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Intel CEO Paul Otellini to Retire in May

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Re: Intel CEO Paul Otellini to Retire in May

#11

Post by MatthewPhillips »

bryanlarsen wrote: post #9
andyjohnson0 wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which "new devices" are you referring to? As far as I know the Nexus One and Nexus 4 use Qualcomm CPUs, and the Nexus S, Galaxy Nexus, Nexus 4, and Nexus 10 all use ARM CPUs. Edit: Thanks to those who pointed out that I'd forgotten the Chromebooks and Google TV. Given the limited extent to which Google have marketed these devices, I'm not sure whether they can be said to have failed yet. And even if they have failed,…

But those were successful devices. He's talking about Google devices that failed, in part because they used Intel CPU's. Devices like the original Google TV.

and Chromebooks.

Re: Intel CEO Paul Otellini to Retire in May

#12

Post by 4ad »

bryanlarsen wrote: post #9
andyjohnson0 wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which "new devices" are you referring to? As far as I know the Nexus One and Nexus 4 use Qualcomm CPUs, and the Nexus S, Galaxy Nexus, Nexus 4, and Nexus 10 all use ARM CPUs. Edit: Thanks to those who pointed out that I'd forgotten the Chromebooks and Google TV. Given the limited extent to which Google have marketed these devices, I'm not sure whether they can be said to have failed yet. And even if they have failed,…

But those were successful devices. He's talking about Google devices that failed, in part because they used Intel CPU's. Devices like the original Google TV.

How do you know it failed because of Intel CPUs?

Re: Intel CEO Paul Otellini to Retire in May

#13

Post by khuey »

bryanlarsen wrote: post #8

What a legacy -- he retires the same day that Intel wins. AMD just ceded the high margin CPU business to concentrate on the volume CPU business. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4804602 Otellini's successor will be playing a different game, fighting ARM rather than AMD.

Which is the game Intel should have been playing for the last N years.

Re: Intel CEO Paul Otellini to Retire in May

#14

Post by bryanlarsen »

khuey wrote: post #13
bryanlarsen wrote: post #8

What a legacy -- he retires the same day that Intel wins. AMD just ceded the high margin CPU business to concentrate on the volume CPU business. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4804602 Otellini's successor will be playing a different game, fighting ARM rather than AMD.

Which is the game Intel should have been playing for the last N years.

Reports are that the Razr i based on an Intel processor is competitive -- similar performance & power usage to an S4 with twice the number of cores. The pre-game warmup is complete. Now the game starts.

Re: Intel CEO Paul Otellini to Retire in May

#15

Post by caw »

khuey wrote: post #13
bryanlarsen wrote: post #8

What a legacy -- he retires the same day that Intel wins. AMD just ceded the high margin CPU business to concentrate on the volume CPU business. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4804602 Otellini's successor will be playing a different game, fighting ARM rather than AMD.

Which is the game Intel should have been playing for the last N years.

The new Intel phones didn't build themselves overnight.

We can all argue that N should be higher than it actually was, but Intel's still present and accounted for.

Re: Intel CEO Paul Otellini to Retire in May

#16

Post by geebee »

I do remember feeling a little disappointed when Paul Otellini was announced as CEO. Paul's an impressive guy, and a local boy, but he is an econ major/MBA, and I always find it a little depressing to learn that a venerable tech company will now be led by someone without a strong engineering or science background.

Actually, I think "first non-technical CEO" probably deserves a notch on a technology company's time line. It doesn't mean that the company won't succeed, but it is a sign that it has become a different type of company (this may be more a reflection of this change than a cause).

But unlike some other high profile flame-outs, it sounds like Otellini was a success at the helm.

Re: Intel CEO Paul Otellini to Retire in May

#17

Post by andyjohnson0 »

lanstein wrote: post #10
andyjohnson0 wrote: post #6

Nit pick: The article says he's been at Intel for "nearly 40 years". According to Wikipedia he joined the company in 1974 [1]. Still a long time though. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Otellini#Employment_at_Int...

Is 38 not nearly 40?

My point related to the title of the HN item, which is "Intel CEO Paul Otellini retiring in May after 40 years with company". This is different to the title of the original article, which doesn't mention the duration.

Re: Intel CEO Paul Otellini to Retire in May

#18

Post by arrrg »

lanstein wrote: post #10
andyjohnson0 wrote: post #6

Nit pick: The article says he's been at Intel for "nearly 40 years". According to Wikipedia he joined the company in 1974 [1]. Still a long time though. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Otellini#Employment_at_Int...

Is 38 not nearly 40?

Huh, when someone says nearly forty years (in connection with human lifetimes) I assume the margin of error is at most a year. Human lives are too short and years too long.

Re: Intel CEO Paul Otellini to Retire in May

#19

Post by ajross »

bryanlarsen wrote: post #14
khuey wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which is the game Intel should have been playing for the last N years.

Reports are that the Razr i based on an Intel processor is competitive -- similar performance & power usage to an S4 with twice the number of cores. The pre-game warmup is complete. Now the game starts.

Right, they're playing the game and have competetive parts. What the ARM-is-the-future people fail to recognize is that the x86 world isn't remotely dead. Relative to consumer SoCs, Intel makes shockingly high margins on its desktop and server silicon. It simply doesn't make sense for them to be making high volume embedded chips unless they have excess fab capacity (which they don't).

The Medfield chips are performance-competetive with existing parts, though they aren't stand-outs. But even if, say, they had a mythical chip that would get lets-just-say-for-argument 2x the performance of Tegra 3 or A6 at 50% of the power draw, they would still not be manufacturing it in volume, for the simple reason that Ivy Bridge cores make a whole lot more money for them than a Tegra-killer would.

So from an investor's perspective, Intel is doing exactly the right thing. Stay in the game, don't cede the market. Make sure your products are competetive, but don't walk away from easy cash either.

Long term, their success will be driven by the value of their SoC products as the desktop world dissolves. But current market penetration isn't a good indicator of what the likelihood of that value will be.

Re: Intel CEO Paul Otellini to Retire in May

#20

Post by mtgx »

andyjohnson0 wrote: post #5
mtgx wrote: post #3

A good time for him to leave before the downwards trend of Intel becomes more obvious, and people start blaming it on him. I hope he leaves the board of Google, too, because I don't like how he has influenced some of Google's decisions in the past few years, to use Intel chips instead of ARM in their new devices, and every single one of them turned out to be the wrong decision.

Which "new devices" are you referring to? As far as I know the Nexus One and Nexus 4 use Qualcomm CPUs, and the Nexus S, Galaxy Nexus, Nexus 4, and Nexus 10 all use ARM CPUs. Edit: Thanks to those who pointed out that I'd forgotten the Chromebooks and Google TV. Given the limited extent to which Google have marketed these devices, I'm not sure whether they can be said to have failed yet. And even if they have failed,…

All the unsuccessful Chromebooks and the Revue Google TV. Both of those have only recently started to pick-up when they started using ARM chips. And now Google is repeating the mistake by starting to put Intel chips in its Motorola devices.

This is also a very bad strategic mistake because if Intel succeeds in mobile, and becomes popular, who do you think it will help most? Google? No way. That situation would help Microsoft, because they can start using the x86 chips that got popular on Android to promote their x86 tablets and hybrids, where Microsoft has a real strength because of legacy apps.

So Google is now pushing Intel chips into the market, and gaining who knows what, because I don't see any benefit for them, but definitely helping Microsoft in the long term. If Intel survives, Microsoft survives. You'd think Google would realize that and doesn't want that.

Google has absolutely no need for Intel in the future, even for their data centers. Microsoft's future pretty much depends on Intel and x86 chips. I don't understand why Google isn't taking full advantage of this weakness of their competitor, and instead it's trying to put Intel back in the game.

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