Intel’s January: A Process, and a Sigh of Relief

January, for Intel, was…well, it was a month. A 26% jump in share price, they say. Numbers. My aunt Mildred, who understands stock options about as well as she understands the offside rule in soccer (which is to say, not at all), keeps asking if I’ve “got in on that Intel thing.” It’s exhausting, explaining semiconductors to someone who still thinks dial-up is a perfectly acceptable way to access the internet. But, briefly, about that jump. It wasn’t just numbers; it was, after years of quiet desperation, a product that actually, reliably, worked.

Intel’s been a bit like a family member struggling with a mid-life crisis. A lot of grand pronouncements, some questionable purchases, and a general air of being slightly behind the curve. Pat Gelsinger, the former CEO, laid out this ambitious “five nodes in four years” plan. Sounded good on paper. My father had a similar plan for his vegetable garden, involving heirloom tomatoes and a complex irrigation system. It lasted approximately three weeks. But Intel, surprisingly, started to deliver. The Panther Lake CPU, built on this 18A node, was the first real test. A lot was riding on it, more than just stock prices. It was a matter of pride, really. A sort of “we used to be good at this” statement.

I spent an embarrassing amount of time reading tech reviews, trying to decipher terms like “RibbonFET” and “backside power delivery.” It felt like studying for a physics exam I never intended to take. Apparently, this 18A node is a big deal. It’s not just about making chips smaller; it’s about rearranging the internal architecture, moving power supplies to the underside of the silicon. It’s like reorganizing your kitchen to maximize counter space, only on a microscopic scale. And, for once, the reviewers were impressed. PCWorld, bless their detailed charts and graphs, was particularly enthusiastic. Excellent integrated graphics, they said. Best battery life they’d ever seen. Twenty-two hours of 4K video! I can barely get through an episode of British Bake Off without needing to recharge my laptop.

The performance gains were also noteworthy. Fifty percent higher multi-threaded performance than their previous chip. My cousin, a graphic designer, would have been thrilled. He’s constantly complaining about rendering times. I tried to explain it to him, but he just stared at me blankly and asked if it meant he could finally play that new video game. The AI inference capabilities were also impressive, boasting a whopping 180 TOPS. I have no idea what TOPS are, but it sounds important.

The Inevitable Pullback

Then, of course, came the earnings report. The stock dipped. It always does. It’s like a rule of the universe. You get a little bit of good news, and then something inevitably goes wrong. Intel guided for a sequential decline in revenue. My aunt Mildred called, predictably. “What happened?” she demanded. “Did I miss something?” I mumbled something about market corrections and cyclical trends. She wasn’t impressed.

But the decline wasn’t due to a lack of demand. Quite the opposite, apparently. Panther Lake is selling well, and their server business is booming. They’re even repurposing older chip manufacturing lines to make server chips. It’s a good problem to have, they say. Like being overwhelmed with Christmas presents. Still, it means a short-term hit to revenue. It’s a bit like renovating your kitchen – messy, inconvenient, but ultimately worth it.

The whole thing feels…fragile. A tentative step forward after years of stumbling. But for the first time in a long time, Intel isn’t just talking about making a comeback. They’re actually, demonstrably, delivering. And that, in this unpredictable world, is something worth paying attention to. Even if my aunt Mildred doesn’t quite understand it.

2026-02-03 17:22

The Inevitable Pullback

Read More