Last quarter NSG/Solidigm (now that Optane is no longer included) was very profitable making $442M in profit off $1.1B revenue. The efficiencies of the merger should make this new company more profitable over time.
So if they can just manage to sustain that, *napkin math* it’ll take in the realm of 5 years to break even (1.6B profit a year. Ignoring quarterly fluctuations etc. napkin math!)
In all honesty, thats better than plenty of acquisitions that appear to need decades to pay off.
That depends on their ambitions for Optane. If they think they can somehow "save" Optane, while NAND is getting increasingly commoditfied (don't forget the looming prospect of China's impact on the NAND business), then it could be a sound strategy.
That's an awful lot to pay for patents. It's even a lot to pay for their fab.
Intel SSDs aren't that stand-out, which suggests Intel doesn't have a lot of unique technology. We know their cell designs aren't even the best in the industry. If SK Hynix simply needed some SSD patents, you'd think there'd be cheaper acquisition targets or even licensing deals they could arrange.
Very unfortunate. Investor greed killed Intel inside out. They sabotaged with the lack of innovation and pressure during 10nm issues. And then they made BS mergers and all like Mobile Eye, and other junk ruining the CPU business. For SSD NAND Intel SLC and MLC drives used to have top class performance long back way before than Samsung started with 850. Unfortunately all that left is useless fat. They even axed 5G and gave it away for peanuts to that scum Apple corporation, which wanted to crush Qcomm by that monkey on top of a mountain Hock Tan of Avago Broadcom.
Optane also dead for consumer, look at that P5800X, world's fastest, most durable, excellent technology breakthrough. It has 148PB of endurance compared to the 860 Pro 4TB MLC which is now very rare in the market's 4.8PB. And insanely high speed no BS SLC caching, no DRAM drama no nothing. Just blistering performance. Axed. 3DXP is dead Utah fab sold off, they say they have NM fab for Optane for Enterprise. Investor greed reducing the R&D innovation for this new Big.little copypaste half cooked garbage formula is pushed for so many generations because BGA thin and light use and throw garbage make a real load of money.
I hope SKH does something good. Samsung also however dropped the MLC now. Shame how the lowest common denominator garbage gets the most green light.
> look at that P5800X ... compared to the 860 Pro 4TB MLC
Don't compare an enterprise drive with a consumer model. There are higher-endurance enterprise NAND-based drives. You can find some of them reviewed here:
Also, I think Gelsinger is doing a lot to spur new innovation at Intel, but it'll take years to know for sure. There were several other things they did which showed they're not without courage or commitment: scrapping Xeon Phi in favor of a more traditional GPU approach to HPC, cutting their losses on Nervana in favor of Habana, the Barefoot and Rivet Networks acquisitions, to name a few. It was also smart to bring on Jim Keller and invest in advanced packaging techniques, which are only starting to bear fruit.
> Shame how the lowest common denominator garbage gets the most green light.
Perf/GB wins the day. For most people, write caching provides just as good an experience as they'd get with a lower-density drive that doesn't use use a write cache, but at a lower cost. Your beloved Samsung is one of those who pioneered that technique.
If you simply can't accept the performance compromises of write caching, you always have the option to buy a write-oriented enterprise drive.
BTW, one thing Gelsinger already did that definitely favors R&D innovation, at the expense of investor greed, was to cut back their stock buybacks. Unfortunately, he didn't cut it to zero, but that probably would've angered investors too much.
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stanleyipkiss - Thursday, December 30, 2021 - link
Pretty crappy name right there.And I was just warming up to Toshiba's "Kioxia" re-branding/spin-off
Mr Perfect - Thursday, December 30, 2021 - link
Oh, I dunno. The new company name sounds enough like Cyberdyne from Terminator 2 to trigger some nostalgia.Pneumothorax - Thursday, December 30, 2021 - link
The English language is running out of non trademarked names. Look at the ridiculous drug names they’re coming up with now.FunBunny2 - Thursday, December 30, 2021 - link
"Look at the ridiculous drug names they’re coming up with now. "yeah, but it pays well. the sort of job I always wanted. not so cool as "Six Days of the Condor", though.
Oxford Guy - Friday, December 31, 2021 - link
Switch to Klingon.spaceship9876 - Thursday, December 30, 2021 - link
Sounds like a bad deal for SK Hynix.FwFred - Thursday, December 30, 2021 - link
Last quarter NSG/Solidigm (now that Optane is no longer included) was very profitable making $442M in profit off $1.1B revenue. The efficiencies of the merger should make this new company more profitable over time.Drumsticks - Thursday, December 30, 2021 - link
So if they can just manage to sustain that, *napkin math* it’ll take in the realm of 5 years to break even (1.6B profit a year. Ignoring quarterly fluctuations etc. napkin math!)In all honesty, thats better than plenty of acquisitions that appear to need decades to pay off.
FunBunny2 - Thursday, December 30, 2021 - link
"it’ll take in the realm of 5 years to break even "considering what Treasuries are going for these days, it's a steal.
Wereweeb - Thursday, December 30, 2021 - link
Yeah, on the contrary, Intel is just throwing away their SSD group.regsEx - Sunday, January 2, 2022 - link
Yeah, that's quite a large mistake Intel made.mode_13h - Sunday, January 2, 2022 - link
That depends on their ambitions for Optane. If they think they can somehow "save" Optane, while NAND is getting increasingly commoditfied (don't forget the looming prospect of China's impact on the NAND business), then it could be a sound strategy.Samus - Monday, January 3, 2022 - link
I don't think SK is after IP per se, they're after patents.Samus - Monday, January 3, 2022 - link
Not after IP meaning, I don't think they care much about Intel's tech. Maybe Optane, but in its current form, na.mode_13h - Monday, January 3, 2022 - link
That's an awful lot to pay for patents. It's even a lot to pay for their fab.Intel SSDs aren't that stand-out, which suggests Intel doesn't have a lot of unique technology. We know their cell designs aren't even the best in the industry. If SK Hynix simply needed some SSD patents, you'd think there'd be cheaper acquisition targets or even licensing deals they could arrange.
ABR - Friday, December 31, 2021 - link
"The standalone subsidiary ... has setup shop ..." "Set up" (as one would speak it); "setup" is a noun.Silver5urfer - Friday, December 31, 2021 - link
Very unfortunate. Investor greed killed Intel inside out. They sabotaged with the lack of innovation and pressure during 10nm issues. And then they made BS mergers and all like Mobile Eye, and other junk ruining the CPU business. For SSD NAND Intel SLC and MLC drives used to have top class performance long back way before than Samsung started with 850. Unfortunately all that left is useless fat. They even axed 5G and gave it away for peanuts to that scum Apple corporation, which wanted to crush Qcomm by that monkey on top of a mountain Hock Tan of Avago Broadcom.Optane also dead for consumer, look at that P5800X, world's fastest, most durable, excellent technology breakthrough. It has 148PB of endurance compared to the 860 Pro 4TB MLC which is now very rare in the market's 4.8PB. And insanely high speed no BS SLC caching, no DRAM drama no nothing. Just blistering performance. Axed. 3DXP is dead Utah fab sold off, they say they have NM fab for Optane for Enterprise. Investor greed reducing the R&D innovation for this new Big.little copypaste half cooked garbage formula is pushed for so many generations because BGA thin and light use and throw garbage make a real load of money.
I hope SKH does something good. Samsung also however dropped the MLC now. Shame how the lowest common denominator garbage gets the most green light.
JayNor - Friday, December 31, 2021 - link
I believe we'll see Optane DIMMs moved to pcie5/cxl.mem in 2022 on Emerald Rapids, freeing up the DDR5 controller to move to higher data rate.Oxford Guy - Saturday, January 1, 2022 - link
WalMart and McDonald’s. Very often, success is a race to the bottom.mode_13h - Sunday, January 2, 2022 - link
> look at that P5800X ... compared to the 860 Pro 4TB MLCDon't compare an enterprise drive with a consumer model. There are higher-endurance enterprise NAND-based drives. You can find some of them reviewed here:
https://www.storagereview.com/enterprise/ssd
> Investor greed reducing the R&D innovation
Also, I think Gelsinger is doing a lot to spur new innovation at Intel, but it'll take years to know for sure. There were several other things they did which showed they're not without courage or commitment: scrapping Xeon Phi in favor of a more traditional GPU approach to HPC, cutting their losses on Nervana in favor of Habana, the Barefoot and Rivet Networks acquisitions, to name a few. It was also smart to bring on Jim Keller and invest in advanced packaging techniques, which are only starting to bear fruit.
> Shame how the lowest common denominator garbage gets the most green light.
Perf/GB wins the day. For most people, write caching provides just as good an experience as they'd get with a lower-density drive that doesn't use use a write cache, but at a lower cost. Your beloved Samsung is one of those who pioneered that technique.
If you simply can't accept the performance compromises of write caching, you always have the option to buy a write-oriented enterprise drive.
mode_13h - Sunday, January 2, 2022 - link
BTW, one thing Gelsinger already did that definitely favors R&D innovation, at the expense of investor greed, was to cut back their stock buybacks. Unfortunately, he didn't cut it to zero, but that probably would've angered investors too much.