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An Interview with Pat Gelsinger

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Re: An Interview with Pat Gelsinger

#21

Post by m132 »

melling wrote: post #18
scrlk wrote: post #12

Sadly nothing about why Pat was forced out of Intel. Panther Lake is quite a good CPU and 14A looks like it'll be a competitive process. IMO, it vindicates the decisions that Pat made a few years ago and wasn't able to see through to completion. "Designing microprocessors is like playing Russian roulette. You put a gun to your head, pull the trigger, and find out four years later if you blew your brains out." (Robert…

Pat killed Intel’s share price. Should have paid more attention to the balance sheet. I thought he would eventually turn the company around but Intel was priced for bankruptcy. Stock price has tripled since last August. Hopefully, Intel is really back. They do need a couple of Fab customers.

Was it Pat or Brian? If I recall correctly, it was under Brian when Intel had one of its worst periods of stagnation, when the 10 nm process all the bets were on turned out to be a non-starter, and when Meltdown and Spectre erupted. It's easy to overlook this because Intel had fairly no competition around then, but that doesn't mean the company was in a good shape.

I've always felt like Pat was a scapegoat who was chosen to clean up the mess when the whole place was already up in smoke and the smell was only starting to leak out. I liked his strategy, was disappointed to see him booted out.

Re: An Interview with Pat Gelsinger

#22

Post by wewewedxfgdf »

newsclues wrote: post #8
wewewedxfgdf wrote: post #6

I thought it was extremely strange that he posted so much religious stuff from official Intel accounts.

why is that the most important thing to comment about?

Because religion should not mix with business.

CEO's should be sufficiently self aware to understand that they should not be foisting their beliefs on the company and their employees and customers.

Being unable to recognize that is a very bad tell about a persons judgement.

Re: An Interview with Pat Gelsinger

#23

Post by dzonga »

scrlk wrote: post #12

Sadly nothing about why Pat was forced out of Intel. Panther Lake is quite a good CPU and 14A looks like it'll be a competitive process. IMO, it vindicates the decisions that Pat made a few years ago and wasn't able to see through to completion. "Designing microprocessors is like playing Russian roulette. You put a gun to your head, pull the trigger, and find out four years later if you blew your brains out." (Robert…

me personally, I wouldn't bet against companies like Intel that have full government banking.

soon or later they were gonna turn things around with military precision specially with DOD, Intelligence folks giving advice.

Re: An Interview with Pat Gelsinger

#24

Post by mort96 »

melling wrote: post #18
scrlk wrote: post #12

Sadly nothing about why Pat was forced out of Intel. Panther Lake is quite a good CPU and 14A looks like it'll be a competitive process. IMO, it vindicates the decisions that Pat made a few years ago and wasn't able to see through to completion. "Designing microprocessors is like playing Russian roulette. You put a gun to your head, pull the trigger, and find out four years later if you blew your brains out." (Robert…

Pat killed Intel’s share price. Should have paid more attention to the balance sheet. I thought he would eventually turn the company around but Intel was priced for bankruptcy. Stock price has tripled since last August. Hopefully, Intel is really back. They do need a couple of Fab customers.

I don't understand what you mean. Stock price has tripled since last August based on Intel finally having a competitive architecture and a competitive process again, no? At least that in combination with various geopolitical circumstances. Sounds like Pat's decision resulted in Intel's stock price rising?

Re: An Interview with Pat Gelsinger

#25

Post by mort96 »

wewewedxfgdf wrote: post #20
KK7NIL wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Source? I've only seen him post religious stuff on his personal social media.

If you are the CEO of Intel then posting from your personal account is the same thing - you are the CEO - it's not private. This is just scratching the surface - his religious posts went on and on and on whilst he was Intel CEO. https://gizmodo.com/things-are-so-bad-at-intel-that-the-boss... https://www.indiatoday.in/technology/news/story/intel-facing... https://www.reddit.com/r/intel/comments/1hb1imh/former_intel...…

This looks like a motte-and-bailey. Your original comment, the bailey: "he posted much religious stuff from official Intel accounts". This comment, the motte: "he posted much religious stuff".

You could've just said, "I thought it was extremely strange that he posted so much religious stuff while CEO". That would've been a very defensible position. You didn't need the false part of posting from official Intel accounts.

Or, if it was an honest mistake, you should've written something along the lines of: "Sorry, I misremembered, it was his personal accounts. But when you're a CEO, I don't think the distinction matters much; anything you post will be read as 'Intel's CEO says'".

Re: An Interview with Pat Gelsinger

#26

Post by Zigurd »

I got to meet several of Intel senior management when Andy Grove was CEO, Gelsinger was CTO, and Avram Miller was CFO and a pioneer in corporate VC. Even somebody universally acclaimed as smart and hard-working as Lip-Bu Tan will find it impossible to capture the magic of a team like that.

Intel's current CEO was hired to explicitly not try to recapture that magic. The board thought Gelsinger's approach of do all the things was reckless. He was hired to take fewer risks, at the cost of putting a restoration of Intel's position in technology out of reach.

Re: An Interview with Pat Gelsinger

#27

Post by aurareturn »

scrlk wrote: post #12

Sadly nothing about why Pat was forced out of Intel. Panther Lake is quite a good CPU and 14A looks like it'll be a competitive process. IMO, it vindicates the decisions that Pat made a few years ago and wasn't able to see through to completion. "Designing microprocessors is like playing Russian roulette. You put a gun to your head, pull the trigger, and find out four years later if you blew your brains out." (Robert…

  Sadly nothing about why Pat was forced out of Intel.
My speculation:

* Intel in 2019 had $72 billion in revenue and 110k employees. When he was fired in 2024, Intel had $54 billion in revenue and 124k employees. He also didn't cut dividend until 2024. He nearly put Intel into the grave in 3 years.

* Under Pat, Intel's roadmap was a mess. When you look at AMD's roadmap, it made a ton of sense, predictable, and there are rarely any delays or cancellations. When you looked at an Intel roadmap, expect 30% of them cancelled, 50% delayed by 1-2 quarters, and 30% switched to a different node tech.

* IFS strategy under Pat amounted to nothing. Fab cancellations or on hold. Cancelling 20A altogether. Not being able to woo any notable customers. Not hiring the right people for external customers. There were reports that he didn't know how to run an external fab, which is why the board decided to hire Lip Bu Tan who came from Cadence.

* He missed on AI boom, crypto boom, said AMD was in rear view mirror, politicized TSMC in order to win government grants while still still using TSMC nodes themself.

Re: An Interview with Pat Gelsinger

#28

Post by Zigurd »

wewewedxfgdf wrote: post #22
newsclues wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

why is that the most important thing to comment about?

Because religion should not mix with business. CEO's should be sufficiently self aware to understand that they should not be foisting their beliefs on the company and their employees and customers. Being unable to recognize that is a very bad tell about a persons judgement.

Of all the openly religious people, Gelsinger did the least to mix business and religion. Whereas an irreligious person like Peter Thiel says some really wacky religious stuff.

Re: An Interview with Pat Gelsinger

#29

Post by philipallstar »

wewewedxfgdf wrote: post #22
newsclues wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

why is that the most important thing to comment about?

Because religion should not mix with business. CEO's should be sufficiently self aware to understand that they should not be foisting their beliefs on the company and their employees and customers. Being unable to recognize that is a very bad tell about a persons judgement.

Person doesn't obey your arbitrary rule; you clutch pearls.

Re: An Interview with Pat Gelsinger

#30

Post by aurareturn »

Zigurd wrote: post #26

I got to meet several of Intel senior management when Andy Grove was CEO, Gelsinger was CTO, and Avram Miller was CFO and a pioneer in corporate VC. Even somebody universally acclaimed as smart and hard-working as Lip-Bu Tan will find it impossible to capture the magic of a team like that. Intel's current CEO was hired to explicitly not try to recapture that magic. The board thought Gelsinger's approach of do all the…

You probably met Intel management when they were booming in the old days. LBT was hired to replace Pat because the board needed someone who didn't have the rose colored glasses that old Intel management had and actually see Intel what it is today: losing in everything.

When LBT took over, Intel was on a path to bankruptcy. Although Pat wasn't solely responsible, he was financially reckless and failed to win any major customers for Intel's new IFS strategy.

Intel over the last 15 years missed the following booms:

* Mobile boom

* Missed on chiplets and allowed AMD to take the lead

* Missed on EUV transition

* Crypto mining boom

* AI chips boom (A huge reason was Pat Gelsinger backed Larrabee, an x86 GPU, and failed to compete against Nvidia)

* Missed storage boom by selling SSD/3D NAND division

* Missing local LLM boom by not having an Apple Silicon, Strix Halo competitor

* Now they're missing the fab boom by cancelling fabs a few years ago

Basically, if they reversed all their decisions in the last 15 years and invested wisely, they'd likely be worth 10x more today.

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