JMP cuts Intel stock rating on Haswell power issues rumors

JMP Securities analyst Alex Gauna cut his estimates for Intel's financial performance over a delay in Intel's Haswell for PCs and servers this year and next. On top of that, Gauna heard rumors that Intel is having problems with the power circuitry of Haswell. He claims the effort to integrate the voltage regulation stage into the Haswell architecture has fallen short of expectations and adds that Intel is not pursuing this power management scheme with subsequent products.

The Intel effort to integrate a voltage regulation (VR) stage into the Haswell architecture appears to have fallen short of desired results, and the company is consequently reversing course and not pursuing this power management scheme with subsequent products. Our discovery of this issue came from discussions with multiple power management partners at the APEC (Applied Power Electronics Conference) trade show that was held March 17-21, 2013, and we were also informed that they had only just become aware of Intel’s change of direction in prior weeks. To be clear, the industry sources we spoke with indicated Haswell is working, but that “the new power approach did not live up to expectations.” It was the consensus view that timelines were also slipping, both for the Haswell refresh for PCs in 2H13 and likely down the road for the next two-socket Xeon server move to Haswell that is known as Grantley and expected in 2H14 […] Sources declined to elaborate on (or didn?t know) the exact performance implications; however, integrated VR was touted as a key feature that will afford the Haswell platform improved power efficiency without compromising performance. We also know from speaking with senior Intel engineers that integrated VR had been “an area of great debate internally.” It seems evident at this juncture that this debate was won by integration proponents, but then lost in terms of benefit yield.

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It was the consensus view that timelines were also slipping, both for the Haswell refresh for PCs in 2H13 and likely down the road for the next two-socket Xeon server move to Haswell that is known as Grantley and expected in 2H14.