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Intel announces retirement of Pat Gelsinger

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491–500 of 777 posts

Re: Intel announces retirement of Pat Gelsinger

#491

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, for at least a time they would have the entire x86 market. That is not nothing. Also AMD may want to get back into the fab business. Without competition in x86 why not use Intel's fabs?

They would technically have no market, because the Intel-AMD X86 license is non-transferable and expires if one party goes out of business.

IANAL, however:

- A token legal remnant of Intel, with 0 employees or properties, might suffice to keep that license ticking.

- If the stakes appeared to be "or America will lose it's ability to make computers", then the government might find a judge willing to sign off on just about any sort of counterfactual, "because national security".

Re: Intel announces retirement of Pat Gelsinger

#492

I feel like this is a mistake. Pat's strategy is aggressive but what the company needs. Intel's stock is jumping at this announcement, but I look at it as a bad signal for Intel 18a. If 18a was looking to be a smash hit then I don't think Pat gets retired. If 18a is a success then it is an even more short-sighted decision by the board. What this likely means is two-fold: 1. Intel 18a is being delayed further and/or t…

US government wouldn't let intel down, this is matter of national security (only grown semiconductor fabs left on US soil) and edge of US tech dominance

> only grown semiconductor fabs left on US soil

not sure what a "grown" semiconductor fab is but follow this link and sort by location https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_semiconductor_fabricat... The number of homegrown companies with fabs is greater than 1

Re: Intel announces retirement of Pat Gelsinger

#493

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> If 18a is not ready I think the best case scenario for Intel is a merger with AMD. Aside from the x86 monopoly that would create, I don't think Intel has much of value to AMD at this point other than the fabs (which aren't delivering). IMHO if Intel is failing, let them fail and others will buy the pieces in bankruptcy. This would probably benefit several other companies that could use 22nm and up fab capacity and…

Intel GFX held back the industry 10 years. If people thought Windows Vista sucked it was because Intel "supported" it by releasing integrated GPUs which could almost handle Windows Vista but not quite. The best they could do with the GFX business is a public execution. We've been hearing about terrible Intel GFX for 15 years and how they are just on the cusp of making one that is bad (not terrible). Most people who'v…

> If people thought Windows Vista sucked it was because Intel "supported" it by releasing integrated GPUs which could almost handle Windows Vista but not quite.

What does an OS need a GPU for?

My current laptop only has integrated Intel GPU. I'm not missing Nvidia, with its proprietary drivers, high power consumption, and corresponding extra heat and shorter battery life...

Re: Intel announces retirement of Pat Gelsinger

#494

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure you needed to predict AI. GPUs exist because CPUs just aren't fast enough. Whether or not people are going to start making GPU-only computers is debatable (although there has clearly been a lot of CPU+GPU single chips).

What a frankly weird oversimplification? GPUs don't exist because CPUs aren't fast enough. GPUs exist because CPUs aren't parallel enough. And to achieve that parallelism, they sacrifice massive amounts of performance to get it. A GPU-only computer would be absolutely horrendous to use. It'd be incredibly slow and unresponsive as GPUs just absolutely suck at running single-threaded code or branchy code.

I mean you can splits hairs about the difference between CPU and GPUs all you want.

The overall point is that work is being increasingly done _not_ on the CPU. If your business is CPUs-only then you're going to have rough times as the world moves away from a CPU-centric world. You don't need to predict AI; you just need to see that alternatives are being looked at by competitors and you'll lose an edge if you don't also look at them.

It's not going to matter much if you have a crappy CPU if most of the work is done on the GPU. Its like how iPhones don't advertise themselves as surround sound; phones aren't about calling people anymore so no reason to advertise legacy features.

Re: Intel announces retirement of Pat Gelsinger

#495
post #493

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Intel GFX held back the industry 10 years. If people thought Windows Vista sucked it was because Intel "supported" it by releasing integrated GPUs which could almost handle Windows Vista but not quite. The best they could do with the GFX business is a public execution. We've been hearing about terrible Intel GFX for 15 years and how they are just on the cusp of making one that is bad (not terrible). Most people who'v…

> If people thought Windows Vista sucked it was because Intel "supported" it by releasing integrated GPUs which could almost handle Windows Vista but not quite. What does an OS need a GPU for? My current laptop only has integrated Intel GPU. I'm not missing Nvidia, with its proprietary drivers, high power consumption, and corresponding extra heat and shorter battery life...

> What does an OS need a GPU for?

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Aero

Re: Intel announces retirement of Pat Gelsinger

#496
post #307

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Individual Russian software developers might be reliable but that's hardly the point. They should've just moved them to US or even Germany or something like that if they were serious about entering the GPU market, though... e.g. There are plenty of talented engineers in China as well but it would be severely idiotic for any western company to move their core R&D there. Same applied to Russia.

Well, Intel Russia opened in 2000 back when USA and Russia were on good terms, and Putin was relatively unknown. Sure it was a mistake in hindsight...

Not just in hindsight -- but by 2011 it was clear to anyone paying attention where Russia was heading (if not to war, then certainly to a long-term dictatorship). Anyone who failed to see the signs, or chose to intellectualize past them - did so willingly.

Re: Intel announces retirement of Pat Gelsinger

#498

Full disclosure, the day Bob Swan announced his exit was the day I purchased Intel stock. Pat had the mandate from both the board and the market to do whatever he deemed necessary to bring Intel back to the forefront of semiconductor manufacturing and a leading edge node. Frankly, I don't think he used that mandate the way he should have. Hindsight is 20/20 and all, but he probably could have used that mandate to eli…

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Re: Intel announces retirement of Pat Gelsinger

#499
I worked for 3 months for Intel. I can genuinely say that there is no saving that company. Recently, they are hiring many PhDs from various US universities (particularly Indians) to try to compensate (they offer generous stocks and are hiring like crazy right now). There are two major problems I saw: lack of genuine interest in fabs (most people are there for the Intel name and then leave or in the case of Indians, they are there for Visa purposes. Mind you, we were not allowed to hire people from China since Intel is subject to Export laws). The biggest problem by far is lack of talent. Most of the talent I know is either at Apple or Facebook/Google, including those trained in hardware. Intel is bound to crumble, so I hope we as taxpayers don't foot the bill. There was unwillingness to innovate and almost everyone wanted to maintain the status quo. This might work in traditional manufacturing (think tennis rackets, furniture...), but fabs must improve their lithography manufacturing nodes or they get eaten by the competition

Re: Intel announces retirement of Pat Gelsinger

#500
post #429
post #418

The CEO of a public company is a glorified cheerleader. Doing the right things is half the job, convincing people you are doing the right things is the other half. Considering Intel's share price dropped 61% under Gelsinger's tenure, no matter the work he did towards the first half, it's pretty clear he thoroughly failed at the second. They desperately need someone who will drive back investor confidence in the compa…

Intel has no GPU. Intel has no mobile processors / SOCs. These seem to be the drivers of growth nowadays. And their CPUs have hard time competing with AMD now. I'm not sure that the 3 years which Geslinger had were enough to turn the tide.

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