In an effort to restructure into a company focused on the cloud and smart technology, Intel has decided to cancel any future Atom projects.
According to the website neowin.net, Intel will lay off 12,000 employees as part of the effort to restructure the company. The high-tech giant will cancel its mobile Atom projects codenamed SoFIA and Broxton and it will focus on investments in IoT, data centers, connectivity and memory businesses, as well as growing market segments as home gateways, gaming and 2-in-1s.
Intel has struggled for long in the mobile market. Now, the discontinuation of the two mobile Atom products signifies an end to the company's mobile efforts. Intel is transforming from a PC company in one focused on the cloud and smart connected devices.
The mobile projects of the company were re-evaluated in order to better align to this strategy. Among the changes included are canceling of the SoFIA 3GX, SoFIA LTE and SoFIA LTE2, as well as canceling of the Broxton platform. These changes are effective immediately and will enable the company to advance its strategy and move resources to products that deliver higher returns.
According to AnandTech, the SoFIA project was announced almost 2 years ago in partnership with Spreadtrum and Rockchip. The program was designed with the aim to produce cost-effective SoCs for entry-level smartphones. SoFIA has finally made it to the market, but it seems that the technology would not be around for long.
The Broxton project represented the next generation of Intel's in-house mobile SoCs, designed to run on Goldmont, Intel's 14 nm Atom core. Now Intel decided to exit the tablet and smartphone race. Atom-branded SoCs will cease to be produced but Apollo Lake will still exist in the form of Celeron and Pentium.
According to the online publication HotHardware, the news is not much of a surprise for tech experts. But since Intel has already invested over the years billions of research and development dollars into the mobile sector, the company's decision means those dollars did not help it much to reach its goals.
