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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

#31

Post by tsotha »

geebee wrote: post #26
wtvanhest wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The first non-tech CEO is usually a strong sign that a company has grown from a startup with a single product focus to a long-term viable business with a diversified product portfolio. (Think GE, AT&T, Boeing etc.) For people in the HN community, this is mostly horrific because it represents everything they avoid. However, for almost everyone else out there that is working for the purpose of simply providing for thei…

that person is highly unlikely to keep a company of Intel's size successful. Perhaps so... particularly in the moment. To me, it's more a question of whether that CEO is a person who once would have known how to create the next high end transistor (or whatever technology innovation is central to the business) and is still able to have that conversation as an engineer/scientist. For instance, I doubt Andy Grove, at th…

>For instance, I doubt Andy Grove, at the end of his tenure, would have been able to do that kind of tech work in the moment, but he had a PhD in engineering and had a very deep knowledge of the technology as well as the business. He did make some very typical-of-engineers mistakes when intel decided to raise its consumer profile.

Grove is a great example of a successful technical CEO. I would never say Otellini was a failure, but Intel flourished under Grove in a way that it didn't under Otellini.

Re: Intel CEO Paul Otellini to Retire in May

#32

Post by tsotha »

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.

>Otellini's successor will be playing a different game, fighting ARM rather than AMD.

Contra the ARM fans who seem to be dominant on HN, I think Intel is well positioned to win that battle. Cutting-edge fab capacity is a pretty big advantage, even if they're using it mostly for high-power CPUs at the moment.

Re: Intel CEO Paul Otellini to Retire in May

#33

Post by cjdrake »

I work for Intel, and I congratulate Paul on his tenure.

On the whole, I would say most of my engineer colleagues approve of Paul's leadership, MBA or otherwise :).

It will be interesting to see if Intel's next CEO decides to take any exciting new turns. Particularly with respect to the PC market, we live in interesting times.

Re: Intel CEO Paul Otellini to Retire in May

#34

Post by krasin »

kenjackson wrote: post #21
mtgx wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 M…

Trust me when I say that the lack of success of Chromebooks and Google TV have very little to do with Intel. With that said, Intel has been way too slow in its race against ARM, but saying that this has impacted Google I don't find credible.

The ARM Chromebook costs less than x86 Chromebooks while offering more-or-less the same user experience and it's much more popular in sales, according to Amazon.

So, Intel is/was a part of the problem at least for Chromebooks. (I don't know anything about Google TV)

Re: Intel CEO Paul Otellini to Retire in May

#35

Post by Aardwolf »

monopede wrote: post #25
Aardwolf wrote: post #2

So according to Moore's law, he should have seen things get 106528681 times more transistors at Intel!

Moore's law: Transistor count doubles every 18 months. Assuming 40 years at the company (it's a bit less) that's: 2^(40/1.5) = 67,108,864 The 62 Core Xeon Phi has 5 billion transistors. Divided by that number is: 149. That's a bit low. The Intel 8080 that came out in 1974 (when he joined the company) had 4,500 transistors. Looks like Moore's law has been slowing down a bit in recent years. Probably due to the focus o…

2^(40/1.5) is 106528681, just like I posted...

Which calculator are you using? Does it use a Pentium CPU with the famous division bug perhaps? :)

Re: Intel CEO Paul Otellini to Retire in May

#36

Post by geebee »

tsotha wrote: post #31
geebee wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

that person is highly unlikely to keep a company of Intel's size successful. Perhaps so... particularly in the moment. To me, it's more a question of whether that CEO is a person who once would have known how to create the next high end transistor (or whatever technology innovation is central to the business) and is still able to have that conversation as an engineer/scientist. For instance, I doubt Andy Grove, at th…

>For instance, I doubt Andy Grove, at the end of his tenure, would have been able to do that kind of tech work in the moment, but he had a PhD in engineering and had a very deep knowledge of the technology as well as the business. He did make some very typical-of-engineers mistakes when intel decided to raise its consumer profile. Grove is a great example of a successful technical CEO. I would never say Otellini was…

Yes, I agree, to say Grove "kept the company successful" (referring to once it became a huge company), is to understate how much it flourished.

Re: Intel CEO Paul Otellini to Retire in May

#37

Post by monopede »

Aardwolf wrote: post #35
monopede wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Moore's law: Transistor count doubles every 18 months. Assuming 40 years at the company (it's a bit less) that's: 2^(40/1.5) = 67,108,864 The 62 Core Xeon Phi has 5 billion transistors. Divided by that number is: 149. That's a bit low. The Intel 8080 that came out in 1974 (when he joined the company) had 4,500 transistors. Looks like Moore's law has been slowing down a bit in recent years. Probably due to the focus o…

2^(40/1.5) is 106528681, just like I posted... Which calculator are you using? Does it use a Pentium CPU with the famous division bug perhaps? :)

I was using the "bc" command line calculator. Turns out it's rounding the exponent. The revised number is correct, though.

Re: Intel CEO Paul Otellini to Retire in May

#38

Post by Aardwolf »

monopede wrote: post #37
Aardwolf wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

2^(40/1.5) is 106528681, just like I posted... Which calculator are you using? Does it use a Pentium CPU with the famous division bug perhaps? :)

I was using the "bc" command line calculator. Turns out it's rounding the exponent. The revised number is correct, though.

Note to self: never use the bc command line calculator.
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