As Its CPU Scandal Deepens, Intel Plans to Cut Thousands of Jobs

CPU manufacturer Intel is set to cut thousands of jobs according to a new report from Bloomberg. It’s another blow to the chip giant as it faces a consumer scandal surrounding CPUs and struggles to find its footing in the changing chip market.

Intel is scheduled to report its second-quarter earnings on Thursday and, according to an anonymous source speaking to Bloomberg, will share its plans to cut 110,000 jobs. Intel started cutting jobs in October 2022 and hasn’t stopped since, laying off 5% of its total workforce in 2023 alone.

The pending job cuts are just the latest episode of bad news for the chip giant. Customers with 13th and 14th generation Intel CPUs have had issues for months. Chips was suffering from constant crashes and blue screens of death, especially when doing heavy work like a game. Video gaming communities have been warning their friends about Intel CPUs on the Internet for months.

NVIDIA pointed the finger at Intel in April patch notes for its GPU drivers. The developers behind the popular free-to-play video game Warframe shared statistics for the latest crash in early July.

“After collecting hundreds of reports from helpful players we found a pattern: almost all of them were from systems with 13th and 14th generation Intel processors,” said the devs Warframe the fields. Some crash dumps from other developers confirmed large amounts of crashes for players using 13th and 14th generation intel CPUs.

People who have celebrated this problem suspect that it has something to do with CPUs handling power incorrectly. Intel finally confirmed this and admitted that the manufacturing problem also affected some older CPUs in the 13th and 14th generation.

On July 22, Intel finally admitted that the CPUs were not handling the voltage correctly and that it would release a microcode patch in mid-August that would fix the problem. The problem is that voltage problems like this can permanently damage the chip. All that power and heat can degrade the CPU, shorten its lifespan and hurt its performance.

Those chips affected by the voltage problem are almost permanently damaged. Will Intel issue a recall or stop selling the chips until they have a fix in place? No, he told The Verge.

However, all hope is not lost. Intel CPUs come with a three-year limited warranty and it’s possible that people with fried chips can return them to Intel for a replacement. The Verge asked if Intel plans to extend the warranty or modify it to make it easier for people with affected chips to get replacements, but Intel did not respond.

There was a time when Intel was the only real option if you wanted a high-powered CPU for your desktop but that hasn’t been the case for a long time. AMD offers competitive pricing for the same performance. And when AMD recently had problems with its high-end CPUs, it delayed shipping them out of caution.

Semiconductors make the world go round but not all are created equal. AI has created a huge demand for silicon, but not the CPU Intel is famous for. The company has slowly entered the GPU market and is pushing itself as an AI solution, but it’s hard to watch it struggle with the chipset it’s known for and think it’s doing good in a market it wants to disrupt.