Intel is shuttering its automotive business as it focuses on its core computing and manufacturing operations. The company has been a long-time supplier to the auto industry, albeit with waxing and waning enthusiasm. Independently managed, Altera and Mobileye are unaffected by this decision.
When Intel addresses computing-adjacent markets, its initial strategy is to sell what it has. Over the past 10 years, it has won some designs by repurposing Atom netbook (remember those?) and laptop chips, such as the recent Raptor Lake-PX (marketed as Malibou Lake when targeting cars). This approach yields imperfect hardware but incurs no additional R&D expense. Moreover, the familiar PC-based platform presents a familiar development environment and has broad software support.
Smartphone processors, such as those from Qualcomm, however, have come to share the same strengths and are even better at supporting Android and other operating systems for car cockpits. Moreover, their smaller packaging and better power confer further advantages. Intel’s full-custom backend design thwarts its development of auto-specific derivatives, unlike Qualcomm’s approach. Nonetheless, Intel and smartphone-chip companies together squeezed legacy auto-chip suppliers targeting cockpit designs.
Intel sought to challenge those companies under the hood, too, deviating from the above strategy. At the start of 2024, Intel acquired Silicon Mobility. Its safety-standard-compliant U310 control-unit chip targeted EV powertrains and other subsystems. The U310 integrated Arm cores, flexible logic units similar to FPGA blocks, and signal-processing hardware. It’s an unusual design, which we expect another automotive semiconductor company to acquire.
Intel deserves more credit for having ideas about how to expand beyond its core market, execution has lagged. Its most recent foray into the automotive market is no different. As Intel’s execution problems have metastasized into its core business and cash has hemorrhaged, the company has necessarily turned from expanding into other markets to defending and reinvigorating data-center, PC, and manufacturing operations.