Intel has admitted that it underestimated the appetites of the AI market — and is now urgently reallocating production capacity in favor of Xeon server processors. This was stated by the company's Chief Financial Officer David Zinsner. According to him, six months ago, hyperscalers signaled a decrease in orders for chips with a large number of cores, but in the second half of the year they sharply increased demand.
As a result, Intel faced a shortage of capacity and began to switch from the consumer sector to solutions for data centers. The priority is Xeon 6, which are actively used as processors in AI servers, including Nvidia DGX systems and configurations with AMD Instinct accelerators. At the same time, the company does not plan to completely abandon the consumer segment, but is shifting its focus to more marginal Core mid-range and high-end, reducing attention to budget models.
This step may lead to a decrease in the availability of cheap PCs, especially against the background of a sharp increase in memory prices. Micron, SK Hynix and Samsung are also reallocating capacity in favor of DRAM and HBM for AI servers, which is why consumer memory has more than tripled in price in recent months.