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Intel CEO Bob Swan to Step Down in February

Considering how much business, gov, & world operates on decades of software made to run on intel chips, doesn’t have any reason to care if the chips in their machines are 10nm or 7, and is heavily incentivized to be conservative, stable and fight change, I expect that being outpaced in the high-end chip speed race will result in the total collapse of intel in about 2 centuries.

Every time some F1 car wins a season, it doesn’t mean the gods stop the hands of time, declare them the winner for all time, and the rest of the car industry goes out of business. This is like zero-sum thinking run amok.
 
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torontotim said:
Intel will join the ranks of IBM, Northern Telecom, Blackberry etc. Inevitable.
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Burroughs, Wang, DEC, Atari, TI, Cray, Sinclair, SGI the list is long. I remember seeing the SGI Reality Engine and Crimson machines at a ComDex show a long time ago. Those Crimsons were so cool looking. I wanted one but had to settle for the Indigo 2 Extreme.

OIP.lGXVgcKGStic4FUA9N_Y1gHaFm.jpeg
indigo2.jpg
 
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Well, this might be good. The Goose laying the golden eggs is just about to totally crumble in the market.

Intel has just flubbed its fab technology for years and years which has held up it processing design advances (they've been on the same 14nm die size for most of their chips for 4 or more years I think now). Their die fabricating tech was once the crown jewel of the company.

The current iPhone is at 5nm, although by Intel measurements (for comparison) it's about 7nm (different metrics between Intel and the rest of the industry there) and most of Intel's new chips for this year are 14nm. AMD's newest that were just announced are 7nm. Intel had promised to go to 12nm and has some chips at that size, but seems to be punting there and promising to move a chunk of their chips to 10nm (already out of date) by the end of the year - but they've done that before and stayed at 14nm.
 
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Dwalls90 said:
So unfortunate to see a company like Intel flounder year after year due to prioritizing the wrong things. The rise and fall of Intel will become a cornerstone case for management courses in business universities.
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The rise and fall and rise of Intel will become a cornerstone case for management courses in business universities. Which other very big and popular company had a rise, fall and rise? This company was so on it's deathbed and when CEOs changed in 2011, this company had a half-life of a neutrino.
 
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alexjholland said:
Ten years ago, a mentor (COO of a chip company) told me, 'Intel will struggle in the future because they can't handle small Nm architecture. Buy ARM shares now.'

He was a smart guy.
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Only bad part of the story for you is that it is made up.
 
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I can understand people singing Apple Silicon's praises and discussing why the move from x86 was a good one; but I do feel that the negative/disingenuous comments surrounding Intel are getting quite out of line.

So Apple made a business decision not to be an Intel customer. Great, it's been analysed to death already, but why do some now feel that Intel deserves this level of flack? Did Intel publicly criticise Apple in recent years? Did they force Apple into any contracts? I don't recall bad blood between the two companies. If Apple was disappointed that Intel didn't meet targets, then that's a different matter entirely.

To achieve the roadmap that they set out - regardless how ambitious it is - can't be easy. Just because AMD has gained marketshare and ARM will now be taken seriously in mainstream computing, it doesn't mean that Intel are suddenly a useless entity. They tried and hasn't worked out in recent years - it happens in business.

The same applies to the CEO Bob Swan. He gave it his best shot and wasn't up to the task. It doesn't mean the guy deserves to be harrassed.

It's that tribalistic attitude of winners and losers that just comes off as crass.
 
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Grove would be severely disappointed to see the sharp state of decline Intel has gone into. Don't know if it's going to get any better for them at this point.
 
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Apple Knowledge Navigator said:
I can understand people singing Apple Silicon's praises and discussing why the move from x86 was a good one; but I do feel that the negative/disingenuous comments surrounding Intel are getting quite out of line.

So Apple made a business decision not to be an Intel customer. Great, it's been analysed to death already, but why do some now feel that Intel deserves this level of flack? Did Intel publicly criticise Apple in recent years? Did they force Apple into any contracts? I don't recall bad blood between the two companies. If Apple was disappointed that Intel didn't meet targets, then that's a different matter entirely.

To achieve the roadmap that they set out - regardless how ambitious it is - can't be easy. Just because AMD has gained marketshare and ARM will now be taken seriously in mainstream computing, it doesn't mean that Intel are suddenly a useless entity. They tried and hasn't worked out in recent years - it happens in business.

The same applies to the CEO Bob Swan. He gave it his best shot and wasn't up to the task. It doesn't mean the guy deserves to be harrassed.

It's that tribalistic attitude of winners and losers that just comes off as crass.
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Agreed. Using software running on Intel tech has paid my mortgage for a few decades. What I would say, though, is that ARM tech is not new, so the writing has been on the wall for a long time.
 
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Anson_431 said:
It's actually interesting to see how the ultimatum from investors was able to finally drive the company into making changes, or at least appearing to be making changes at least. I do wonder how long does it take for Intel to stop being reactive though lol
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This change has nothing to do with the ultimatum. Reports about Intel looking for a new CEO were published before the ultimatum. For the companies of Intel caliber, CEO search takes way longer than the amount of time we had after the ultimatum.
 
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Apple Knowledge Navigator said:
I can understand people singing Apple Silicon's praises and discussing why the move from x86 was a good one; but I do feel that the negative/disingenuous comments surrounding Intel are getting quite out of line.

So Apple made a business decision not to be an Intel customer. Great, it's been analysed to death already, but why do some now feel that Intel deserves this level of flack? Did Intel publicly criticise Apple in recent years? Did they force Apple into any contracts? I don't recall bad blood between the two companies. If Apple was disappointed that Intel didn't meet targets, then that's a different matter entirely.

To achieve the roadmap that they set out - regardless how ambitious it is - can't be easy. Just because AMD has gained marketshare and ARM will now be taken seriously in mainstream computing, it doesn't mean that Intel are suddenly a useless entity. They tried and hasn't worked out in recent years - it happens in business.

The same applies to the CEO Bob Swan. He gave it his best shot and wasn't up to the task. It doesn't mean the guy deserves to be harrassed.

It's that tribalistic attitude of winners and losers that just comes off as crass.
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I think there's something about large, multinational incumbents who 'assume' they own the market being forced to eat humble pie that's kinda satistfying to watch.

It's especially satistfying if it's a plucky, agile upstart that unseats them.

Obviously, Apple are a huge MNC too.

But reports suggest that Intel didn't take ARM seriously; or at least, didn't envision their architecture could ever translate to desktop machines.

No company is too big to fail.

Even Apple could fail (and they nearly did).
 
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philosopherdog said:
Non-technical leaders are usually a poor choice for tech.
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While Bill Gates was very proficient at coding he was a terrible visionary for innovations at Microsoft. On the flip side Steve Jobs was a "salesman" that knew nothing about writing code. He was an amazing visionary which is why Apple became so successful before he his death. He even knew Tim Cook would be the right person to take his place and bring Apple to the great success it is today. Non-technical leaders can really do wonders for companies.
 
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Maconplasma said:
While Bill Gates was very proficient at coding he was a terrible visionary for innovations at Microsoft. On the flip side Steve Jobs was a "salesman" that knew nothing about writing code. He was an amazing visionary which is why Apple became so successful before he his death. He even knew Tim Cook would be the right person to take his place and bring Apple to the great success it is today. Non-technical leaders can really do wonders for companies.
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Yup. In fact great CEOs often are NOT technical.

Many of my clients are engineers and developers. They often struggle to position their products effectively, because having a high level of technical aptitude can reduce your ability to relate to your customers.
 
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