David Kanter (dkanter.delete@this.realworldtech.com) on October 13, 2018 6:08 am wrote:

> Do you have any reason to believe that Intel would ever give away server parts?

Well, yes. They were fined billions for effectively giving parts away.

First, Intel gave wholly or partially hidden rebates to computer manufacturers on condition that they bought all, or almost all, their x86 CPUs from Intel. Intel also made direct payments to a major retailer on condition it stock only computers with Intel x86 CPUs.

-- The European Commission

They paid to get Atom chips into tablets and phones:

Intel is, in essence, paying tablet makers to adopt its Bay Trail Atom chips because it needs to catch up.

-- CNET.

"It is not unusual for us to put programs in place to incentivize customers and accelerate the market for our products, and we've been clear about our desire to grow market share in tablets," Intel said in a statement to CNET.

-- ibid.



(And even if these aren't literally giving them away, no-one's said Cloudflare's is actually getting them for zero dollars.)

> I don't, it makes no
> sense when they are capacity constrained.

I suspect Intel doesn't care that much about losing i3 or lower sales to AMD. They can try to regain that market when they get 10nm capacity working; it's low-margin, AMD are well-established in the market, and getting AMD/Global Foundries/TSMC to cover the low-end market during a capacity crunch (by putting their own prices up a bit!) is probably cheaper than buying the fabs to ensure they won't have capacity crunches.

They do care very much about their high-margin server business, and keeping competitors out.