One of the highlights of Intel's first-quarter earnings report last week was improved sales of its client and data center processors as a result of improved output and yield, as well as high demand. Last week, industry analyst Ben Bajarin said the company was now selling what would normally be 'scrap' or 'low-expectation' CPUs, which helped boost margins. We followed up with industry veteran Dan Hutcheson for more details, and he notes that some of the company's recent yield gains are less about breakthrough inventions and more about disciplined execution improvements under its new manufacturing leadership.
Dan Hutcheson, vice chair of TechInsights, told Tom's Hardware that while techniques like binning and statistical process control (SPC) have been standard practice at Intel for about 40 years, recently — starting from around late 2024 when Naga Chandrasekaran, the current head of Intel Foundry, joined the company — Intel focused on tightening yield distribution across the wafer by reducing edge-related variability.
