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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

#241

Post by kyrra »

2muchcoffeeman wrote: post #238
microtherion wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"It's just too late to turn them around" is pretty much what people said about Apple when Steve Jobs returned, though (in fact, it's more or less what I thought as well). As Adam Smith said, "there is a great deal of ruin in a nation", and likewise, big companies generally get more opportunities to reinvent themselves than one would expect.

How often do big companies like Apple and Intel succeed in righting a sinking ship though? You can’t keep pointing to the one guy that succeeded.

Competition is always an amazing driver for getting large companies to start doing the right thing. As long as they are not completely shut out, they have a chance of succeeding.

Until still have some amazing technology compared to AMD, they're five processes screwed right now but I think they have a chance to succeed. But given the timeline on new CPUs and fab processes, it'll be 4 years before we see the fruits of anything he does.

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

#242

Post by zippergz »

ChuckMcM wrote: post #211

Here's a fun fact (and I suspect shows what a loser I am :-)) Pat Gelsinger and I were colleagues at Intel in the early 80's. We both worked in what was called "MIPO" (Microprocessor Operation) but I was in Systems Validation and he was on the customer facing side with field engineering. My career went off through a variety of engineering roles, his went into management and up. When he joined EMC, I told him I had al…

I have a few former colleagues who were equals (or close) with me early in my career, and are now senior executives at Fortune 500 companies, and it does always make me feel kind of like a loser!

But also I think about how much crap they put up with in those roles, and how relatively low-stress my life is, and then I feel better about it. They're cut out for that kind of job, and I most certainly am not.

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

#243

Post by dbcurtis »

ChuckMcM wrote: post #233
tuna-piano wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Any thoughts on what made him special (either from your perspective or from those choosing to promote him)?

Keeping in context that I've not worked with him in (gulp, 30 years!) at Intel he was one of the folks who put problems into the whole picture. So a customer would say, this chip doesn't work, over at Systems Validation we would get hopefully enough information to re-create their problem on an Intel built board, and Pat's job (at the time) was to co-ordinate between us, design engineering, and marketing to figure out…

People that can ask the right question are much more impactful than people who can “only” find the answer. (NOT trivializing the smarts it takes to find the answer. )

My Pat Gelsinger story: I worked in a successor org to MIPO, in those days called MPG. One day during pre-silicon validation on the Pentium II, one of my NCG’s came to me and said: “An old test from the historical test archive is failing in the simulator. I want to find the author and ask him about it. Do you know a Pat Gelsinger?”

Me: “Well, he is an Intel Fellow now, so he might not remember what that test was supposed to do. “

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

#244

Post by NonEUCitizen »

bjornsing wrote: post #190
chrisseaton wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You’re free to call him Saint IGNUcius if you want - many people do - and it’s a similar level of connection to reality.

I find this kind of credentialism a bit silly to be honest. If there’s anything with little connection to reality it’s 90% of dissertations.

Trying to call yourself "Dr." when you don't have a real PhD is the worst kind of credentialism.

I call my friends with real PhD's by their first names and they're fine with that.

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

#245

Post by wombatmobile »

ksec wrote: post #99

"Notable absent from that list is he fired Pat Gelsinger. Please just bring him back as CEO." - [1] 2012 on HN, when Paul Otellini Retired. "The only one who may have a slim chance to completely transform Intel is Pat Gelsinger, if Andy Grove saved Intel last time, it will be his apprentice to save Intel again. Unfortunately given what Intel has done to Pat during his last tenure, I am not sure if he is willing to pi…

It's always too late to change the past, and never too late to change the future.

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

#246

Post by gonehome »

KirillPanov wrote: post #235
gonehome wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure they really can do both (because doing the TSMC model well intentionally excludes the other). Part of TSMC's offer is that they won't do design, they won't compete with you on design etc. They specialize in the best possible fab and service for your design and that's it.

> Part of TSMC's offer is that they won't do design That's kind of a hoax. GUC (Global Uni Chip) is huge, and a nearly-wholly-owned subsidiary of TSMC. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_Unichip_Corporation TSMC has a large design operation. It simply is part of a subsidiary rather than the parent company, that's all. There are a lot of shady links between TSMC and GUC. I was once pressured to "collaborate" with GU…

Interesting - thanks, I didn’t know that.

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

#247

Post by wombatmobile »

microtherion wrote: post #234
reb wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> As Adam Smith said, "there is a great deal of ruin in a nation" Tired brain read this as "there's a great deal in a ruin of a nation." Close enough, I guess?

That would make a truly horrifying business book: "The Art of the Deal of Ruin in a Nation"

Evidently, 40% of people would buy it.

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

#248

Post by phdelightful »

gonehome wrote: post #226
geogra4 wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would amd be screwed?

My long term bet is on M1 and ARM/RISC5 for the future. x86 is on the way out and can't compete on power or performance. In the end RISC won, it just took a while to get there. As things trend that direction AMD and Intel don't really have much to offer, they're competing on legacy tech. With TSMC providing fabs for designs from anyone, the serious players don't need AMD or Intel. Apple has a massive lead here, but o…

There’s nothing that restricts AMD to compete solely using x86. I think they’re sitting on an ARM core design from the first Zen arch that they never released.

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

#249

Post by NonEUCitizen »

ghaff wrote: post #60
mepian wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

You are free to edit and expand the article.

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

#250

Post by gonehome »

ascendantlogic wrote: post #232
gonehome wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting - you think he can pull this off? It'll be interesting to see what happens, I had written them off as on the path of inevitable decline and irrelevance. If they have someone as CEO who understand the existential threat they're facing from everywhere maybe they'll survive. The irony of the other top comment is that the AMD threat wasn't the competitive threat that mattered. AMD is also screwed.

I'm old enough to remember writing IBM off in the early 90's and Microsoft off in the late 2000's. These companies had one thing in common: giant war chests of cash and legacy businesses that were still pumping out money by the truckload. It's not like a startup/small business that's riding on a razor's edge, these companies have so many resources they can keep searching for a way "out" of their predicament for a ver…

I think you’re right that they’ll be around a while, but Microsoft (and Apple) were both saved by CEOs in fairly dramatic fashion.

I’d argue IBM largely is irrelevant today, but they technically still exist.

Google is lucky they have an ad monopoly because they don’t really have a coherent company vision, I wouldn’t buy their stock. They might get lucky with their deepmind purchase.

I don’t disagree with you, but if I was choosing companies in a strong position today it’d be Apple, Amazon, and Microsoft. I wouldn’t make a long term bet on Google or Intel.

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