That's in line with a leaked slide that comes courtesy of AdoredTV, which details that Intel will reduce the prices of its processor lines rather significantly, so much so that it could come with a $3bn cost.

 

But this kind of financial smack around the chops could be one way for Intel to ensure its Core and Xeon processors remain at a price that is competitive with AMD; we doubt the chipmaker would likely undercut Team Red, but cheaper Core CPUs would surely make the decision to go AMD or Intel more tricky once one balances cost and performance ratios.

 

As AdoredTV pointed out, Intel has the ''financial horsepower'' to take this type of revenue hit, as its long standing dominance in the chip world means that it certainly is not short on cash reserves; while Team Red isn't destitute, it doesn't have the net income of its main rival.

 

In the event that the rumours are real, we'd place a cautious bet that the biggest price cuts is going to be levied at Intel's Xeon data centre CPUs, as that is where the chipmaker is at its most dominant. But the rise of AMD's EPYC Rome 7-nanometre processors gives a new challenge to that arena, and one that Intel likely cannot sit idly by and ignore.

 

Sure, Intel might cook up some chips that offer substantially more efficiency than Team Red's rivals, but that's not simple to do; Intel hasn't precisely had an easy route to the 10nm process node basically. As such, in the short-term a price reduction pretty makes sense.

 

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