Intel sees chip shortage bottoming this year

Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger used the company’s Q2 earnings call to predict it would take the semiconductor industry two years to catch up with demand, but forecast current chip shortages would level out during H2.

The CEO noted Intel is working on adding more fabrication facilities in the US, Europe and Middle East, and had more than 100 customers in the pipeline.

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Gelsinger noted Intel’s data centre business recovered from a “low point” in Q1, forecasting the unit would be “transformed” by 5G, a technology “hitting its stride with open RAN”.

Autonomous driving will also fuel data centre growth, Gelsinger said. He touted the latest tests underway at Intel’s Mobileye unit, which recently deployed a self-driving car on the streets of New York City.

He said Mobileye will have more than a million vehicles providing telemetry for dynamic crowdsourced mapping by the year-end.

Revenue at the unit grew 124 per cent year-on-year to $327 million, up 124 per cent year-on-year, though Intel highlighted a sequential decline attributed to the impact of Covid-19 (coronavirus) on the automotive industry.

Gelsinger explained Intel is “infusing AI across everything we do” and expects the market for the technology to grow more than 20 per cent in 2021.

Net income in Q2 fell 1 per cent to $5.1 billion, with revenue flat at $19.6 billion.