Itanium hype. They all just rolled over and died from Intel huffing and puffing.
I would have to go back and find who was fabbing chips for the workstation vendors. Motorola, Texas Instruments, IBM, Hitachi? Who was fabbing for DEC? It is very much a money play. Not only do the workstation vendors, all of them, had to collaborate on architectures and software, the foundries had to share resource and technology too. Interesting that IBM PowerPC is the last one standing, though probably because they live in their own niche that Intel can't touch for some reason. Long term enterprise IBM customers? Hmm, is there still a Fujitsu SPARC system that still comes out?
Back then, far more firms fabbed their own chips. DEC fabbed for DEC, for example. But the implications of economies of scale were obvious, so folks knew consolidation was coming.
I think POWER survived because IBM was the only one not to be fooled by Itanium. Alpha should have survived on technical merits, but the business guys couldn’t figure out how to capitalize on that asset. Maybe if Linux were more of a thing back then alpha could have made it.
Comments
The first in line with the most money would be from China. Domestic politics would (quite rightly) stop that. Same goes for most other foreign buyers. But who in the US or even the G20 would have the deep pockets needed, and would be deemed trustworthy enough to own the big American Chip Company’s design, and fab facilities?
^^^This. Forget the whining about butterfly keyboards. I could NOT stand how the fans constantly ran on my previous MacBook Pro while doing nothing! I have yet to hear the fans on MacBook Pro as ALL Apple computer use to be and are again, SILENT!!!!!!!!!!!!
Intel, AMD and Nvidia are in the same position chipmakers without a in house OS. It is just a matter of time the fusion of a in house OS to go along with in-house hardware is just too strong with a motivated company because of the flexibility of changing direction and designing new devices for the future, which is where Apple has typically been strongest.
Recently, there have been more rumors about Qualcomm, and Broadcom, in regards to modems and Wi-Fi type chips, and Apple, I think it’s nothing personal, just business, but Apple probably or is working on new devices or is iterating on existing devices, and that is the main motivation behind them leaving those two companies behind probably because they want to incorporate or make something smaller, how do you make everything fit in a pair of eyeglass frames? both those companies are happy to supply existing chips or are happy to collect money on patents from you, but they’re not gonna do the hard work to miniaturize anything for a new Apple device which is why Apple probably is looking to replace them in their designs.
As for the workstation vendors, Linux, Windows NT and Moore's law killed them. I don't know how they could have survived. You need money to develop the next fab node. Every next fab node (basically defined as a doubling in transistor density per unit area) required 2x the money as the old fab node. Intel owned the PC space, and it continually ate into all adjacent markets, resulting in Intel accruing all the money to go to the next fab node, and starving RISC workstation vendors of money to get to the next fab node.
Then, the Unix derived platforms were locked into the workstation niche. They couldn't grow out of it without Office software, without games, etc. And, Linux came along and made them irrelevant. Hard to compete against free and some company selling services to a free OS running on commodity hardware. And, NT was more than good enough to grow into the workstation market, and it had Office software and integrated with MS server platforms fine.
Intel is now a victim of Moore's law. The thing that favored them is now threatening them with an existential crisis because Otellini said no to making smartphone chips at the wrong time. The smartphone market has more money in it than the PC market. I don't think the US gov't will let them go fabless. The USA will subsidize their fabs until there is something different from CMOS semiconductor manufacturing. The only way the USA lets Intel go fabless, or possibly out of business, is if TSMC and Samsung agreed to put equivalent fabs in the USA.