Intel announces retirement of Pat Gelsinger • Hacker News Board

Re: Intel announces retirement of Pat Gelsinger

#731

Post by baq » Tue, Dec 03, 2024, 7:16 PM UTC

FullyFunctional wrote: post #642

nabla9 wrote: post #503

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reuters has some inside information: https://www.reuters.com/business/intel-ceo-pat-gelsinger-ret... >Gelsinger, who resigned on Dec. 1, left after a board meeting last week during which directors felt Gelsinger's costly and ambitious plan to turn Intel around was not working and the progress of change was not fast enough, according to a person familiar with the matter. The board told Gelsinger he could retire or be…

Thanks, finally a signal in this thread of noise. I found it unbelievable that all media presented it as if it was his decision. Of course it wasn't. I "predicted" this three months ago (really, it was inevitable), but gave it 1-6 months. Now for the what-happens-next popcorn. In a normal world, they would go bankrupt, but this is very much not a normal world.

There are precious few companies who can turn rocks into thinking machines, Intel is one of them for better or worse. It’s a national security issue.

Re: Intel announces retirement of Pat Gelsinger

#732

Post by alganet » Tue, Dec 03, 2024, 7:18 PM UTC

astrange wrote: post #730

alganet wrote: post #727

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"efficient for everything": that is a bold claim, can you elaborate more on it? Also, can you name these other platforms? Also, can you back up the information about most users not leveraging Rosetta?

> "efficient for everything": that is a bold claim, can you elaborate more on it? https://share.transistor.fm/s/124f8bc4 > Also, can you name these other platforms? Fujitsu A64FX, and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Denver > Also, can you back up the information about most users not leveraging Rosetta? Well I couldn't tell you that, but most people just use web browsers.

Sorry, I'm not gonna hear some podcast PR by Apple. I heard their PR already.

If most people just use web browsers, why so much effort has been put on Rosetta 2? Sounds very wasteful.

Also, A64FX seems to agree with my statement that an ARM with some x86 spice makes a better product than just an ARM.

And, if we're talking about making ARM mainstream, Raspberry Pi did more for the platform than Apple and deserves to get the good reputation.

Re: Intel announces retirement of Pat Gelsinger

#733

Post by araes » Tue, Dec 03, 2024, 9:37 PM UTC

lotsofpulp wrote: post #648

MPSFounder wrote: post #647

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Should have mentioned Hardware. I remember Intel pays more than Apple hardware when adjusted for COL (Intel in Oregon/New Mexico vs Cupertino). It has been a while since I looked into the salaries though. I agree they do not pay well relative to big tech on the software side of things though

Top talent who can shop around for more pay is going to demand higher pay in exchange for the opportunity costs for having to live in Oregon/New Mexico compared to Cupertino.

This case kind of depends on your priorities. If your goal is the Cupertino, Sunnyvale, Mountain View lifestyle and lateraling between the various companies in the area, then it's an opportunity cost. Has other positives also: low crime, wealthy neighbors, investment money, startup opportunities, mountains and hiking in the area, ocean nearby.

Has it's downsides though. Having visited NASA Ames over in Mountain View because of space agency work, it has a lot of the same issues as Aspen. Lot of sameness, lot of architecture that's McWealthy pseduo-Pueblo, lot of expensive blast plain suburbia, lot of people that start with "you're leaving money on the table" mentality, San Jose and San Fran traffic nearby can be nightmarish, and the crime of Oakland doesn't have that far to walk.

With many family in the Portland, Hillsboro, Beaverton area, that area also has it's positives: relatively low crime in Hillsboro / Beaverton (Portland's not great on the East side)[1], wealthy neighbors, huge amounts of hiking / outdoors / mountain climbing / biking / botanical gardens / parks, much less of blast plain suburbia, somewhat private feeling / hidden housing developments, ocean nearby, Columbia River nearby, significant art culture, lots of breweries / restaurants / food trucks / foodies, decent public transit, if you want dry desert wealth like Cali then Bend is not that far away.

Comparing the shows Portlandia vs Silicon Valley and Weeds is not a bad approximation.

[1] https://www.thetrace.org/2023/02/gun-violence-map-america-sh...

Re: Intel announces retirement of Pat Gelsinger

#734

Post by araes » Tue, Dec 03, 2024, 9:45 PM UTC

MPSFounder wrote: post #631

araes wrote: post #600

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> lack of genuine interest in fabs - most people are there for the Intel name I can actually believe this. Of most of the rest of the arguments, that tend to be rather vague, and wave at implementation, or some stock related motivation (like we need TSMCs business), a lack of genuine interest in the employees that was not sold to them or the market especially effectively seems fairly believable. Most people are there…

The senior engineers I saw there are talented. And Intel has benefits and stock packages that rival those of big tech. I think I can expand on your point by saying the more senior engineers were risk averse and on the verge of retirement, and the young engineers were just there for the Intel name or some other reason. There is surprisingly very few middle-aged long-term people down there. This would be expected in so…

Like I mentioned down below, used to work with the space agency back in the day, and by extension, Boeing. Even late 2000's, early 2010's, Boeing was a dumpster fire. Visited their local offices and the place looked like a hoarder hole. Boxes thrown everywhere, haphazard cabinets just left places, roaming meetings in sparse rooms. Seemed like homeless were camping there rather than a functional company.

The meetings with them felt that way too. Watch the same slides for months and wonder how nobody was moving anywhere with anything actually involving choices. "So, we've got these three alternatives for SLS, and like 10 other nice-to-have engineer pipe dreams." "Right, you'll choose the obvious low cost choice A. Why are we having this meeting again?" Many months later, after endless dithering, surprise, obvious choice using almost no hardware changes is chosen. All engineer nice-to-have pipe dreams are thrown away. There was much rejoicing at the money successfully squandered.

Re: Intel announces retirement of Pat Gelsinger

#735

Post by araes » Tue, Dec 03, 2024, 10:00 PM UTC

lotsofpulp wrote: post #636

MPSFounder wrote: post #631

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The senior engineers I saw there are talented. And Intel has benefits and stock packages that rival those of big tech. I think I can expand on your point by saying the more senior engineers were risk averse and on the verge of retirement, and the young engineers were just there for the Intel name or some other reason. There is surprisingly very few middle-aged long-term people down there. This would be expected in so…

> And Intel has benefits and stock packages that rival those of big tech. Given Intel’s stock returns over the past 15 years, Intel would have to offer insane cash compensation to rival big tech. Levels.fyi indicates Intel heavily underpays, which is what I would expect. https://www.levels.fyi/?compare=Intel,Apple,Google&track=Sof...

Thank you for the pay comparison website link. The pay scale difference is frankly is a little challenging to even believe in some cases. Facebook pays an M2 software manager $1,426,471? Comparables at other (F)AANGs are $700,000 to $800,000. Double ??? at the same grade? That seems like nonsensical escalation. Does not seem like FB/Meta/saggy infinity symbol formerly known as Prince is getting their money's worth.

Re: Intel announces retirement of Pat Gelsinger

#736

Post by lotsofpulp » Tue, Dec 03, 2024, 10:19 PM UTC

araes wrote: post #735

lotsofpulp wrote: post #636

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And Intel has benefits and stock packages that rival those of big tech. Given Intel’s stock returns over the past 15 years, Intel would have to offer insane cash compensation to rival big tech. Levels.fyi indicates Intel heavily underpays, which is what I would expect. https://www.levels.fyi/?compare=Intel,Apple,Google&track=Sof...

Thank you for the pay comparison website link. The pay scale difference is frankly is a little challenging to even believe in some cases. Facebook pays an M2 software manager $1,426,471? Comparables at other (F)AANGs are $700,000 to $800,000. Double ??? at the same grade? That seems like nonsensical escalation. Does not seem like FB/Meta/saggy infinity symbol formerly known as Prince is getting their money's worth.

When equity compensation is such a high proportion, one can not simply compare numbers. You have to take into account volatility of the business and its impact on share price (and hence impact on your compensation).

The equity compensation figures on levels.fyi are very rough estimates on what one might sees, but it is possible that Meta has to offer more equity due to more perceived volatility in its business rather than, say, Apple or Microsoft. Or maybe more expected work hours/days.

But also, Meta has long been known to pay more, famously being the business that eschewed the collusion that resulted in the famous high-tech employee antitrust litigation:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-Tech_Employee_Antitrust_L...

Re: Intel announces retirement of Pat Gelsinger

#737

Post by UltraSane » Tue, Dec 03, 2024, 10:23 PM UTC

majewsky wrote: post #722

PaulHoule wrote: post #529

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Does 4k matter? I was doing a11y work for an application a few months back and got interested into the question of desktop screen sizes. I see all these ads for 4k and bigger monitors but they don't show up here https://gs.statcounter.com/screen-resolution-stats/desktop/w... And on the steam hardware survey I am seeing a little more than 5% with a big screen. Myself I am swimming in old monitors and TV to the point w…

> Does 4k matter? The PC I'm typing this on has two 27in 4k screens. I'm sitting so that I look at them from about 75cm away (that's 2.5 feet in weird units). I archive most of my video files in 720p, because I genuinely don't see that big of a difference between even 720p and 1080p. It is definitely visible, but usually, it does not add much to the experience, considering that most videos today are produced to be wa…

A unit based on the average size of the human foot is not "weird".

Re: Intel announces retirement of Pat Gelsinger

#738

Post by UltraSane » Tue, Dec 03, 2024, 10:34 PM UTC

kllrnohj wrote: post #70

this_user wrote: post #33

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They have made too many bad choices, and everyone else has been eating their lunch for the last few years. They are a non-factor in the mobile space where ARM architectures dominate. They are a non-factor in the GPU market where NVDA dominates ahead of AMD. They were focused heavily on data centres and desktop/laptop CPUs where ARM is also increasingly making inroads with more efficient designs that deliver comparabl…

> where ARM is also increasingly making inroads with more efficient designs that deliver comparable performance. ARM isn't doing any such thing. Apple & Qualcomm are, though. ARM itself if anything looks weak. Their mobile cores have stagnated, their laptop attempts complete failures, and while there's hints of life in data center it also seems mediocre overall.

AWS is basically running 100% of their own software on their own Graviton ARM CPU

Re: Intel announces retirement of Pat Gelsinger

#739

Post by rvba » Tue, Dec 03, 2024, 11:10 PM UTC

anthonyskipper wrote: post #378

lotsofpulp wrote: post #337

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would bet 95%+ of people who use Excel are not affected by any difference between Excel for macOS versus Windows.

I work in a large enterprise company, have both windows and mac machines, and excel works equally great in both, but more and more excel runs in a browser. We mostly email links to spreadsheets running in cloud. So it really doesn't matter what your OS is any more from an excel perspective, as long as your computer can run a modern browser you are good.

Excel in browser is unreaponsive, laggy and unproductive for power users.

It is like a toy version of the standalone app.

Also it sucks with lists, pivot tables...

Re: Intel announces retirement of Pat Gelsinger

#740

Post by JohnBooty » Tue, Dec 03, 2024, 11:13 PM UTC

mewse-hn wrote: post #519

JohnBooty wrote: post #422

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is holding Intel back, there? Engineering chops? AMD and nVidia already patented too much of the good stuff? Too much existing code optimized for AMD and nVidia quirks?

Extreme outsider perspective but they seemed like dilettantes. They'd dip their toe into doing GPUs and then cancel the project every couple years. A few weeks ago Gelsinger even commented he saw "less need for discrete graphics in the market going forward" - just seemed like a very Intel thing to say

As a fellow outsider, that makes a lot of sense to me. Even if Intel started outperforming nVidia today... who would want to put serious effort into making their stuff work with Intel hardware in a market they're likely to pull out of at any moment?