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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

#231

Post by kwertyoowiyop »

reb wrote: post #227
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.

> 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?

Must have been reading the news while typing it!

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

#232

Post by ascendantlogic »

gonehome wrote: post #170
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…

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 very long time until they finally land on the right combination of people, vision and timing.

We see it now with Google now being the "evil empire". They haven't had a real hit since Android and seem to be floundering, but online ad revenue is such a huge geyser of cash they're gonna be fine for a very, VERY long time.

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

#233

Post by ChuckMcM »

tuna-piano wrote: post #220
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…

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 how to tell the customer to proceed.

The "actual" problem could be anything from the customer misinterpreting the datasheet (Marketing/Comms problem), to insufficient testing (Factory/Production problem), to chip function (Design Engineering problem). As a "new college grad", or NCG in the lexicon, I admired how he dug out details from various folks to get to the real problem. He always had ideas for things Systems Validation (SV) could do to maybe trigger the problem that made sense to me. He really embodied the philosophy of fixing the problem not fixing blame on some group.

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

#234

Post by microtherion »

reb wrote: post #227
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.

> 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"

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

#235

Post by KirillPanov »

gonehome wrote: post #222
foobiekr wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With Intel's cashflow, they can do both without any difficulty. But yes, they should be the american TSMC.

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 GUC as an explicit condition of getting access to the then-bleeding-edge 16nm PDK. I turned it down. A competitor of mine (with whose chief engineer I am friends) had the same screws put to them.

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

#236

Post by kevinmchugh »

tw04 wrote: post #48
danpalmer wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To me this description sounds like a specialist high performance computing company rather than a consumer technology company. That may be a perfectly reasonable market to be in, but is that type of company worth $200bn? I'm not sure. Roughly 40% of their revenue is consumer chips where, apart from some games optimisation, they are no longer standing out from the crowd, and the leader is arguably Apple, with AMD doing…

>Roughly 40% of their revenue is consumer chips where, apart from some games optimisation, they are no longer standing out from the crowd, and the leader is arguably Apple, with AMD doing well. You lost me at Apple. Apple owns around 15% of the PC market space and almost the entirety of that is Intel-based systems. Outside of HN, nobody cares about the M1 chip, it isn't a selling point to my mom or her friends. If so…

My mom would love to be able to use the same apps on her phone and her computer. I've been thinking about suggesting her next computer be an apple one since she got her first iphone and this makes it easier. Your Mom May Vary.

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

#237

Post by bitcoinmoney »

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…

I don’t think x86 is on the way out. Apple won’t dominate desktop/server market anytime soon.

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

#238

Post by 2muchcoffeeman »

microtherion wrote: post #219
UncleOxidant wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pat's a great guy and first class engineer, but I think it's just too late for him to turn Intel around at this point. The problems have become too entrenched. They needed someone like him at the helm 10 years ago. Apple's M1 shows that the world has passed Intel by. I wish him luck, though.

"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.

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

#239

Post by foobiekr »

gonehome wrote: post #222
foobiekr wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With Intel's cashflow, they can do both without any difficulty. But yes, they should be the american TSMC.

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.

Someone else mentioned it, but that's really not true about TSMC.

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

#240

Post by foobiekr »

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…

Exactly right.
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