Industry Expert Blogs

Bill Holt’s “Advancing Moore’s Law” presentation at the recent Intel Analyst day was swallowed hook, line, and sinker by the mainstream media fish so let me play devil’s advocate here and point out some problems with his spin on the competitive landscape.

Coincidentally, one of my Intel friends insists that Intel is number one when it comes to integrity amongst semiconductor companies. While I agree with that in principle, I think clear exceptions are the Intel presentations at the analyst meetings. And in this case it’s Bill Holt’s presentation, but another one that comes to mind is Intel CFO Stacy Smith’s Contra Revenue nonsense, but I digress…

First and foremost Bill continues to do Apple Versus Zebras comparisons in regards to Intel process technologies versus the foundries. In this case Bill is comparing Intel Broadwell and Skylake microprocessors against Apple SoCs, two very different things. Obvious question: Why doesn’t Bill use Bay Trail (22nm) and Cherry Trail (14nm) SoCs as comparisons against the Apple A8 (20nm) and A9 (16nm) SoCs? That way Bill would not have to fabricate a “Transistor Density Normalized for Composition" calculation, right? Yes Bill composition DOES matter!