Thread regarding Intel Corp. layoffs

Not sure there is a candidate who could have made a difference at the top. Methinks the problem is somewhere in-between. I saw major problems during the abandonment of ultra mobile in 2014-2015, Subsequent hubris forther exacerbated things. Not just AI or foundry. Been through ACT and CPM. Surprised it took this long for this to happen.

For all those Pat haters... do you seriously think Swan was better?!?! Intel lost it's way due to Andy Bryant being Chairman of the Board... he was the architect of the demise of Intel starting with promoting BK and Renee as 2-in-a-Box CEO and President... then putting Swan as interim while looking for a CEO for A YEAR. Since there were no bites after a year... they just gave it to Swan instead of embarrassing themselves more. Love Pat or hate Pat... he's 10x the CEO than BK, and 100x better than Swan.

Lirk Skaugen

The Indian culture clashes with meritocracy. It’s not what you know, it is definitely who you know. Empire building and brown nosing would sadden Mr. Grove.

now is all-in on ARM

They were all in on PowerPC but moved to x86 and then moved to ARM. Apple wants vertical integration. That's why they have been trying to make their own modem, but have been unsuccessful so far. Apple only licenses the ISA from ARM. It would be a low hanging fruit to move to a free ISA. Apple will wait for the RISC-V and its ecosystem to improve and then make the move.

The nature of computing architecture is that the big winner on RISC-V is more likely to be QCOM or some company that is currently not big, than AAPL or INTC.

AAPL was unburdened by its past use of x86 and always wanted to be self-reliant on processor design, but now is all-in on ARM.

INTC has repeatedly shown it can't stick with ARM, due to the higher profit margins of their proprietary x86. This is the classic case of being captured by past success.

Eventually the market share losses to ARM will force Intel to find a new path. As with a lot of other strategic choices, the Board may know this and have some criteria for when to shift away from x86 (not that they would admit that to anyone).

RISC-V is still scaling up, just starting to produce designs that are comparable to PC, so there is a lot more work to go until that is a mature architecture. ARM is several decades old, with adoption still growing. So see if there is yet another attempt by Intel to start working with ARM, and maybe pick up some RISC-V projects along the way, milking x86 till that cash cow has withered away.

If RISC-V is to be successful, Apple will have to lead the way. They went from PowerPC to Intel to ARM, and their fans followed along and cheered the transition each time. Unlike x86 users, Apple fans are "unburdened by what has been." If they know they can make more profit in RISC-V and get same or better performance, they'd make the jump.

or better yet, RISC-V.

But RISC-V is not more than a students' pet project.
The way it's developed leads to huge fragmentation as there's no big player that could lead the way. Those the only few rv startups look no more than a bubble riding on AI hype train. And software side of RISC-V is a mess compared to what we have with ARM.
I had a lot of hopes for RISC-V to ignite a new wave of CPU startups as there were in 2010's with SoftMachines and Nuvia, but it looks like that is not going to be true.

@nua.. PG has been here nearly 4 years not 2. Get a grip on reality and time frames. Intel has been going down hard for almost half a decade. This isn't a blimp or a senior moment. The guy in charge is clearly the wrong choice. The problem now is that the situation is so bad that no one can reverse it. Intel will fail... it is not too big anymore.

The board didn't want to make a difference they just wanted the gravy train. It's like the harris campaign. If you profit you don't want to stop. Just say sorry and donate to charity.

@nua... driving a car until the gas runs out is better for the passengers/employees than driving off a cliff which is what PG did.

Intel has fundamentally changed, it will never be the Intel you remember.

Give that Elon guy a break. He has too many jobs which mean he does absolutely nothing in a day. Let assume he spends max 2 hours per job and how long does it take for him to switch one job to the others?

Mira Murati would be an amazing CEO.

Any of the past or current DEIs on ELT... They are all brilliant and completely fungible across functional domains -- design, manufacturing, HR, etc.,

"Elon Musk could be the best Intel CEO. He has track records of both product design and manufacturing, and will identify and fire the incompetent ELT and middle management in one week, as he did to Twitter."
Didn't he fire about 80% of the twitter staff, maybe deservedly so.
Elon is excellent at appearing intelligent and getting government contracts/handouts.

Elon Musk could be the best Intel CEO. He has track records of both product design and manufacturing, and will identify and fire the incompetent ELT and middle management in one week, as he did to Twitter.

PSO was d-mb.

Oh, BK for sure. :o

But if he is not available then someone who understands where technology is headed and knows how to pick products for those future markets, knowing that the future will not include x86.

Bob Swan caught some of the pandemic PC bo-m, but passed on partnering with OpenAI and was more focused on stock buybacks and other earnings manipulation than how to get the factories or products competitive again. Accountants should never run technology companies.

BK and Sohail were good examples of those that rode the 1990s PC wave, but contributed little and managed to weasel their way to the top.

Otellini approved Centrino, which enabled laptops as we know them, but of course passed on the iPhone due to poor forecasting from Finance. It's worth repeating, Accountants should never run technology companies.

Overall the basic issue is that the company was able to dominate PCs and was able to leverage that into blade server dominance, but none of that leads to where technology was headed next. That makes the Board, ELT, MCM incompetent/irrelevant.

The fix for that would be to merge with AMD and get Lisa Su show everyone how it is done. QCOM might be a good fit as well, as they are also focused on RISC architecture.

The problem is that x86 is an old architecture, and about to be made irrelevant by ARM and then RISC-V. This is the nature of technology and compute in particular. It moves on.

So the real savior of Intel is the CEO who is able to burn the ships and move products to ARM or better yet, RISC-V. It appears to me that Pat is trying to initiate that transition by having Foundry pick up some external ARM customers. The next step is to increase RISC-based development.

While Pat has proven to be a particularly terrible CEO, Intel's problems go back many years. Craig Barrett was an excellent materials/manufacturing guy, but major design flaws and lack of vision had already crept in. Every CEO since manifested that. Pat captained the big boat after it hit the iceberg; but just hastened it sliding beneath the waves.

Andy Grove, but unfortunately he is not currently available.

Lip-Bu Tan

Bob Swan was just going to keep driving the car until it ran out of gas. If Swan was still here now we would be mostly dead. He was not a leader. Pat was the right guy for the state of Intel when he was hired. Is the he the right guy two years from now I guess we will see.

And the people he hired and the people they hired and so on.
The issues and direction have been getting worse with time.
It is internal company rot which probably began with the board.

They should have just left Bob Swan in place. The company was generating record revenue under his leadership rapidly approaching $80B. PG came in and revenue plummeted. The real mistake happened back when otellini was selected. At that time Intel had 4 strong leaders being groomed for CEO. They just chose the wrong one.