INTC - Intel Corporation
57.70 -0.09 (-0.16%)
After hours: 5:10PM EST
| Previous close | 57.55 |
| Open | 57.55 |
| Bid | 57.77 x 2900 |
| Ask | 57.83 x 1800 |
| Day's range | 57.39 - 58.34 |
| 52-week range | 42.86 - 59.59 |
| Volume | 19,083,438 |
| Avg. volume | 18,049,895 |
| Market cap | 251B |
| Beta (5Y Monthly) | 0.91 |
| PE ratio (TTM) | 13.53 |
| EPS (TTM) | 4.27 |
| Earnings date | 22 Jan 2020 - 27 Jan 2020 |
| Forward dividend & yield | 1.26 (2.19%) |
| Ex-dividend date | 2019-11-06 |
| 1y target est | 56.69 |
- Zacks
Amazon Roundup: Government, re:Invent Conference, India, Other
Amazon had a big week with government issues, a host of new deals and announcements at its annual conference and developments in India.
- Zacks
Micron Technology (MU) to Post Q1 Earnings: What in Store?
Micron's (MU) first-quarter fiscal 2020 earnings are likely to have been hurt by low DRAM revenues amid the U.S.-China trade tussle. However, strong DRAM bit demand is likely to have been a breather.
- Zacks
CenturyLink, Intel Partner to Offer Premium Home Connectivity
CenturyLink (CTL), in collaboration with Intel, develops Wi-Fi 6 gateway to meet the increasing demand for premium home connectivity and provide faster connections with embedded security features.
- Bloomberg
Apple Buys U.K. Startup to Improve iPhone Picture Taking
(Bloomberg) -- Apple Inc. acquired a U.K.-based startup with technology that improves photos taken on smartphones.According to filings made public in the U.K. on Thursday, Apple corporate lawyer Peter Denwood was recently named a director of Cambridge, U.K.-based Spectral Edge Ltd., while the startup’s other advisers and board members were terminated.The documents show that Apple now controls Spectral. Similar filings in the past have revealed other startup acquisitions by the Cupertino, California-based tech giant, such as the purchase of digital marketing startup DataTiger earlier this year.A purchase price for Spectral Edge could not be ascertained. The startup said last year that it raised more than $5 million in funding.Apple didn’t respond to requests for comment. The U.S. company has opened offices in Cambridge in recent years to work on artificial intelligence for products like the Siri digital assistant.Spectral Edge uses a type of AI called machine learning to make smartphone pictures crisper, with more accurate colors. Its technology takes an infrared shot and blends it with a standard photo to improve the image.Photography has become a key differentiator in the smartphone market. Apple has rapidly added new camera features to the iPhone, including a triple-lens system in the iPhone 11 Pro earlier this year. It’s also planning to add a 3-D camera to iPhones next year for improved depth sensing and augmented reality.Spectral Edge’s technology could contribute to the AI Apple already uses in its Camera app by continuing to improve the quality of photos in low-light environments. The startup has said its technology can be applied via software or chips. Apple’s latest devices include custom processors that assist with picture taking.Apple’s purchase of the firm is one of several deals it has made this year, including buying Drive.ai’s self-driving car team and acquiring Intel Corp.’s smartphone modem business.To contact the reporter on this story: Mark Gurman in Los Angeles at mgurman1@bloomberg.netTo contact the editors responsible for this story: Tom Giles at tgiles5@bloomberg.net, Alistair Barr, Andrew MartinFor more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.com©2019 Bloomberg L.P.
- Zacks
Zacks Industry Outlook Highlights: Intel, NVIDIA and STMicroelectronics
Zacks Industry Outlook Highlights: Intel, NVIDIA and STMicroelectronics
- Bloomberg
Chip Analysts Struggle to Get Excited About 2020 After Rally
(Bloomberg) -- After a year in which semiconductor stocks defied conventional wisdom with a seemingly unstoppable rally in the face of gloomy fundamentals, analysts are loathe to go all in.With signs of a rebound in demand still scant, the key question for the new year is where chipmaker shares can go when they’re trading at the highest price to future earnings multiples in nearly a decade. Most analysts expect business to improve in 2020, aided by things like 5G technology and cloud infrastructure spending. But valuations are cause for concern, especially when accounting for lingering tariff uncertainty.“It is challenging to argue that a good amount of the future return potential hasn’t simply been pulled forward on hope,” said Bernstein analyst Stacy Rasgon.At the end of 2018, most of Wall Street saw little to get excited about in the semiconductor industry. Chipmakers had begun axing forecasts as customer orders slowed and inventories swelled as the U.S.-China trade war heated up. Despite all of that, the Philadelphia semiconductor index embarked on a relentless advance, logging just two down months the entire year.The gauge that tracks 30 semiconductor-related stocks has risen 56% so far in 2019, which would be the biggest annual gain in a decade. That eye-popping number was aided by a brutal market sell-off at the end of 2018 that hit technology stocks particularly hard. Chip shares notched new highs Thursday after President Trump said the U.S. and China are “very close” to a “big” trade deal.To keep the rally going, semiconductor companies will need to start posting better-than-expected financial results, according to Morgan Stanley analyst Joseph Moore, who was one of the first analysts on Wall Street to get cautious on the group in the second half of 2018. Moore now advocates holding a select group of stocks including Intel Corp. and Nvidia Corp., which he expects to benefit from higher cloud spending in 2020.“The period where stocks are going to go up on bad numbers is largely behind us,” he said in an interview. “If the numbers come up, then we can have some good performance. I don’t think there’s room for these multiples to come up too much more.”In that regard, the third quarter was a good start. With results in from all members of the chip benchmark except for Broadcom Inc., more than three-quarters of companies beat profit and revenue estimates, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.Still other indicators are worrisome. Inventory levels for many chipmakers remain elevated, according to Moore, and tariffs haven’t been resolved. U.S. goods on some electronics imported from China are set to increase on Dec. 15 if there’s no trade deal.Despite the trade uncertainty, 2020 is “looking decent” from a fundamental standpoint, according to Bloomberg Intelligence analyst Anand Srinivasan. He expects cloud spending to improve, 5G spending to kick in, and stability in mobile devices and personal computers.“The growth themes that we have been positing are going to be manifested in 2020, particularly in the second half,” he said. “We think it still could be a bumpy ride from a stock perspective but we feel optimistic about 2020.”See AlsoSoftware Analysts See More Volatility in an Uncertain 2020Airbus Secures Lead Over Boeing as 737 Max Weighs Into 2020After ‘Blood-Spilled’ Year, Pot Firms Brace for Repeat in 2020Small-Caps Set to Retake 2020 Market Lead After Three-Year LagS&P 500 Melt-Up Is So Hot It’s Making Cheerleaders Into Skeptics(Updates shares and Trump comments in fifth paragraph, adds P/E chart.)\--With assistance from Lu Wang.To contact the reporter on this story: Jeran Wittenstein in San Francisco at jwittenstei1@bloomberg.netTo contact the editors responsible for this story: Catherine Larkin at clarkin4@bloomberg.net, Jennifer Bissell-LinskFor more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.com©2019 Bloomberg L.P.
- Zacks
AMD Augments Graphics Capabilities Through New Radeon GPU
AMD launches new Radeon Pro W5700X GPU for Mac Pro users. The configuration enables tackling heavy workloads.
- Zacks
Cisco Enters Chip Market: Should AVGO, INTC, ANET Take Note?
Cisco (CSCO) ups its game in networking chip market with Silicon One Q100, putting Broadcom, Intel, Arista Networks, and Juniper Networks at risk.
- Zacks
5G Set to Transform US Healthcare: 3 Stocks to Watch
Non-MedTech companies are ramping up investments in healthcare through 5G.
- Zacks
Semiconductor-General Stock Outlook: 2020 Prospects Lifting Shares
Semiconductor-General Stock Outlook: 2020 Prospects Lifting Shares
- Bloomberg
Cisco Enters Chip Market, Supplying Microsoft, Facebook
(Bloomberg) -- Cisco Systems Inc. has started supplying switch chips to major data-center operators, including Microsoft Corp. and Facebook Inc., opening up a new avenue to win orders from some of its largest networking-equipment customers.Cisco Silicon 1 is a switch semiconductor that’s already being used by Microsoft and Facebook in crucial networking equipment, the companies said Wednesday at an event in San Francisco. San Jose, California-based Cisco is now offering the chips, which it says are the fastest in the industry, to all of its customers, regardless of whether they buy its networking machinery. Previously Cisco’s chips were only available as components of its machines.The shift toward standalone chip sales is another departure from the business model that made Cisco one of the biggest companies in the technology industry. Cisco’s expensive proprietary combinations of hardware and software make up the backbone of much of the internet and corporate networks, and these products generate the bulk of the company’s revenue. The new initiative has the potential to attract business from customers who want to build their own machines instead of buying whole packages. It also puts Cisco in direct competition with its suppliers, Intel Corp. and Broadcom Inc., which also make switch chips that the networking equipment maker uses in some of its products.“From today -- and this is something that some of you never thought we’d do -- some of our customers will buy our silicon and build their own products if that’s what they choose to do,” Chief Executive Officer Chuck Robbins said at the event. “We really want our customers to consume this technology in any way they want.”As the internet infrastructure business moves away from suppliers who provide all the needs through locked-down combinations of hardware and software, Robbins has been pushing Cisco to adapt by becoming a bigger supplier of networking services and software. On his watch, software has risen to provide about 11% of revenue. Hardware still generates more than half of sales.Cisco shares rose less than 1% to $44.24 at 2:02 p.m. in New York. The stock gained 1.8% this year through Tuesday’s close.The move into selling components is an attempt to win orders from the hyperscalers, such as Microsoft, Google and Amazon.com Inc.’s AWS, a group that has increasingly turned away from Cisco’s offerings and equipped their data centers with computers and networking gear designed in house. Those big cloud-computing vendors contribute as little as 2% of Cisco’s total sales, according to Raymond James analyst Simon Leopold.Switch chips perform the crucial function of deciding where packets of data should go in a network of computers. They are designed to handle that task at great speed, and only a few companies have been successful in the market. Broadcom is the biggest provider of this type of chip as an individual component and has as much as 80% share, Leopold said. Intel took a bigger interest in the market in June when it bought startup Barefoot Networks.Cisco’s new offering will combine the attributes of both switch and routing chips, the company said. It’ll be able to move data very quickly and still be programmable, carrying the ability to have its function changed. Routing, directing traffic among networks, is typically conducted by groups of chips that bring other attributes but are unable to direct data fast enough for modern internet traffic loads. One chip providing all of the functions will simplify the operation of networks by eliminating the need for different layers of software, Cisco executives said.Offering up what was previously guarded as a proprietary advantage shows a flexibility at Cisco that has been increasing as Robbins works to transform the company. Analysts predict the build-it-yourself approach to networking, pioneered by the large cloud-service operators, over time will be copied by companies looking to reduce the cost of their data-center spending. That corporate market is one of Cisco’s biggest sources of revenue.Cisco’s equipment, including its chips, is designed by the company and manufactured by a third party, which it hasn’t identified.The company also announced a new router machine at the event, designed to better serve as the backbone for new fifth generation, or 5G, cellular networks. The Cisco 8000 will be based on the new chip. The company also unveiled plans for products that will support faster data transmission speeds over fiber-optic cables. Like the rest of the networking industry, Cisco is positioning itself to be a main provider of equipment for the predicted surge in internet traffic and data created by the proliferation of mobile systems.(Updates with comment from Cisco CEO in the fourth paragraph.)To contact the reporter on this story: Ian King in San Francisco at ianking@bloomberg.netTo contact the editors responsible for this story: Jillian Ward at jward56@bloomberg.net, Andrew PollackFor more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.com©2019 Bloomberg L.P.
- Zacks
3 Semiconductor Stocks to Buy Right Now for 2020 on Chip Comeback
We found three semiconductor stocks with the help of our Zacks Stock Screener that investors might want to consider buying for 2020...
- Bloomberg
White House Says Trump Warned Russian Against Election Meddling
(Bloomberg) -- Donald Trump warned Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov on Tuesday against interference in U.S. elections, the White House said in a statement after an Oval Office meeting between the two men.But Lavrov suggested in a news conference at the Russian Embassy in Washington that Trump delivered no such warning. Lavrov said he brought up elections during the meeting but only to protest a warning from Secretary of State Michael Pompeo earlier in the day.The meeting came hours after House Democrats unveiled articles of impeachment alleging the president sought to coerce a foreign leader to help his bid for re-election, and it was the first encounter between Trump and Lavrov May 2017, when the U.S. president boasted to the Russian about firing then-FBI Director James Comey and reportedly shared classified information.“Just had a very good meeting with Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and representatives of Russia. Discussed many items including Trade, Iran, North Korea, INF Treaty, Nuclear Arms Control, and Election Meddling,” Trump tweeted after the meeting as he traveled to a campaign rally in Hershey, Pennsylvania.The last time Trump met with a Russian -- President Vladimir Putin, at the Group of 20 summit in Japan in June -- he appeared to mock the idea of warning his counterpart against election interference.“Don’t meddle in the election, president,” Trump then told Putin, pointing his finger at his Russian counterpart. “Don’t meddle in the election,” he repeated. Putin laughed after Trump’s admonition was translated, and Trump smiled.Tuesday’s White House gathering, in which Pompeo also participated, was even more loaded with tension. Earlier in the day, House Democrats announced articles of impeachment that include a finding Trump damaged U.S. national security by withholding military aid to Ukraine, which is battling Russia-backed separatists, in hopes of forcing its government to undertake an investigation into former Vice President Joe Biden.Immediately before the White House meeting, Pompeo and Lavrov sparred in front of reporters over U.S. findings that Russia interfered in the 2016 election.In a summary of their discussion, the White House said Trump also urged Russia to resolve its conflict with Ukraine. Trump expressed support for an arms control agreement that would include both Russia and China, and asked for Russian support in preventing Iran from developing nuclear weapons and ensuring that North Korea reduces its own stockpile.Biden and other Democrats routinely criticize the U.S. president for showing deference to Vladimir Putin. They frequently reference a news conference in Helsinki in which Trump said he believed the Russian leader’s claims more than the findings of his own intelligence services.Separately, the Justice Department inspector general released a report on Monday finding no political bias in the FBI investigation into allegations of Russian collusion, a conclusion that counters Trump’s contention that he and his campaign had been unfairly targeted. The report, however, cited significant missteps by the bureau as it sought a warrant to surveil a former Trump campaign adviser.And just last week, Trump attended a NATO summit in London, where other leaders expressed concern about Russia -- not just its annexation of Crimea but also its tightening grip on Syria after Trump ordered the withdrawal of U.S. troops.Revealing Intel SourceThe 2017 meeting came just a day after Trump fired Comey over frustration with the probe into his campaign’s ties to Russia. It darkened the cloud of controversy related to Russia that still looms over Trump’s presidency, even after federal investigators found no evidence he was involved in Moscow’s efforts to influence the U.S. elections.Lavrov arrived at the White House at about 2:20 p.m. in Washington and left about an hour later. The meeting was closed to reporters and none of the participants made any public remarks.After their first meeting, the Russian state news agency Tass released pictures of Trump and Lavrov laughing in the Oval Office. White House officials then rushed members of the American media into the room, but the Russian delegation had already departed.Only official U.S. government photographers were allowed into Tuesday’s meeting, according to a White House official who asked not to be identified because it was private.The White House said after the 2017 meeting that it had been misled by Russian officials and believed the Tass photographer was there on behalf of the Kremlin.In the following days, the Washington Post reported that Trump revealed highly classified information during the meeting and may have jeopardized a source considered crucial to the battle against Islamic State. Subsequent reports identified the source of that intelligence as Israel. Trump denied ever explicitly revealing the source to Russia, but concerns remained that he had given the Russian officials enough information to determine it for themselves.“Just so you understand, I never mentioned the word or the name Israel,” Trump said during a 2017 trip to Jerusalem. “Never mentioned it during that conversation. They’re all saying I did, so you have another story wrong. Never mentioned the word Israel.”Putin met with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy in Paris on Monday. That summit led to an agreement to exchange prisoners and the withdrawal of some troops, but no permanent resolution to the ongoing conflict in the disputed Donbas region. More than 13,000 people have died in the conflict over the 500-kilometer (310-mile) contact line over the past four years.North Korea, VenezuelaTrump is also eager to enlist Russia to help pressure North Korea to abandon its nuclear weapons program amid worrying signs that his efforts may be failing.Kim Yong Chol, Chairman of the Korea Asia-Pacific Peace Committee, called Trump a “heedless and erratic old man” in a statement to the state-run Korean Central News Agency earlier this week. On Sunday, Trump warned that North Korean leader Kim Jong Un risked voiding “his special relationship with the President of the United States” amid reports that North Korea had conducted a key test at a missile site.“Kim Jong Un is too smart and has far too much to lose, everything actually, if he acts in a hostile way,” Trump tweeted.Trump has also said he wants to broker a replacement deal for the New START treaty, which limits the production of nuclear weapons and expires in February 2021. Trump said last week he’s eager to expand the deal to include other nations like China, and want to see “a cessation on nuclear and nuclear creation.”“It’s -- in my opinion -- the biggest problem the world has today,” Trump said.The White House didn’t say whether Trump raised concerns over Russia’s backing of Venezuelan leader Nicolas Maduro. Vice President Mike Pence led a meeting last week with other White House officials to re-examine the administration’s push to empower Juan Guaido, the National Assembly leader and Maduro opponent who declared himself interim president of Venezuela with American backing earlier this year.But Guaido has failed to push out Maduro, and Trump is losing confidence that the opposition leader will ever topple the regime. The administration officials have instead discussed a possible partnership with Russia to ease the leader out of power.\--With assistance from Jordan Fabian and Nick Wadhams.To contact the reporter on this story: Justin Sink in Washington at jsink1@bloomberg.netTo contact the editors responsible for this story: Alex Wayne at awayne3@bloomberg.net, Joshua GalluFor more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.com©2019 Bloomberg L.P.
- TechCrunch
'Plundervolt' attack breaches chip security with a shock to the system
Today's devices have been secured against innumerable software attacks, but a new exploit called Plundervolt uses distinctly physical means to compromise a chip's security. The Plundervolt attack does just this, using the hidden registers to very slightly change the voltage going to the chip at the exact moment that the secure enclave is executing an important task.
- Business Wire
Intel’s Continued Commitment to Transparency and Equity at All Levels
Intel Corporation is disclosing its latest workforce representation data, as well as 2017 and 2018 pay data.
- Bloomberg
Intel Is First to Share Detailed Pay Disparities. It’s Not Flattering.
(Bloomberg) -- It’s not really a surprise that white and Asian men dominate the top pay tiers among Intel’s U.S. workforce. That’s been true in the tech industry for years. What’s unusual is the excruciating level of detail about pay disparity the chipmaker is releasing Tuesday to the public—information it could have kept secret.In addition to its annual update on the outlook for women and people of color at the company, Intel on Tuesday released the results of a new report it sent to the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission that gives unprecedented pay, race and gender data for about 51,000 U.S. workers. Intel is the first company to release the otherwise private data.The results are not flattering. Among 52 top executives at Intel, who all earn more than $208,000—the top pay band the EEOC tracks—29 are white men, 11 are Asian men and 8 are white women. The remaining tally is 1 each for Asian women, Hispanic women, black women and black men, with no Hispanic men among executives in that top tier.The ratio was similarly skewed across manager, professional and technician job classifications, with white and Asian men dominating top pay groups and women and people of color clustered in the lower bands. One in four white men at Intel are in the top salary tier, earning at least $208,000, a higher share than any other group. Rates are far lower for women and underrepresented minorities; less than 10% of black employees are top earners. “It’s difficult to really fix what you aren’t being transparent about,” said Barbara Whye, Intel’s chief diversity and inclusion officer and a vice president in human resources. The chipmaker is making itself “very vulnerable,” she says, to “do the right things,” and she hopes her peers will follow and share pay information, too. “These are industry-wide problems,” Whye said. “They are going to require industry-wide solutions to resolve them.” So far, no other companies have said they’ll do the same. Intel joins a small but growing number of companies that have released gender and racial pay data, often under pressure from investors. The transparency may be laudable, but it is often overshadowed by what is revealed. Annual diversity reports from the biggest tech companies from the last half decade have shown scant progress in advancing the numbers of under-represented workers.Companies that choose to release this kind of information risk backlash. Citigroup this year faced criticism after it voluntarily released median pay data that showed women at the bank earn 29% less than men do.Intel’s report finds that within job types—not just at the top—white men dominate the highest salary band. Two-thirds of employees fall into a job group called “professionals,” which includes includes non-managerial office workers and programmers. Nearly all earn at least $80,000 per year, but white and Asian men have the highest salaries. Black, Hispanic and other minorities are overrepresented in the bottom half of the pay ranges. Even if the numbers look bad, companies will ultimately benefit more from leading on disclosure than they would from dragging their heels, said Natasha Lamb, managing partner at Arjuna Capital, which pressures companies to disclose gender pay data. The point is not to beat up on organizations for telling the truth, she said. “It's much more important to have an accurate reflection of reality than to glaze over the simple truth,” she said. “These companies are not as diverse and equal as they could be.”In 2015, Intel set a goal to have women make up at least 26% of its workforce by 2020. The company met that last year and is working to increase the percentage of women among top executives now to 26%, too, Whye said. Intel says representation among its total U.S. workforce and for technical employees has improved—underrepresented workers make up 15.8% of the company up from 14.6% last year. Women as a percentage of the workforce fell slightly to 26.5% from 26.8%.Intel announced in January that it had met its goal of equal pay for men and women who do the same work. This EEOC data does not measure that.Overrepresentation of white men in the highest-paying jobs contributes to the nation’s wage gap: American women earn 20% less than men do, and the gap is even wider for women of color. Intel’s disclosure shows that these disparities can’t be fixed simply by raising the salaries of women and minorities. Whye said the company’s task is to help underrepresented groups get promoted into more lucrative roles and keep them there. The data provided to the EEOC covered 2017 and 2018 and was collected from nearly all U.S. companies for the first time this fall under an initiative started by President Barack Obama. By law, the forms stay private unless a company makes them public. This could be the only time the EEOC collects worker pay broken down by race, sex and ethnicity, making Intel’s disclosure a unique window into company compensation, and how it results in wage gaps. The agency has been soliciting the data since July and could continue to do so until January under a federal judge’s order. But the EEOC has said it won’t pursue future collections in this form. In the U.K. where companies are required to publicly report wage gaps between male and female workers, the disclosures have shown the benefits and limits of transparency, said Harini Iyengar, a lawyer who advocates for equal pay in Britain. “A lot of members of the public who don't pay an interest generally in labor market issues are quite shocked at the scale of the pay disparity,” she said. “So that's been very positive because people are genuinely shocked.” But so far the nationwide initiative has not resulted in measurable change, she said: “What I'm seeing is collective hand-wringing about, ‘Oh no, this is not good enough. But look everyone else in our industry sectors is in the same boat. So that's all right then.’” (Corrects top executives chart to reflect that values show the total number of executives rather than the share. Updates third paragraph with context about highest paid Hispanic executives. )\--With assistance from Lucy Meakin and Paige Smith.To contact the authors of this story: Jeff Green in Southfield at jgreen16@bloomberg.netHannah Recht in New York at hrecht@bloomberg.netTo contact the editor responsible for this story: Philip Gray at philipgray@bloomberg.net, Rebecca GreenfieldFor more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.com©2019 Bloomberg L.P.
- Zacks
Intel's Horse Ridge Chip Takes Quantum Computing to New High
Intel (INTC) unveils new "Horse Ridge" quantum control chip with an aim to realize quantum practicality.
- Zacks
Intel (INTC) Dips More Than Broader Markets: What You Should Know
Intel (INTC) closed at $56.53 in the latest trading session, marking a -0.49% move from the prior day.
- Zacks
Factors Setting the Tone for Oracle's (ORCL) Q2 Earnings
Oracle's (ORCL) fiscal second-quarter results are expected to reflect solid adoption of cloud-based services and latest Autonomous Database.
- Zacks
The Zacks Analyst Blog Highlights: Microsoft, United Technologies, Procter & Gamble, Walmart and Intel
The Zacks Analyst Blog Highlights: Microsoft, United Technologies, Procter & Gamble, Walmart and Intel
- Zacks
The Zacks Analyst Blog Highlights: Tesla, Baidu, Lyft, Alibaba and Intel
The Zacks Analyst Blog Highlights: Tesla, Baidu, Lyft, Alibaba and Intel
- Business Wire
Intel Introduces ‘Horse Ridge’ to Enable Commercially Viable Quantum Computers
Intel Labs unveils a new cryogenic control chip. "Horse Ridge" will speed development of full-stack quantum computing systems.
- Bloomberg
Beijing Pushes for Removal of Foreign Tech in More State Offices
(Bloomberg) -- Terms of Trade is a daily newsletter that untangles a world embroiled in trade wars. Sign up here. The Chinese government is taking further steps to remove foreign technology from state agencies and other organizations, a clear sign of determination for more independence amid escalating tensions with the U.S.Beijing will likely replace as many as 20 million computers at government agencies with domestic products over the next three years, according to research from China Securities. More than 100 trial projects for domestic products were completed in July, the brokerage firm said. The Financial Times newspaper said the Communist Party’s Central Office earlier this year ordered state offices and public institutions to shift away from foreign hardware and software.The government under President Xi Jinping has been trying for years to replace technologies from abroad, and particularly from the U.S. Bloomberg News reported in 2014 that Beijing was aiming to purge most foreign technology from its banks, the military, government agencies and state-owned enterprises by 2020. The country’s Made in China 2025 plan also set out specific goals for technology independence, although the policy has been de-emphasized after contributing to trade war tensions.U.S. President Donald Trump’s aggressive policies against China and its leading companies have given the effort renewed urgency. His administration banned U.S. companies from doing business with Huawei Technologies Co. this year and blacklisted other Chinese firms.“The trade war has exposed various areas of Chinese economic weakness, which Beijing seems determined to rectify,” said Brock Silvers, managing director of Adamas Asset Management. “If the decision pushes Trump to finally come down hard with a more forceful ban of Chinese tech, however, China may one day regret having gone so public with its policy so soon.”While the current push is narrow in scope, it is designed as part of the broad, long-standing effort to decrease China’s reliance on foreign technologies and boost its domestic industry. The goal is to substitute 30% of hardware in state agencies next year, 50% in 2021 and 20% in 2022, China Securities estimated, based on government requests and clients’ budgets.The research, from September, detailed Beijing’s goals. The FT reported the number of computers to be replaced could reach 30 million, attributing the figures to China Securities. The newspaper said the goal is to use “secure and controllable” technology as part of the country’s Cyber Security Law passed in 2017.Starting next year, key industries such as finance, energy and telecom will test more domestic products in trials that may last years, the firm said. Chinese banks are supposed to shift from International Business Machines Corp. and Oracle Corp. to more diversified X86 architecture suppliers and then eventually to fully made-in-China hardware. China has decided to adopt ARM architecture for its domestic hardware, China Securities said.“The China-U.S. trade war could also help to breed a new market for home-made products,” China Securities analyst Shi Zerui wrote.Still, Beijing’s push has proven difficult because its domestic industry hasn’t yet shown itself capable of matching foreign technologies in certain sectors. Particularly hard to replace, for example, are semiconductors from suppliers like Intel Corp. and Nvidia Corp., as well as software from Microsoft Corp. and Apple Inc.“While large suppliers such as Microsoft and IBM are undoubtedly worried, many high-end components, like chipsets, can’t be easily replaced,” Silvers said.\--With assistance from Debby Wu.To contact Bloomberg News staff for this story: Gao Yuan in Beijing at ygao199@bloomberg.netTo contact the editors responsible for this story: Peter Elstrom at pelstrom@bloomberg.net, Vlad SavovFor more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.com©2019 Bloomberg L.P.
- Zacks
Autonomous Vehicles Aim New Highs With Driverless Tests
Alibaba (BABA)-backed AutoX applies for testing its self-driving vehicles, without in-car driver backup, thereby stirring competition in the autonomous-vehicle tech space.
