Perhaps 2016? Maybe even earlier?
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PSO was pretty good.
He created the Intel platform branding with Centrino and other efforts which raised Intel’s dollar share of the PC market with bundling of Wi-Fi and other components.
He did miss the mobile revolution, but was a victim of the innovator’s dilemma. If you really understand it, you’ll realize that managers are powerless to prevent it as they are operating rationally with a profit maximization strategy.
It takes a manager with plutonium grade ba--s to seriously tank profits with low margin mobile parts in the very uncertain hope that future sales will make up for it.
Grove tried to get new businesses going. Spent $1B on ProShare and put Pat in charge (failed). Hands off to Barrett. Barrett goes full gas $10B in acquisitions in communications over 3 years right around the internet bubble. PSO takes over. Retrench to core. Cut heads, scale back. Got back on track with tick tock delivery in processors and chipsets. Won Apple Mac from IBM risc. No new business creation really. Execution in IA starts slow steady decline after PSO. Many attempts to grow new businesses internally as well as large stupid acquisitions that all fail. Each successive CEO since that time has done incrementally more damage.
@3hxz+1jPxGK2R 100%. I also came from the outside. The culture is very strong and self-reinforcing. There are so many layers and so many bullsh-t jobs that have nothing to do with delivering great products. The organization really is designed around a single product, IA. It is functional silos with many layers of management. Many DEIs with no processor or silicon experience at the top. Just look at ELT, they don't know anything and didn't design anything either. Yes, Pat was a 'lead' on 486, but that was the last of his engineering over 30 years ago. Whoever bloviates the best, whoever has the best TA with slides wins. The tone is set at the top.
PSO was not very bright.
As someone who joined Intel from the outside, the core problem with the company is a culture that as a result of past monopoly has ignored customers and external competition and instead has become a cauldron of internal competition, politics and intrigue.
Huge swathes of Intel have no discernible skills than PowerPoint and working at Intel. This is self reinforcing and has led to so many of the bad ideas, poor execution and incompetence over the past decade or more.
For me ist started with ACT. Good people were paid good money just to leave the company. Many including myself then started to work (or better not work) towards that package. Two years later I got it and went directly to the competition. I know a few people at Intel who still sit there doing nothing claiming not to leave without a package…
All started with PSO
This is the problem with DEI and any sort of group identity discrimination or 'affirmative' action. It creates more problems then it solves. It is tribalism at it's very core. Meritocracy is the only thing that matters.
This article explains everything: https://news.bloomberglaw.com/daily-labor-report/rare-caste-bias-case-advances-raising-calls-for-federal-action
Cisco and Intel struck down by the same stench. This is the primary reason they are two of the only Fortune 500 companies that has yet to regain its 2000 dot-com peak stock price.
MeeGo OS fading fast? Intel says it's 'still committed'
A report claims Intel is backing off its MeeGo operating system for smartphones and tablets and instead will focus on hardware running Android and Windows.
https://www.cnet.com/science/meego-os-fading-fast-intel-says-its-still-committed/
rofl Meego, that sounds like an SSG fupa under Renee? Almost as breathtakingly stupid as buying McAfee!?!! Intel track record in software even worse then poor execution on process nodes, acquisitions and design slips. Fubar.
Intel thought Meego was a serious contender for a mobile operating system.
This thing was green-lit and armies of engineers went to work on this debacle.
The arrogance of Intel thinking it could just outcompete Apple, Google and Microsoft in software is just breathtakingly stupid.
yeah during that period the mantra was only one architecture can win and that is IA. Since that time ARM has taken over a phones, tablets, apple PC and now entering server.
It's easy to see how, better performance per watt and all these new mobile devices used different o.s. so, no more microsoft jail locking in IA design wins.
- PSO selling off ARM business
- PSO downplaying Apple iPhone business
These are two decisions that have hurt Intel more than anything else.
Then there is also 10nm Litho blunder. That was pure incompetence especially after the experience with 14nm.
Indian managers
when intel was taken over by third worlders
IA monopoly is like a mountain... and when mountains crumble first it comes down a little at time...and then suddenly all once. It feels like we are close to the 'all at once' phase.
When you have a monopoly as Intel did on x86 and didn’t matter what you did you made money and your competition failed due to execution and scale it bred cultural that was deeply arrogant and in the end incompetent at the core to make common sense business decisions in the face of formidable competition.
Most of the executive leadership and the current CEO have never actually had to make difficult decisions and you can see it in the premise of IDM and IFS, totally not sound or logical nor leveraging any core Intel current competitive advantages.
Now that they have to compete the end game is so obvious.
it started in ~2014 when BK became CEO and DEI was introduced into the company. Things got progressively worse over the years under BK's tenure and remained so when BS was at the helm as the company exec staff went "Full WOKE" and abandoned meritocracy, focused more time on 'virtue signalling' than achieving results and solving real problems, and Intel lost many good people in that timeframe and morale of the good workers who remained declined in the toxic environment upper management created.
When Intel hired a guy just to change the logo.
I was deeply involved in the Rambus project. We did get the technology ready for production. But it was too little, too late. The Asian DRAM companies and Micron hedged their bets and continued their synchronous DRAM technology. Intel did finish Rambus development and got it into production. While Intel won a battle, the DRAM companies won the war.
At our "Celebration Party", in the Pink Building, The US Bank Corp Tower in Portland. The view was incredible. I can't say that Pat's speech was incredible but I will always remember that Pat talked about risk taking and that sometimes risk taking doesn't always work out.
I wonder what Pat will say this time.
when ecomomy went bad last 2 years, it was pretty predictable...
I concur. I have I7-6700 on 14nm and I'm still waiting for Intel to give me a part that improves enough on what I have to buy it. I am this close to dropping IA altogether and going with Apple M processors. As Pat said, 'they did a pretty good job with it...'.
... and for all you haters, no I don't give a rat's a-s about anything other then great single threaded performance and cool running machine, I am not buying a furnace.
Manufacturing started going downhill with 14nm.
Design started the downhill slide long before with the Pentium 4.
no will.i.am and black eyed peas were already irrelevant by the time Intel 'hired' him to do some promos. Again, more shareholder value flushed down the toilet. He never really worked from them, it's called 'marketing'.
https://venturebeat.com/business/black-eyed-peas-star-will-i-am-says-hes-hooked-on-intel-creative-role-video/
Does will.I.am still work at Intel ?
It was 20+ years in the making, and this thread explained the misadventures quite well. Stated simply it was this:
- Failure to break out of x86 prison
- Losing the role as the baddest inside x86 prison
Going from one of the highest capitalized companies in the world to the “NPC” of tech has been a painful and unnecessary journey.
@1dbs+1jPxGK2R pretty funny, I thought you made it up...
Deborah Conrad, Intel vice president and chief marketing officer: "We're thrilled to tap into the limitless creativity will.i.am brings to the table. He's not only a brilliant artist and producer, but also an innovator pushing the bounds of technology professionally and personally. We share a strong interest in innovation around music, art and lifestyle, and are excited to join forces to establish an authentic, emotional connection with consumers."
The relationship ties in with Intel's "compute continuum" vision, in which more and more devices will compute and connect to the Internet, and the company's "visual life" initiative that explores how visual experiences such as photos, videos and movies are redefining the relationship consumers have with laptops, smart phones, tablets and other devices.
ever since CEO / PSO speech at ISMC Las Vegas with the tigers on stage followed by Director of Creative 'Will I Am', it's all gone down hill. That was the one where he came out in a fab bunny suit to announce the delivery of parts to a very large phone manufacturer...
...and don't forget WiMax, another unmitigated disaster. Arrogance hubris Intel thinking they could unseat the entire 3g/4G/5G ecosystem.
In the late 90's, with the Itanium fiasco followed by the P4 dud.
Intel went downhill once Andy Grove was gone
My take is that Intel constantly gets out of markets right before they become profitable or take off. So much R&D & acquisition cash, seasoned workers, and customer goodwill thrown away. Can't trust Intel to be in this market tomorrow!
While technology moves quickly, there are also large arcs to follow -- own the standards and profit from the long tail and extended support. Could have made high-volume/low margin profit from SmartARM, mobile, makers-education. Sell hand-holding support and boutique reference designs on royalty.
Nope -- cut it unless it can generate 50% margins within 18 months of concept approval. What other industries have a 50% operating/profit margin, restaurants survive on 5-15%, retail just as dicey, even construction is lucky to average 20%
Failed aquisitions. like altera
Everything post 1268 has been delayed.
The views on StongArm and Prescott are on point. I would add that Intel’s Infiniband is another case in point with a lot of work done internally but wasn’t taken farther. Mellanox and Infineon went ahead. Intel pretty much stuck with enabling, specs and such. With all the work done in host software, it could have been taken lot farther. Projects with innovative ideas and in prototypes were essentially ki---d. Being wedded to x86 is weak point. After all, proprietary processors were in vogue in the 70s and 80s, Intel came to dethrone them with x86. But by the same token, ARM is a contrarian investment that didn’t come to fruition with the dogmatic bravado of Intel
Intel knows how to grind acquisitions to the ground and it let go off people - all in the name of criteria Set to purge. People here have already enumerated the spectacular failures in acquisitions. It is sad story of a company that repeatedly ignored all the flags and wasted billions - perhaps more than others.
In hindsight I view the Willamette CPU (late 1990's) as being the earliest clue of Intel going off the rails. It was absurdly complicated with a 12 stage pipeline, so much so that the 18 stage Prescott followup was abandoned after enormous grief. Then the 'right hand turn' occured, but Intel still missed seeing the rise of smart phones and getting onboard with ARM.
In '97 Intel acquired the remnants of Digital Equipment fab and some IP. As part of that deal they got StrongARM. Intel knew ARM was better for lower power then IA. Under VP Ron Smith, they tried to make app processors for phones and other embedded devices. Funny because this now is a huge market. Intel just couldn't execute and didn't have staying power. Anyway, this also started a wave of phone silicon acquisitions such as $1.6B for DSP Communications in 1999. Later, they acquired Infineon for $1.6B in 2010. In addition to the billions and billions spent on acquisitions, Intel spend billions in internal R&D. Finally in 2019, they threw in the towel and sold the remains to Apple for $1B, exiting the business.
This is just one example of new business strategies Intel tried and failed at. If you add up the net losses on acquisition, along with net burn for Intel R&D on failed projects like phone silicon, telephony, internet servers, internet appliances, networking equipment etc., etc., you can easily come up with $50 - $100B in shareholder value destruction from year 2000 - 2020.
It's staggering how much capital gets wasted inside tech companies. Intel is not the only one. However, Intel is likely to be one of the largest offenders. Everyone is making fun of Meta for wasting $1-$B on the metaverse... They aren't even close to how much money Intel has wasted. There are companies that know how to grow new business and stick with it. Microsoft is one ( X-Box is prime example). Cisco is another example, they have a great track record of acquiring network silicon companies and growing products from them. Intel culture seems destined to never get growth.
Intel spent most of the early 2000s trying to find direction so there were a lot of failed business attempts and missed opportunities like cell phone. Prior to ACT 2016 Intel still had about a 2 year process technology lead and huge market share leads in both client and data center. ACT 2016 resulted in far more people taking early retirement and VSP than Intel had planned. The huge experience drain lead to a rapid loss of technology lead and endless delays in getting new products ramped for production. In a company that was moving as fast as Intel once was there is always a lot of tribal knowledge that doesn't get documented because no one has the time. The accumulated knowledge left with the experienced workers. Intel has been trying to catch up ever since.
When AMD released Bulldozer and management dropped any and all pretense about technical merit.