Intel Vows To Bring SMT Back In Effort To Boost Competitiveness In CPU War

Yesterday, Intel published a blog post titled "Lip-Bu Tan: Steps in the Right Direction," described as "a message from Intel CEO Lip-Bu Tan to all company employees." In it, he addresses the turmoil at the company recently, and talks about plans to continue terminations, ultimately resulting in a headcount of about 75,000 people by the end of the year. That's down from 124,800 people in 2023.

As enthusiasts, that's not the most interesting part of the post, though. When outlining his "Strategic Pillars of Growth" for Intel, item 2 is "Revitalize the Intel x86 Ecosystem." He notes that Panther Lake is the company's top priority, and that Nova Lake intends to "close gaps" in the high-end desktop space, despite that it doesn't exactly appear to be what we would normally consider a "high-end desktop" processor. He then goes on to say this:

"In data ...