https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42334697
>Gelsinger’s narrative of his time at Intel seemingly just went from strength to strength. Worse, in his own story, the bad things at Intel always seemed to happen when he wasn’t in the room or otherwise over his objections — and the good things always when he was called in to save an effort from failure.
People may read this as arrogance. Except time and time again it was proven to be true. It wasn't his own subjective version of history. It is quite literally proven with time that he was the only one fighting inside Intel against most of Intel's strategic decision. He was battle tested and also the reason why he left ( or forced out ) because the board and then CEO disagree with most of his direction.
>with no mention of Intel’s gross architectural missteps with respect to 64-bit that allowed (and even demanded!) AMD Opteron in the first place.
And he was the one who disagree with Itanium but it was done by different team, different vision, different needs, mostly because the board and CEO wanted to conquer the so call "Enterprise" market. And Guess who was put in charge later to pick up the mess. Oh he said it already.
>how could Intel expect outsiders to trust them to learn from their mistakes if it wouldn’t even publicly acknowledge what those mistakes were?
Surprisingly they actually did but media wouldn't even cover it. Bob Swan publicly stated "all" the problem over the years. Including Capex issues which I have been banging on about since 2015 and may be part of the reason why I got death threats from Intel Fan Boys ( Apart from TSMC over taking Intel ). Bob actually did a great job layering the foundation for Pat.
>And this gets to Gelsinger’s first real, unequivocal mistake: he didn’t eliminate Intel’s dividend. I am not alone in this view; Ben Thompson of Stratechery too.
He wasn't allowed to. That was the board's decision. He has hinted numerous time this is war time and he wanted to cut the dividends. Again blame the board and investors. And Pat is exactly "THE" War Time CEO we are all looking for. There is no better Commander in Chief to lead the war for Intel. Except the Senate and politicians or who ever at Rome would not agree on the budget or how desperate the scenario is. How you expect to win a battle when your reinforcement is constantly cut and half of your battle is with Rome / Intel itself.
> the newly-christened Intel Foundry Services (IFS)
This is actually second or arguably in my view third time Intel tried with their Foundry services. Which makes this even worst because they learned absolutely nothing from the first two failure. Yes, in many cases failure doesn't necessary turned into experience without the proper leader or manager turning it into lessons.
>the culture at Intel didn’t really seem amenable to the level of customer engagement that foundry customers (rightfully) expect.
They improved a lot this time around. It isn't perfect. But out of the two ( or three ) time Intel did only this time around they are actually doing something and learning. Remember the amount of crap SemiAccurate said certain Teleco equipment provider will go bankrupt because Intel couldn't deliver their 10nm ( or was it 14nm ) Foundry. 5 node in 4 years? That plan ends with 18A and they have been executing on the first 4. Even as someone who trust Pat a lot since the early days of Intel I thought that was too much to pull off, given the current intel situation and still having to play with the board. But he did. For Fuck Sake, he did it. Up to the first 4 node and we are not far from the final. 18A is already in customer's hand and Intel is working their ass off to prove the world wrong. Amazon and Microsoft are already on it. And yes it will likely be producing Hyperscaler CPU on ARM rather than x86 but so what. The Foundry needs volume to win.
>but Intel promptly turned around and introduced the Pentium-M line
Do we need to mention who was behind Pentium-M?
>Similarly, is Intel assuming that TSMC is unable to build fabs in the US or that the US government wouldn’t see such fabs as addressing geopolitical concerns?
The whole point isn't not allowing TSMC to built fab in US. The point is "Leading Edge Node" in US soil. And with TSMC that isn't and wont ever happen. Not due to politics but other logistics, operation and economics issues. If US government ever want Leading Edge Node on US Soil, not just the Fab but the actual Technology know-how as well, they will need to hand out money. Would it not be better to hand it out to Intel rather than TSMC?
>Tofino was clearly living on borrowed time, and we were disappointed
I dont know much about Tofino. But Pat cutting off everything other than x86 CPU, Foundry investment and ( perhaps ) GPU is definitely the right move. And perhaps the only move for Intel.
Pat was the right CEO, and perhaps the only CEO who could save Intel. My only question is how could I set a motion to fire everyone on the board and sue all the Funds handing out Board Membership like some Gala tickets.
Edit: I just want to add another thing. People often ask why certain company, organisation or parties can survived as long as they are given as how much crap everything goes inside. You will almost always certainly find someone making an heroic effort fire fighting everything every time shit hits the fan and he is very successful with it. More often than not his services is taken for granted. And isn't often appreciated enough. I have seen this across many different companies in different industries. And it is why the Entrepreneurial spirits is alive and well. There is still insane amount of inefficiency in the world that is up for many to explore and grab.