Intel really wants to move away from the dying PC business

It's no secret that the PC market is shrinking.

And for a company like Intel, who's historically made most of its money off PC chips, that's bad news.

In order to survive the PCs' decline, Intel has been desperately trying to shift away from it, reshaping the company to focus on chips for data centers and connected devices instead.

That renewed focus is perhaps most noticeable in a chart that Intel included in its latest 10-Q filing to explain the company's future strategy roadmap.

As you can see in the chart below, the PC doesn't even have its own separate section in Intel's broader vision chart (it's looped in under the "Things & Devices" instead):

Intel writes in the filing that this chart is meant to reflect the company's drive to tranform from "a PC company to one that powers the cloud and billions of smart, connected computing devices."

It writes, "As more 'things and devices' become smart and connected to the cloud, there is greater demand for data centers to not only connect these devices, but also to capture and analyze the data they create."

In plain English, that means Intel wants its chips to be in all the Internet-connected devices, like PCs, mobile phones, and autonomous cars, and process all the data generated from those devices through Intel chip-powered data centers. Once that's established, Intel would get to control the so-called "virtuous cycle of growth," in which each segment continuously feeds into its growth.

If you've been following Intel, this isn't anything new. Intel CEO Brian Krzanich first revealed the idea for this "virtuous cycle of growth" at last year's Investor Meeting and shared more details in a blog post in April. Still, it's an interesting illustration that perfectly captures the changes taking place at the world's largest chipmaker.