Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger Retires Amid Company's Decline

[SexExpert]

With such a small market share, how can Apple silicon be a major blow to Intel?

If you've got a public relationship with one of the biggest (and sometimes the biggest) company in the world and they suddenly and very publicly announce 'we dont want your **** anymore' then that's quite bad.

There's also the fact that Intel has no ARM strategy worth the paper it's written on, whereas AMD, nVidia, Microsoft, Qualcom and all the other big names in the PC space do, which has become many times more embarrassing now that Apple's Mx line has demonstrated that ARM is perfectly competitive with x86 at a fraction of the power.

 

[sw1tcher]

Intels downfall is a prime example of people listening to MBAs over engineers.

Brian Krzanich is an engineer. Look at what happened with Intel when he was CEO.

Pat Gelsinger is also an engineer.

Tim Cook has an MBA from Duke University.

 

[TheSl0th]

With such a small market share, how can Apple silicon be a major blow to Intel?

Apple was 5% of Intel’s revenue. That’s hardly chump change.

And don’t underestimate the brand damage from being unceremoniously dumped by a premium customer.

Add to that the fact that, as a customer, any increase in market share for Apple was at worst no change in Intel’s market share. Now, any increase in Apple’s market share is almost certainly at the expense of Intel’s market share.

It hardly broke the company but it was not a negligible loss either.

 

[jdb8167]

Brian Krzanich is an engineer. Look at what happened with Intel when he was CEO.

Pat Gelsinger is also an engineer.

Tim Cook has an MBA from Duke University.

Tim Cook is also an engineer. He has a BS in industrial engineering from Auburn.

 

[elvisimprsntr]

That is not unusual for a company with a successful product. They ride the horse for as long as possible.

I seem to recall another company in Ontario, CAN that tried to do the same thing.

 

[jz0309]

Surprised by the timing, not by the action.
He played politics (Chips act, new fabs in Europe with European equivalent of chips act) more than he focused on the inside… and totally missed industry trends and hanging on to x86.
I hope Intel can move on

 

[Jamie0003]

Apple is almost/already at that point... Intel with incremental yearly upgrades which is what Apple is doing for many years now...

Are you sure about that? I mean, Apple has enough money to buy entire freakin’ countries if they wanted to

 

[I7guy]

Intel is the perfect example of what can happen to a company once they become complacent and fail to innovate. The market is brutal.

Yes. If they don’t get their act together they will join Kodak, xerox, blackberry etc.

 

[I7guy]

Surprised by the timing, not by the action.
He played politics (Chips act, new fabs in Europe with European equivalent of chips act) more than he focused on the inside… and totally missed industry trends and hanging on to x86.
I hope Intel can move on

X86 is not going away (at least in our lifetime). Neither amd nor Intel will stop design and development of x86 chips.

 

[rubberducker]

Intel is a monumentally dysfunctional company. And Pat Gelsinger did untold damage behind the scenes. The company is a husk of its former self, and those that are left (that haven't been let go) actively despise the company and the toxic way its run. Intel is slowly sinking to the bottom of the sea and nobody that works for it can see anyway past that. RIP Intel.

 

[PBG4 Dude]

They tried that with XScale in the 2000s and sold it in 2006.

They also sold their stake in ARM this year and have tried to become a FAB etc. So many failed opportunities over the years.

Also the iTanium VLIW (Very Long Instruction Word) processor aka iTanic.

 

[Will Co]

What I find most remarkable about this story is that Intel - INTEL - is looking at posting its first loss since 1986. How the mighty have fallen, indeed.

But as others have said, they have failed upon failure upon failure. You can't keep doing that in this industry. ARM architecture and in particular the AS variants are technically impressive and do seem to be doing damage. Apple was not a significant customer of Intel, but the move by Apple to ARM seems to have strengthened a movement already underway.

The M4 is my first foray into AS and I am very pleasantly surprised at how many native apps are ready for ARM. I'm not talking about the Apple side - I'm talking about tools that were predominantly x86/64 for Windows. Companies seem to be ready to recognise that they need to build their Windows platform app for Intel and Arm. Microsoft, for example, have made much of their development toolset available as a universal binary. Visual Studio flies on my M4 in a VM running Win11 Arm. It's this aspect that is going to enable the real damage. There will be far less lock-in to Intel in the future, and that will enable choice. With the performance and battery life benefits AS currently has, it's then a fairly easy choice to make. Other manufacturers will pile into ARM based chips, and then we'll really see a slide into the gutter for Intel.

Unless - they pull something out of their technical hat.

 

[nostradumbass]

X86 is not going away (at least in our lifetime). Neither amd nor Intel will stop design and development of x86 chips.

True. Just because Intel lost customers to AMD and Apple Silicon doesn’t mean we lose our minds like those loons fighting over toilet paper during covid. It’s not the end of the world. Kodak still exists and still has a solid stable base serving its traditional customers even if it is much smaller than before.

 

[Art Mark]

I remember thinking that when Jobs told Intel he was focusing on power consumption and they blew him off - that was the beginning of the end. Arrogance. And they totally missed mobile because of this. If you don't steal marketshare from yourself with new products another company will take it from you. I suspect they will become increasingly worthless until they are sold for parts. Here in Oregon it will hurt as they are the biggest tech company and there campus is hugely important to the entire economy of the state.

 

[Art Mark]

Intels downfall is a prime example of people listening to MBAs over engineers.

Perhaps. I think it's simply arrogance. They felt whether engineers or marketing, that they knew the future best. And as Apple shifted priorities to power consumption - they blew them off totally missing mobile. And I'd guess there were plenty of meetings with Apple before Apple pulled itself away from Intel and at these meetings Intel just couldn't or wouldn't step-up. I think blame needs to be leveled at the entire company.

 

[Art Mark]

How much severance pay did he receive?

Funny how executives never take blame, and always walk away with literally more money than they will need the rest of their life by failing. While most workers are badgered and blamed for anything and everything. Capitalism doing what it does best.

 

[bruinsrme]

Intels downfall is a prime example of people listening to MBAs over engineers.

this has been the case in Oregon for years. There are some incredible engineers at ASML and in NY without MBA and up doing incredible things with EUV. I will say this, Pharma/biotech is a million times worse at listening to useless PhDs over others.

 

[bradman83]

Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger has retired following a challenging tenure marked by the company's struggles to compete against Apple and other major chipmakers TSMC.

Fixed it.

Don’t get me wrong, Apple Silicon is impressive, and if Apple had to manufacture their chips using Intel or Samsung fabs it would still be impressive. But what really sets it apart is TSMC’s engineering and the fact that Apple is willing to pony up top dollar to always use the most bleeding edge manufacturing process (something even AMD doesn’t do). Without TSMC, Apple and AMD’s chips wouldn’t be nearly as far ahead.

 

[jb310]

To be fair, Intel had problems long before Gelsinger took over as CEO... but I don't think he helped very much. 😅

 

[Hodar1]

Decades ago, before Cyrix rolled onto the stage with the 486 direct fit into the Pentium socket, it was floated that Motorola Semiconductor (when it existed, in Austin TX) would build x86 processors to compete against Intel for the PC market.

The idea was crushed by upper management, because this was "conceding" the marketspace that the Motorola 68xxx processors had cut out for itself.

In semiconductors, you MUST be willing to "eat your children"; which is a difficult sale. Intel could not bear to "eat it's children", so it is now in the position it's enjoying. It's not the talent of the workforce that is in question, it's the wisdom of it's leadership.

 

[jz0309]

X86 is not going away (at least in our lifetime). Neither amd nor Intel will stop design and development of x86 chips.

I do know that, but the x86 market is not growing, in fact it is shrinking, Intel missed the boat, again. Look at AMD and where their focus is and shifted.

 

[citysnaps]

Brian Krzanich is an engineer. Look at what happened with Intel when he was CEO.

Pat Gelsinger is also an engineer.

Tim Cook has an MBA from Duke University.

And also has a BS in Industrial Engineering from Auburn.

 

[jz0309]

The problems at Intel started long before Gelsinger's stint as CEO.

Intel started falling behind during Brian Krzanich's helm. During his tenure, Intel struggled in the mobile chip space, eventually giving up. He failed to lead Intel in developing smaller 10 nanometer chips. It was delay after delay after delay

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Their blunders allowed AMD to catch up with their Zen-based CPUs. It was these Ryzen chips that brought back the enthusiasts like how the Athlon chips did nearly 2 decades prior. This is when AMD started taking marketshare from Intel, eventually allowing them to surpassing Intel in market cap

https://www.cnbc.com/2022/07/29/amd-passes-intel-in-market-cap.html

Things got worse when Bob Swan took over hence his short stint as CEO.

I believe Gelsinger did his best under the circumstances and mess he was given.

The problems with Intel started even before Krzanich, they started with Barrett and then Otellini…

 

[uacd]

And 7 years ago no one believed me when I said that Apple will transition to their own fast and silent processors and that would mark end of Intel. People literally said I am an idiot. And now look where we are…

If Intel really wants to stay afloat they better offer affordable options for building PCs or they would be done faster than Nokia.

Oh btw, NVIDIA must prepare. Neither game industry will save them, nor their overpriced video cards. And even AI bandwagon won’t help them. If they don’t release energy efficient and cooler options to the market their CEO will be next.

And AMD is quite smart. I can see they have been reacting to the game rules changes and are already developing mobile options

 

[rp2011]

I would have never switched to a Mac if they were still on Intel. I have always hated my Windows machines but switching to Mac was non starter as they would be second fiddle to Windows machines as Intel chips were fine tuned for Windows and Mac was a niche afterthought for them. But when I got my 2018 iPad Pro I found I could ditch windows but for the specialty programs I used. The 2018 iPad Pro was a far superior experience to any Windows machine I had owned and knew it was the end for Intel. When the M1 Macs were announced I did not bat an eye as I already knew it would wipe the floor of most non water-cooled Intel bohemoths.

The most amazing part is, how do you blow a monopoly so bad. It was just them and Windows. Yet another example of a company too cozy milking a bread and butter product instead of innovating. Seems to happens every time.