back to article Who had Pat Gelsinger retires from Intel on their bingo card?

Intel has confirmed the sudden departure of chief executive Pat Gelsinger, in a move intended to restore investor confidence in the ailing Silicon Valley giant following a year of turmoil. Gelsinger is retiring from the Santa Clara biz effective December 1 after more than 40 years in the industry and will be replaced in the …

  1. Tom Chiverton 1

    replaced ... by ... CFO

    It's the end when the bean-counters are in charge, right ?

    #bofh

    1. _olli

      Re: replaced ... by ... CFO

      If so, they will be doomed. Intel's biggest woes have been in operations, ergo they should nominate someone with strong track record in understanding and executing silicon operations. See the fruit company as an example, Tim Cook has COO background.

      1. katrinab Silver badge

        Re: replaced ... by ... CFO

        They really need someone of the same calibre as Lisa Su to turn things around.

        1. habilain

          Re: replaced ... by ... CFO

          Not sure Su would help that much - much of Intel's problems come from the foundry, which is not something AMD has had to worry about in a long, long time.

          1. gnasher729 Silver badge

            Re: replaced ... by ... CFO

            I think the problem is not any foundry, but having a CEO who can find someone to run the foundry.

        2. CowHorseFrog Silver badge

          Re: replaced ... by ... CFO

          No they need to stop belivinv the lie that leadership actually knows what its doing and its good value to overpay them rather than actually paying the real engineers who do the real work.

    2. hoola Silver badge

      Re: replaced ... by ... CFO

      But both Gelsinger and the rest of the C-Suite will have nice fat bank balances, bonuses & share options.

      What happens further down the food change is not really of interest to them. Intel have lost their way, for whatever reason and should have had a good clear out of the board about 5 years ago.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Pint

        Re: replaced ... by ... CFO

        What happens further down the food change is not really of interest to them.

        100%. Consider anyone in a position like this and of a similar age. Plenty of money to have a very, very comfortable retirement. It's up to the next generation to decide what happens next.

        On the one hand it makes me a bit jealous but on the other I'd do exactly the same thing if I was in his shoes.

        I do often wonder whether people would give a shit about their "principles" if they were offered 100 million to not have any.

        1. gv
          Thumb Up

          Re: replaced ... by ... CFO

          "Those are my principles, and if you don't like them... well, I have others."

        2. Geoff Campbell Silver badge
          Pirate

          Re: Principles

          As I am very fond of saying, a principle is not a principle until it has cost you money (or something else of significant value). Until then, it's just an opinion, and every sucker out there has a buttload of those.

          GJC

        3. Zolko Silver badge

          Re: replaced ... by ... CFO

          I do often wonder whether people would give a shit about their "principles" if they were offered 100 million to not have any

          I'll bite : I think I'd make a counter-offer at 10 million and keep my principles. 10 millions are more than I could reasonably spend, I'd have to think hard how to waste such amount of money

          1. Snowy Silver badge
            Holmes

            Re: replaced ... by ... CFO

            Considering how fast some big lottery winners have spent their winning 10 or even 100 million is not hard to spend and have nothing to show for it.

            1. Oninoshiko

              Re: replaced ... by ... CFO

              Depends on which principals. Don't murder people? I'd like to think I'd stand by that one... Don't steal from anyone, even evil mega-corps... I'll take the millions.

    3. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: replaced ... by ... CFO

      Crap! It looks like we're going to keep doubling down on the strategy of firing experienced engineers, then "replacing" them with RCGs (recent college grads) and wonder why we can't build world leading products anymore. And, also to look for cheaper offshore labor, but we still won't pay competitive wages in the "low cost geos" so all we are is a tech training org who can't keep/retain top talent in those areas either. (Damn right, I'm posting this anonymously.)

    4. Freddellmeister

      Re: replaced ... by ... CFO

      Again!?

      Intel did so great last time? Bob Swan?

    5. StrangerHereMyself Silver badge

      Re: replaced ... by ... CFO

      Mwaah, don't know. They're bleeding so much cash and earning so few that they had to do something. If they sell off the foundry business they're doomed in the long run, but if they don't they're doomed in the short term.

      Their stock price is so low they're not contemplating another stock issue, it seems.

      Time is simply running out for Intel.

      I'm not sure about you guys but I stopped buying their CPU's when added Intel Management Engine with no option to turn it off. I'm not saying that's what pulled them down, but it played a (small?) part.

      1. Alan Brown Silver badge

        Re: replaced ... by ... CFO

        You _do_ know that AMD has a similar management device in their CPUs too, don't you?

    6. Porco Rosso

      Re: replaced ... by ... CFO

      Pat Gelsinger failed in capturing the money influx of the venture capitalists .. to make his vision of Intel happen over a long period. ( see intel stock market value being evaporated, he couldn't pull a Tesla as Musk did ...)

      Most of these investors and big customers are now all betting on Nvidia solutions , Nvidia ecosphere and Nvidia future vision. (there is a reason why there is a Nvidia rush and overhype ... there is non at Intel)

      That money now towards Nvidia is even bigger than even Intel + AMD. (AMD just get crumbles of the Nvidia pie, because Nvidia cannot deliver enough chips that the market wants)

  2. Matt Dainty
    Coat

    I've drafted you a letter of resignation. Gives you the chance to say that you're jumping before you're pushed, although obviously we're gonna be briefing that you were pushed, sorry.

    1. isdnip

      And the statement released "by" Gelsinger should actually be called the statement prepared by the corporate communications department in the name of Gelsinger, who was kicked out as the scapegoat for this quarter's bad results. Ever notice how every departure from a C-suite job is accompanied by almost exactly the same statements from the kickee and the board?

    2. big_D Silver badge

      To be honest, I'd been waiting for this since the May/June time... Back then it seemed inevitable and I was surprised he managed to hang on as long as he did, many other CEOs have been ousted much more quickly for lesser reasons, although it is a shame, I think his vision was probably the only way Intel can survive in a meaningful way...

  3. Mockup1974

    AMD bros, we finally won...

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      [AC because I work there]

      Be careful what you wish for. If the death of Intel means everyone goes AMD, great. If it means everyone decides to accelerate the shift to ARM, not so much…

      1. ThomH Silver badge

        Asked uninflected: what's wrong with the shift to ARM?

        To somebody on the software side of the industry, it looks like ARM is competitive for performance while being better for battery life and comes with the huge advantage of being customisable by the customer because of its different IP arrangement. Naive as that may be.

        1. Spazturtle Silver badge

          Not the AC you asked but ARM is more locked down, which is why if you want to install Linux on an ARM device you need a custom image made for that device whilst with x86 you can just use a generic installer.

          ARM and RISC-V hand a lot more control over to the device manurfacturer.

          1. Aaronage

            Arm isn’t more locked down. PC-BSA will solve that problem for PC just as SBSA solved it for server.

            You will get generic images that boot everywhere eventually :-)

            1. Anonymous Coward
              Anonymous Coward

              "eventually" is often fraught with peril.

              1. Aaronage

                Well I had an SBSA compliant server board and generic server images worked perfectly with it. I’m not feeling any peril for PC-BSA.

                It will happen, the only people who want you to think it won’t happen are our x86 friends.

          2. EvaQ

            Arm isn’t more locked down. It's less standardized, and thus more open. There is no Wintel monopoly that defines how each device must work.

            And that has pros and cons.

            1. Anonymous Coward
              Anonymous Coward

              "less standardized, and thus more open"

              There's at least one xkcd about that, and probably others equally applicable.

              Less standards sometimes ends up meaning "harder to use" (or implement); for ARM to-date it has resulted in a twisty maze of ARM boards, all different. Or at least, different enough that system developers and integrators essentially have to treat each one as a separate model type.

              Which is why, as others upthread have noted, you usually can't install Linux et al onto an ARM system like you can x86; instead you typically end up having to image someone else's pre-built and -configured OS onto your boot media, and hope it's fit for purpose. Or spend the time (and engineering resources, if you operate at scale) curating and maintaining your own OS images.

              Similar complaints from system case builders, peripherals manufacturers, and so on.

        2. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Orig AC here: I meant from AMD’s x86 business perspective.

          There are a couple of 2020 Intels rattling around in my house but almost everything else is already ARM.

          1. hohumladida

            Competition is the name of the game. AMD cannot sit on its laurel even though, frankly they are far ahead of intel at this point. They have a new challenger in the name of ARM to contend with. They have time since Qualcomm just faltered their entry, but others will follow MediaTek/Nvidia.

          2. big_D Silver badge

            I have a Core i5 7th Gen laptop and a Ryzen 1700 PC and an Atom based NAS, sitting in a cupboard, gathering dust. Everything else is ARM, from a few Raspi servers for PiHole, to smartphones, tablets and a Mac mini M1 (same performance as the Ryzen in Luminar Neo, but uses a fraction of the electricity to do that same work). The laptop gets used about once a month by my wife (although she is replacing it with an iPad Air M2) and I've turned the Ryzen PC on twice this year.

        3. big_D Silver badge

          Because AMD make Intel x64 architecture processors, if it accelerates the swing to ARM, they are also stuck on making legacy chips for legacy peripherals and software that won't run on ARM.

          They'd need to pivot to ARM as well...

          For the consumer, all good, whichever way, for AMD and its employees, not so good.

      2. JessicaRabbit

        The real issue is that if Intel dies and everyone shifts to AMD then AMD being just another profit obsessed corporation will start behaving like Intel. That they don't now is only because it's one of their competetive edges.

      3. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        AMD fans should want Intel to stick around as a competitive player.

        With less competition, AMD can push up their prices.

      4. pogul

        With the M series macs, I haven't been this happy with a computer since my Archimedes, which was an Acorn Risc Machine (or was it advanced, I forget, but either way I think you see the key letters there)

        1. Christopher Reeve's Horse

          I think that's a serious consideration for the market future. I've got a high spec i7 11th gen Win 11 laptop, and more recently acquired a second hand base spec M1 MacBook Air. The MacBook runs rings around the intel device performance wise, and is completely silent and lasts potentially days/weeks between charging. It's a no-brainer, I won't ever buy an x86 based laptop again, Intel or AMD. Same probably goes for desktop machines TBH.

  4. FIA Silver badge

    'Kicking' Pat Gelsinger has left Intel, Mike Magee1 has passed away... 2024 is really starting to make me feel old....

    1Thought it was a shame that didn't get a mention on 'el reg.

    1. LrngToFly

      Agreed! What wonderful days those were for The Register and Mike's next endeavor.

  5. Vulture@C64

    Despite their money, size, domination and being the designer of the PC CPU, Intel never managed to be a genuine innovator, like AmD or ARM, or even Motorola going far enough back. Every iteration was a bolt on the existing design, maintaining compatibility with software that hardly anybody cared about, or should have cared about.

    It's sad to see a key figure in the industry ejected as an offering to the investor gods, he did a lot of good, if not ultimately taking the correct decision about 25 years ago. I await his autobiography, it will be a fascinating read.

    1. ForthIsNotDead
      Meh

      Agree. They were kind of a victim of the x86 instruction set and architecture. They actually did an amazing job to take it as far as they have. But the idea that a modern 2024 processor absolutely must be able to run software written in 1979 is kind of stupid. But that straitjacket wasn't really of Intel's making - it was market forces that dictated that. But now they seem to be a victim of it. Companies such as ARM and RICK V have had the benefit of a clean sheet. Intel didn't get that luxury. They did create other processors over the years that were not x86 based, but none of them gained traction.

      1. isdnip

        As a desktop user, I am thrilled that the Intel chips of today can still run old programs, stuff written before "Hello World" was bloated into gigabytes of crud by "modern" development practices. I am pissed that Windows 10+ cannot run old code that Windows 7 could run. I do understand how most servers, with a narrow task, can be limited to recently-compiled binaries, but the desktop track benefits from all the backwards compatibility.

        1. Zolko Silver badge

          x86 compatibility ≠ x86 instructions set

          One could also argue that Intel could have innovated in its own garden by switching to a RISC architecture (Arm for example) and have it emulate x86 instructions for older software. Well, what Apple did with the Mx processors that beat the s***it out of x86 : whta prevented Intel to experiment down that road ? Comfort and monopoly.

          So no pity here

          1. david 12 Silver badge

            Re: x86 compatibility ≠ x86 instructions set

            Intel could have innovated in its own garden by switching to a RISC architecture

            And they could have called it "Itanium" and "IA-64".

            I wonder how successful that would have been in the market?

            1. Zolko Silver badge

              Re: x86 compatibility ≠ x86 instructions set

              And they could have called it "Itanium" and "IA-64"

              did they run native x86 software ? Think not : Emulation to run existing x86 applications and operating systems was particularly poor

          2. Peter Gathercole Silver badge

            Re: x86 compatibility ≠ x86 instructions set @Zolco

            Intel did.

            Most of the original x86 instructions are now run as microcode on a RISC based core in Intel x86 processors, and have done since the early Pentium Pro processors.

            True this is sort-of hardware emulation, not any sort of software emulation (for that, look at the Transmeta Crueso). Even early 8086 processors had an element of microcoded instructions, but most were hardwired into the processor.

            The interesting thing about the M1 and later Apple processors is actually the on-die HBM that makes a huge difference in performance, not the instruction set.

            I wonder whether anybody has done a T-state analysis of something like an i5 or i7, and compared it to an Apple M processor, to see whether the latter is actually faster at running a single instruction stream, or whether the difference is in multi-taksing and running several instruction streams in parallel. I must do some reading.

        2. gratou

          > I am pissed that Windows 10+ cannot run old code that Windows 7 could run.

          Exactly. We still have the bloat but not the compatibility. Thank you MS.

        3. Alan Brown Silver badge

          " I am pissed that Windows 10+ cannot run old code that Windows 7 could run."

          Free clue: You can setup the operating environment _for that program_ to look like Windows 7

          It's not exactly widely advertised but the facility is there

      2. gnasher729 Silver badge

        You can write macOS code, compile it for ARM and x86, and run both on an ARM silicon Mac. The Intel version will automatically be translated from Intel to ARM assembler code using Clang.

        The result runs typically at 80% of the speed of an ARM processor. So thats at most the penalty: 20% slower after translating assembler code.

        Intel processors are just not very fast. If you look at performance per Watt they don’t come close to Apples ARM implementation. There are people who use Apple Silicon because it runs Intel code at same speed for much less power.

        1. Dostoevsky Bronze badge

          > Intel processors are just not very fast.

          And that's a load of hooey. My ultrabook's Intel chip is faster (higher clock speed by half a GHz) than my friend's M3 Max. It has more cores, too. The only thing it doesn't compete on is power consumption, but oh well. Once Linux is fully ported to the ARM notebooks Apple makes, they might even be usable!

          Sweeping generalizations generally don't add anything to the argument.

      3. Piro

        Wrong argument. AMD has managed to advance things significantly in all aspects. The architecture is not holding them back.

      4. Cliffwilliams44 Silver badge

        After IBM had their ass handed to them over Micro-Channel, very few in the industry had the guts to produce new technology that was not compatible with previous hardware/software.

        This went on for years until ARM and Apple finally were brave enough to sat "we can't keep doing this!" The biggest blame is Microsoft and their entrenched corporate customers!

        Recent events have shown this cannot go on much longer! If Intel/AMD are gong to survive they have to bring a new generation of processor to market that are not compatible with the x86 architecture!

        1. Alan Brown Silver badge

          "After IBM had their ass handed to them over Micro-Channel"

          You mean after IBM attempted to corner the market with a proprietary and undocumented interfacing standard and discovered they were no longer the 9000 pound gorilla in that market

          ISA took off BECAUSE it was open. MCA died because it wasn't

          PCI didn't have the same kind of problem

      5. Alan Brown Silver badge

        "But that straitjacket wasn't really of Intel's making - it was market forces that dictated that"

        One can say the same thing about Boeing and the B737, but that's not doing them much good at the moment

    2. exovert

      The predecessor (Swan) had a tough ride, not being his fault they had to reheat Sky-lake,lake lake lake lake, and similarly, though alder lake isn't attributable to Gelsinger it seemed they had the auspices of being on the right track. They have competitive core products (but have to use TSMC to get them). These are big changes to the model that I think I'd argue made intel's past success.

      I have to wonder if anyone other than someone like Gelsinger could have pushed them to that - or if we're now back to pumping stock with buybacks, than expensive fabs & development like 10yr ago when they seemingly spent the investment on there instead, and they'd otherwise be inheriting now.

      not a good sign for intel.

      but at least they get a $8bn performance bonus from Sam (yeah i'm sure they're 'not allowed' to buy their own stock, or sell for magic beans, like anyone will be around to answer for that). I await to see if they now double down on financial rather than product engineering. I don't know that i'm hopeful, the only reason I can think of to kick Gelsinger is they didn't want to stay that course.

    3. ThomH Silver badge

      I reject the notion that each iteration of x86 being a bolt-on to an existing design eliminates any possible innovation, necessarily ignoring any potential contribution by Intel to the various strides in superscalar, speculative and out-of-order execution over the decades.

      You're also ignoring Intel's often-commanding lead in process and its frequent attempts to branch out — the i960 was fairly decent and reasonably popular, and the Itanium was at least a big swing. A big swing and a big miss. But they tried.

    4. katrinab Silver badge
      Alert

      The Itanic was pretty innovative, though a complete flop.

      1. Mage Silver badge
        Alert

        The Itanic was pretty innovative

        But wasn't it an HP design?

        A company that lost it's mojo. Agilent is the real HP.

        But yes, Itanic was an innovative flop, maybe because HP didn't understand CPU or Compiler design well enough?

        1. isdnip

          Re: The Itanic was pretty innovative

          Hell, Keyspan is the real HP by now. Agilent just does the bio products, which came later. But both HPs are shadows of the former company, destroyed by a bad BoD and incompetent CEO.

          1. An_Old_Dog Silver badge

            The Old HP

            In the late 1970s, I toured HP's Corvallis, Oregon, USA facility. Among other things, they'd made a to-scale, twelve-foot-tall version of their HP-32E calculator. The giant version was fully functional, AND, had that great clicky-feeling tactile feedback when you pressed the keys.

            Their HP 2000 and HP 3000 miniconputers will live on in SIMH.

      2. An_Old_Dog Silver badge

        Intel Innovation

        The iAPX-432 was very innovative. Too bad Intel couldn't get it working well enough, quickly enough.

      3. Richard 12 Silver badge

        Itanium flopped because it wasn't backwards compatible.

        There was very little wrong with the actual chips, and basically nothing wrong with the design.

        But it couldn't run the software people wanted to run, so it died.

        1. herman Silver badge

          Itanium lacked a very good C compiler

          1. Merrill

            The Very Long Instruction Word architecture relied on the compiler packing instructions into words for maximum efficiency.

            The whole VLIW concept was made irrelevant by Java running on a virtual machine on a processor with multilevel caches..

    5. Ken Hagan Gold badge

      "Intel never managed to be a genuine innovator, like AmD or ARM, or even Motorola going far enough back."

      Really? The Pentium Pro was sufficiently innovative to make "x86" compdtitive with RISC (and wipe out most if the RISCs over the next decade). Itanium was also innovative, just wrong. In response, I'll credit AMD with having the guts to step up to an empty plate and deliver Amd64.

      But ARM and Motorola? Haven't you got to go back to the 1980 to see their innovations?

      Mind you, I'll happily concede that my examples are a qusrter of a century old. Where's the innovation in modern CPU design? Should I be ignoring CPUs entirely and looking for innovation in GPU design? But if I did, would I even find anything there that isn't 20 years old?

      1. TReko Silver badge

        Speed is all

        The reason the x86 survived was because it was faster than its competitors and it was compatible.

        The 286 beat the 432, the Pentium 3 and 4 beat the Itanium. I don't know about the i960, it had great floating point.

        The same goes for 486 vs 68040. The DEC Alpha chips were slightly faster than Pentiums, but very expensive.

        1. DS999 Silver badge

          Re: Speed is all

          It wasn't "faster" than its competitors, it had a money advantage that allowed Intel to invest a lot more into developing it and more importantly to gain an advantage in fab technology. A single generation lead in fab technology back then meant a CPU that was twice as fast.

          The competition wasn't in the PC market where the volume was, they were in the workstation/server market so their better architectures were pushed aside one by one as x86 muscled up from below.

          That's exactly the same thing that's happened to Intel now with ARM, which isn't "faster" than x86 but Apple alone sells more iPhones than the PC market sells PCs, and at a higher average revenue per unit to boot, and that isn't even close to the dominant smartphone platform unit-wise. Intel can't compete with the flood of money being invested by Apple, Qualcomm, Samsung, Google, Huawei, Mediatek and other smartphone industry giants.

          If they had a visionary as CEO he would have seen where things were going and made sure Intel was part of that future, even if it meant abandoning x86 to do it. Instead they had caretaker CEOs who didn't want to upset the bureaucracy that had built up underneath - and its #1 rule which was "x86 is the solution to every problem". So they tried to foist x86 cores onto the smartphone market, which utterly failed.

          1. Anonymous Coward
            Anonymous Coward

            Re: Speed is all

            If you have a process advantage, it's silly not to use it. But in the early 1990s it seemed like x86 could not be scaled up any more and it would lose to those simple, scalable RISC architectures, process generations be damned. The P6 microarchitecture was pooh-poohed from the start, but its frequency scaling from 150 MHz to 1.4 GHz in six years won the 1990s RISC vs CISC wars for Intel when it came to hitting the same ballpark as the best RISC could offer in peak performance (power efficiency is another matter, of course).

            Sure, the Alpha might have scaled farther in frequency if the development had continued, but looking back it would have surely hit a similar power wall as the Pentium 4. And as the process generations advanced, the x86 "penalty" in transistor budget became less and less important.

            So for me, the P6 was right at the edge of what was possible to design at the time, *and* it was able to make a pig (x86) fly. And later, after the Itanium/Pentium 4 dead ends, the old dog could still be developed onward to the Pentium M/Core microarchitectures.

            Yes, AFAIK NexGen also did similar things with x86 instruction set being internally compiled into RISCy micro-operations, and was out about a year earlier, so maybe it was more innovative in that sense (and was bought out by the "innovative" AMD to act as the basis of their CPUs going forward), but considering the timelines this was clearly a case of parallel evolution rather than Intel copying.

            1. mevets

              Re: Speed is all

              IIRC, the P6 was where intel added the dodgy L1 cache semantics unleashing 2 decades of side channel leaks and attacks?

              Innovation Indeed; but it did keep the modern architectures at bay for an extra decade or so.

        2. Alan Brown Silver badge

          Re: Speed is all

          "The reason the x86 survived was because it was faster than its competitors and it was compatible."

          Just the "compatible" part - and that was simply because it dominated the desktop environment

          x86 was slower per clock and per watt than EVERY other competing cpu out there. The others were beaten into server or embedded equipment niches and then died when Intel went after those markets too

          MIPS might have stood more of a chance if the Longsoon versions were fully licensed sooner (they actually run emulated x86 almost as fast as real x86) but the very comfortable Windows/Intel partnership essentially destroyed everything by leveraging their effective consumer monopoly into driving competition out in all other CPU spaces

          Had Intel taken power consumption a little more seriously in the early 00's it's entirely possible that the entire ARM phone ecosystem might have been stillborn

      2. Spunbearing

        You do know that the Intel lost a suit to DEC for stealing design tech for the Pentium Pro?

        New York Times 1997:

        "Mr. Palmer said yesterday that Digital offered to license the Alpha chip to Intel in 1991, when Intel was looking to improve the performance of its chips. He said that Intel looked carefully at Alpha before deciding not to use the chip.

        When Intel introduced its Pentium Pro chip in November 1995, Mr. Palmer said he was surprised by the new chip's substantial increase in performance. His suspicions grew last August, he said, when Andrew S. Grove, Intel's chief executive, and Craig Barrett, its chief operating officer, seemed to admit in an article in The Wall Street Journal that Intel took its chip designs from others.

        ''Now we're at the head of the class, and there is nothing left to copy,'' Mr. Barrett was quoted as having said."

        https://www.nytimes.com/1997/05/14/business/suit-by-digital-says-intel-stole-pentium-design.html

    6. big_D Silver badge

      They did innovate a few times, whilst maintaining compatibility - probably their biggest mistake. The Israeli skunkworks that came up with the "M" mobile cores with more efficiency was a fairy big redesign. But, yes, in general, they have just iterated or squeezed their legacy stuff into "modern" concepts, like Lunar Lake.

    7. StrangerHereMyself Silver badge

      Intel's core asset was software compatibility with the enormous trove of software written for x86. It's also the reason why Microsoft became the dominant software vendor, because both realized that people don't want to throw out all their hard- and software every once in a while just because vendors believe they invented a better mousetrap.

      In that sense I believe Intel did the right thing: they improved the performance of their architecture enormously over the years whilst keeping the ability to run legacy software. That's a feat in itself. It's easy to improve performance with a clean-sheet design. Not so if you have to keep the ability to run 40+ year old software.

      1. katrinab Silver badge
        Meh

        On the other hand, Apple has shown 3? times that it is possible to migrate to a different CPU architecture

        [Motorola -> Power PC -> AMD64 (Intel) -> ARM]

        1. StrangerHereMyself Silver badge

          The jury's still out on that since the shift away from x86 is costing Apple lots of customers who need to run Windows natively, not emulated.

          1. StrangerHereMyself Silver badge

            You doubt me, do ya? Well according to [1] I'm 100% right.

            Apple's market share is now well below 10% and the tipping point is drawing closer that most ISV's will find it unprofitable to develop for Mac OS X.

            [1]: https://appleinsider.com/articles/24/10/09/worldwide-mac-sales-dropped-in-q3-2024-while-most-pc-vendors-gained

  6. Dan 55 Silver badge
    Facepalm

    Meanwhile in the boardroom

    - The only thing we're any good at is x86. Nothing else we try seems to work.

    - Guys, guys, I've got a plan. Let's remove the x86 guy, surely that will surely improve the situation.

    1. Sam not the Viking Silver badge

      Re: Meanwhile in the boardroom

      Guys, Guys, I have a plan. Let Copilot run the company!

  7. tehstu

    The unfortunate juxtaposition of the subtitle and "Breaking Intel" at the start of the article.

  8. Fruit and Nutcase Silver badge
    Joke

    Stephen Elop?

    What's he up to these days? I'm sure he's got a ready drafted memo he can send to the company on his first day at the office - may need some minor edits here and there, but nothing major

  9. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    But...

    ...their latest CPUs have been getting rave reviews. Something shifted in the right direction. They seem to be powerful whilst also power efficient.

    1. katrinab Silver badge
      Meh

      Re: But...

      But in which segment of the market would you say they are the leaders?

      In servers, Epyc is way ahead of Xeon

      In workstations, Threadripper is way ahead of Xeon-W

      In gaming, it is a bit more balanced and subject to opinion, but Ryzen is certainly competitive

      In mobile, Apple is way ahead. If you want to run Windows, Apple is probably still ahead, but AMD and Qualcom are certainly competitive

      In regular desktop, it is a dying market, and a 10-year-old CPU from any manufacturer is perfectly adequate so it really comes down to price.

      1. Mage Silver badge
        Coat

        Re: But...

        Also compare Intel (or AMD) Chrome Books with ARM ones.

        They have growth. PC workstations/Laptops (rather than Servers) are becoming office only purchases. PC Gaming is a niche.

        1. LVPC

          Re: But...

          >>. PC Gaming is a niche.

          It's one back of a niche. PC gamers spend big bucks on high-end gear (CPU, multiple GPUs, overkill power supplies, displays, etc.) And every few years, do it all again, whereas a regular desktop or laptop lasts a decade or more.

          Gaming is 80 billion a year...

    2. DaemonByte

      Re: But...

      Because Intel is controlled by share prices now and short-term investors want line go up. Meanwhile fixing intel's cpu woes takes a long time. Clearly Pat had the experience and know how plus did seem to be starting that transition but line went down so off he goes. In comes the accountant and no doubt he will ride the crest Pat made then eject before it falls again.

  10. HuBo Silver badge
    Happy

    Bingo!

    Eh-eh-eh! I can remember posting this (Major shoes to fill?) almost a year ago ... the Lisa Spelman bit was wrong but, what do I win?!?!? (some swag would be so nice, right in time for x-mas!!!!)

    1. Anonymous Custard Silver badge
  11. Ross 12
    Devil

    What I'd like to see

    They could sell x86 to AMD and become a second supplier, reversing the original arrangement. They'd get a cash boost from the sale and AMD are better at technical and architectural stuff so everyone wins

    1. katrinab Silver badge
      Meh

      Re: What I'd like to see

      Isn't that sort-of already the case with AMD64?

  12. Yet Another Anonymous coward Silver badge

    in a move intended to restore investor confidence

    That's my ambition - to reach the point where firing me saves the company

    1. Brewster's Angle Grinder Silver badge

      Re: in a move intended to restore investor confidence

      TBH, I've been at that point several times in my life. "If this company is going to survive, we're going have to fire you and several dozen other people. Sorry."

      1. Doctor Syntax Silver badge

        Re: in a move intended to restore investor confidence

        How many really did survive?

  13. hohumladida

    Wintel Reckoning

    Intel's whole model was reliant on the Wintel hegemony. They benefited immensely by this lock in. If you are really sympathizing, do not forgot all the chip makers that went bust because of this monopoly. (DEC, SG, Cyrix, Motorola's x68000, Solaris, Amiga, Atari). Intel only thrived while Moore's law was applicable. That law has broke down many years ago, Intel is coasting at this point. It is too late for this behemoth to correct ship. Pat's parting sob love letter is just his nostalgia kicking in.

    1. Kurgan

      Re: Wintel Reckoning

      The lock-in is still present today, up to a point. But I think it's MS that rules the market and gives peanuts to its vassals (intel and amd) with the windows 11 forced PC replacement. Probably it was not so 30 years ago, but it's been like this since at least 20 years. Businesses need to run Windows, and Windows needs (well, needed) X86 or AMD64 cpus to run. Today windows can run on ARM, but it's a very marginal market anyway.

      Mobile is a very different story but that ship has sailed for MS and Intel (and AMD) 20 years ago.

      1. Yet Another Anonymous coward Silver badge

        Re: Wintel Reckoning

        It was also reliant on Intel having a monopoly on the chips needed to build the high margin servers. Apart from Xeon you releid on Intel for high performance ethernet, SATA and south bride chipsets - if you didn't play nicely with Intel on your entire product line you didn't get to play in the server market.

        Not unlike Microsoft's - you ship DOS/Windows on every machine or you don't get any Windows OEM licenses

    2. Edward Ashford

      Re: Wintel Reckoning

      Solaris was knocked off its perch by Linux rather than wintel. Oracle only bought Sun to secure Java, I was surprised when they kept Solaris on life support (and not much later OEL was the preferred platform).

      1. hohumladida

        Re: Wintel Reckoning

        True, Solaris is the OS. I should have said Sun's SPARC which was their own microprocessor. Sun Microsystems had to contend with competition on both the hardware and software, SPARC against x86 PowerPC and Solaris against Linux, BSD (you could also argue Win NT which would be Wintel).

      2. katrinab Silver badge

        Re: Wintel Reckoning

        And to a certain extent FreeBSD. ZFS was one of Solaris's USPs, and FreeBSD has historically been stronger there than Linux. Linux has probably caught up now, but 10 years ago it certainly wasn't as good.

  14. kneedragon

    Telphone Sanitisers

    The Hitchhiker’s Guide (Douglas Adams) talked about the race that got rid of the useless one third of their population, the telephone sanitizers. These people landed on Earth and became us. They decided they needed to invent fire, so they went and formed a focus group to work out what colour it should be. Those are the people who have invaded Intel. That’s what’s gone wrong.

  15. OllieJones

    Another one bites the dust

    Gelsinger tried to wreck my startup thirty years ago, and came close by hiring away some good people.

    Good riddance to bad rubbish.

    1. Freddellmeister

      Re: Another one bites the dust

      You really sat this one out...

    2. StrangerHereMyself Silver badge

      Re: Another one bites the dust

      That's just business. I've seen far worse being done.

  16. Dave81

    Mixed bag

    He did well helping Intel execute in their process roadmap, but his strategy to turn Intel into a foundry was doomed from the start. The clear winning strategy is their old biz model where they earn exceptional margins by designing and also manufacturing leading products. It fell apart when they lost their process lead. They need to get that process lead back so they can get back to winning. The foundry thing never made sense. That’s lower margin, requires more command and control management and employees willing to take a lashing to stay competitive. I don’t think western employees are built for that.

    The problem for Intel is that CPUs aren’t the biggest chip market anymore, so they can’t generate the cash needed to have the leading process tech if it’s just being used to dominate CPUs. They’ll need to win in GPUs to be number one like the good old days. The best strategy for them is to make sure they take the process lead and then use that fleeting opportunity to make the best GPU for AI on the market. They pull that off and they can become a trillion dollar market cap company. Otherwise any other outcome will result in them eventually falling behind tsmc again, and they’ll eventually become irrelevant

    1. StrangerHereMyself Silver badge

      Re: Mixed bag

      I think there's still a market for their foundry business. The U.S. military wants a second source for its part (which don't need the latest nodes) and are more than willing to bankroll it. They just need to get nose to nose with TSMC. That may require some work, but it's doable. The U.S. government could even pressure Taiwan into giving up its secrets and help intel get its foundry business off the ground.

      1. Alan Brown Silver badge

        Re: Mixed bag

        not for much longer.

        The USA believes it's still the largest market in the world but the reality is that it's now one of 5 around the same size and continuing to behave like the 900 pound gorilla with a bad attitude is increasingly alienating its friends and allies as well as its frenemies

        Trump 2 may well be the last straw. We already saw a lot of logistics being rejigged away from USA owned/influenced transport chains in 2020 and whilst that got put on back burner status during Biden's presidency, I've seen a lot of ramping up since Nov 5th

        Mercantilist mentality tariff/trade wars are directly what led to both WW1 and WW2 - more obviously so for WW2 as events for the former started 50 years before things started getting "hot"

    2. CowHorseFrog Silver badge

      Re: Mixed bag

      Oh yes pretending all is well because one uses all the right buzz words in a leadership announcement.

  17. Joe Gurman

    Did he choose to retire....

    ....or was he pushed? I suppose it's irrelevant. Either way, it's refreshing to see a less than successful (*cough*) CEO get the boot just before Xmas instead of thousands of employees.

    1. Hi Wreck

      Re: Did he choose to retire....

      Walked the plank,

      Resign or be prosecuted,

      You get the idea (See Bloomburg).

    2. CapeCarl

      Re: Did he choose to retire....

      "....or was he pushed?"...Good thing Intel isn't based in Russia (open windows + gravity = bad result)

  18. Hi Wreck
    FAIL

    Engineering

    If only Intel had spent the Billions of dollars they incinerated in share-holder buybacks and other financial engineering on actual real engineering, they would likely not need the bailout from Uncle Sam (CHIPS Act) and might actually have a product that customers want. But Wall Street knows best (until the company is gutted, that is).

  19. FrankAlphaXII
    Coat

    Something something rats and ships

  20. Doctor Syntax Silver badge

    They could try to bring him back again to sort out their woes when the bean-counters fail a bit more. If that happens he'd need to insist on a bit more commitment.

  21. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Given his sterling track record at EMC and VMware, the question must be asked: "What the hell was Intel thinking anyway?"

    Follow Tucci into the land of the golden parachute, Pat. Hope you enjoy yourself.

  22. Wu Ming

    Assuming unlimited funding by US govt

    Was wondering if process node leadership can be bought back.

    Latest ASML machine costs $450 Mil a piece. A18 faces astonishingly complicated innovations to work.

    Troubles begun with 14nm well over a decade ago. Otellini’s purview.

    Then they lost the smartphone market explosion.

    Never a serious contender in the GPU market, they also lost the most recent NPU market explosion.

    They are allegedly working with AMD to streamline AMD64. But with the proliferation of co-processors I am not sure it matters anymore.

    Apple demonstrated ARM is viable for mass market general-purpose computing. Watch to desktop workstation. Designing it’s own SoCs, partnering with TSMC and many others in Asia for production demonstrated incredible efficiency. Both in products and financials.

    Nvidia, Amazon followed suit.

    I would say the fabless model has won. What can the US government do to extricate Intel, ailing vertically integrated silicon designer and producer, from Intel Foundry? The asset they want to retain control of and also to thrive.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Assuming unlimited funding by US govt

      Tariffs tariffs tariffs

      And if that doesn't work....invade or bomb the competitors

  23. Confucious2

    Cheap 80486

    My company bought me an 80486 when you could get one for less than £4K

    By the time it was upgraded to 5 Mb RAM and a massive 100Mb HD the price was actually £5650

  24. Groo The Wanderer

    With a healthy stock and cash severance package, no doubt...

    1. CowHorseFrog Silver badge

      Beats me why the US military exists, when the real thieves robbing America blind are already inside the borders.

  25. Wang Cores

    Dude lost at corporate politics the millisecond he started throwing bible passages on twitter on a stock dive.

  26. gauge symmetry

    Oh the irony...

    is that his resignation letter was probably written by ChatGPT... running on nVidia hardware.

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