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Intel CEO Bob Swan to step down, VMware CEO Pat Gelsinger to replace him

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Re: Intel CEO Bob Swan to step down, VMware CEO Pat Gelsinger to replace him

#51

Post by parasubvert »

tw04 wrote: post #48
danpalmer wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To me this description sounds like a specialist high performance computing company rather than a consumer technology company. That may be a perfectly reasonable market to be in, but is that type of company worth $200bn? I'm not sure. Roughly 40% of their revenue is consumer chips where, apart from some games optimisation, they are no longer standing out from the crowd, and the leader is arguably Apple, with AMD doing…

>Roughly 40% of their revenue is consumer chips where, apart from some games optimisation, they are no longer standing out from the crowd, and the leader is arguably Apple, with AMD doing well. You lost me at Apple. Apple owns around 15% of the PC market space and almost the entirety of that is Intel-based systems. Outside of HN, nobody cares about the M1 chip, it isn't a selling point to my mom or her friends. If so…

I think you are vastly underestimating the revolution of what the M1 represents to the PC industry.

Re: Intel CEO Bob Swan to step down, VMware CEO Pat Gelsinger to replace him

#52

Post by hodgesrm »

PedroBatista wrote: post #31

The trillion dollar question is: Is the board leaning into the usual MBA moves 101 and turn Intel into a "services company" gradually going fabless and milking those sweet patents OR will they put the work boots on and start building an actual tech company with the people who actually can save them on the payroll? cutting on the usual contractors meat grinder and invite the vast armies of middle-management and market…

Pat Gelsinger didn't do that at VMW, and it seems unlikely he'll do it at Intel. He's an engineer.

Re: Intel CEO Bob Swan to step down, VMware CEO Pat Gelsinger to replace him

#53

Post by ghaff »

JohnJamesRambo wrote: post #41
totalZero wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pat was fairly effective at VMW. The fact that he himself is not new to Intel is probably beneficial for the company, but there's a pretty substantial difference between being CTO and actually steering the ship. I'm not comparing Gelsinger to Steve Jobs in a general sense, but Jobs wasn't new to Apple when he returned -- and yet Jobs' return to leadership was transformative for the company.

Only in the incestuous world of CEOs does being "fairly effective" at your last job grant you the keys to one of the biggest companies in the world.

You could argue that VMware was slow to move into containers and should probably have better leveraged Pivotal before they drew them in. The former is something of an innovator's dilemma thing. The lack of focus on developers and applications was something of a VMware blind spot going back to Diane Greene days. But "fairly effective" underplays how well VMware has done over the past 10 years or so overall. There are things they should have been more aggressive about, especially with the benefit of hindsight, but they've been a very successful software company/subsidiary.

Re: Intel CEO Bob Swan to step down, VMware CEO Pat Gelsinger to replace him

#54

Post by klelatti »

tw04 wrote: post #48
danpalmer wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To me this description sounds like a specialist high performance computing company rather than a consumer technology company. That may be a perfectly reasonable market to be in, but is that type of company worth $200bn? I'm not sure. Roughly 40% of their revenue is consumer chips where, apart from some games optimisation, they are no longer standing out from the crowd, and the leader is arguably Apple, with AMD doing…

>Roughly 40% of their revenue is consumer chips where, apart from some games optimisation, they are no longer standing out from the crowd, and the leader is arguably Apple, with AMD doing well. You lost me at Apple. Apple owns around 15% of the PC market space and almost the entirety of that is Intel-based systems. Outside of HN, nobody cares about the M1 chip, it isn't a selling point to my mom or her friends. If so…

Not sure of the source of your 15% but I'm willing to bet that by value it's more - no Celerons in Apple's line up. Plus Apple wouldn't be going down this route if it didn't expect to grow market share - and although people don't care if it's M1 or i5 they do care if the experience is better.

Then Apple's success with the M1 will spur others - I would not be surprised if Microsoft follow them down the same route.

Re: Intel CEO Bob Swan to step down, VMware CEO Pat Gelsinger to replace him

#55

Post by hodgesrm »

atlgator wrote: post #46

Pat completely missed the boat on building a VMWare cloud when AWS started taking off. Can't say I'm enthused for Intel.

He recovered from the mistake. The drop in VMW share price on news that he's leaving shows what the market thinks of his affect on VMW value.

Re: Intel CEO Bob Swan to step down, VMware CEO Pat Gelsinger to replace him

#56

Post by baskire »

msoad wrote: post #16
xwdv wrote: post #6

This won’t change anything, by the time Intel gets back on it’s feet, big techs will be building their own silicon and AMD will have eaten up whatever is left of Intel’s lunch.

People underestimate what it means for Intel when Microsoft and Apple are going to produce their own chips and AWS is pushing their ARM offering. It does not take much for the industry to switch to ARM as default for desktop and server.

I’ve noticed the switch to arm isn’t drastically harder than switch to amd for large DC/Cloud users.

The biggest burden is political. The technical work is only a few months. With savings often more than paying to hire substantially more staff to assist in migration then accelerate the core product.

Re: Intel CEO Bob Swan to step down, VMware CEO Pat Gelsinger to replace him

#57

Post by tw04 »

parasubvert wrote: post #51
tw04 wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Roughly 40% of their revenue is consumer chips where, apart from some games optimisation, they are no longer standing out from the crowd, and the leader is arguably Apple, with AMD doing well. You lost me at Apple. Apple owns around 15% of the PC market space and almost the entirety of that is Intel-based systems. Outside of HN, nobody cares about the M1 chip, it isn't a selling point to my mom or her friends. If so…

I think you are vastly underestimating the revolution of what the M1 represents to the PC industry.

I think you are vastly overestimating the "revolution" of what the M1 represents to the industry. Apple isn't selling it to any other PC makers, and corporations aren't pivoting away from Microsoft for a CPU. Every single ARM chip that's been targeted at the Windows world has produced yawn-inducing performance.

Re: Intel CEO Bob Swan to step down, VMware CEO Pat Gelsinger to replace him

#58

Post by terafo »

tw04 wrote: post #48
danpalmer wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To me this description sounds like a specialist high performance computing company rather than a consumer technology company. That may be a perfectly reasonable market to be in, but is that type of company worth $200bn? I'm not sure. Roughly 40% of their revenue is consumer chips where, apart from some games optimisation, they are no longer standing out from the crowd, and the leader is arguably Apple, with AMD doing…

>Roughly 40% of their revenue is consumer chips where, apart from some games optimisation, they are no longer standing out from the crowd, and the leader is arguably Apple, with AMD doing well. You lost me at Apple. Apple owns around 15% of the PC market space and almost the entirety of that is Intel-based systems. Outside of HN, nobody cares about the M1 chip, it isn't a selling point to my mom or her friends. If so…

>it isn't a selling point to my mom or her friends

Gargantuan battery life isn't a selling point? For laptop? In what universe?

Re: Intel CEO Bob Swan to step down, VMware CEO Pat Gelsinger to replace him

#59

Post by specialist »

wronglebowski wrote: post #7

This spoils any optimism I may have had for Intel. Reading that this came due to a search for "Strategic alternatives" is damning. Intel is like Boeing. They make one thing and they used to make it very well, silicon. If Boeing told you they were looking into alternatives to making planes would you be optimistic? It feels like they're throwing in the towel on being the leader, giving up on trying to catch up process…

Yes, but (vs and):

My goober hot take on Boeing is a bit different.

Another victim of financialization.

When McDonald Douglass reverse acquired Boeing, the balance changed. Emphasis on share price, gutting wages while doing stock buybacks, shady business practices (bribes for defense contracts, gutting oversight), and so forth.

Of course, there's always more to the story. Like I have no idea how much to blame Clinton Admin's push for consolidation and monopolies (removing competition). Or how to explain the quixotic quest to outsource and offshore core competencies.

So as casual observer, it seems like Intel similarly lost its way.

Re: Intel CEO Bob Swan to step down, VMware CEO Pat Gelsinger to replace him

#60

Post by ghaff »

mepian wrote: post #40
amelius wrote: post #25

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pat_Gelsinger Not sure what to make of the fact that he wrote two books on balancing work and family life, and makes me wonder if this is the general that will win the silicon war. Time will tell, I suppose.

This article doesn't do him justice, he was one of the key people behind the 386 project which saved Intel during its first major crisis. After that, he went on to become the lead of the 486 project and kept moving up on the management ladder until the Larrabee fiasco.

That is so typically Wikipedia. 10,000 word articles on trivial subjects and basically a stub listicle for an article on the longtime CEO of one of the largest (but "uncool") software companies in the world.
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