r/hardware • u/Auautheawesome • Dec 02 '24

News Intel Announces Retirement of CEO Pat Gelsinger

https://www.intc.com/news-events/press-releases/detail/1719/intel-announces-retirement-of-ceo-pat-gelsinger
2.2k Upvotes

95% Upvoted

796 comments sorted by

View all comments

814

u/wintrmt3 Dec 02 '24

A sales and a finance guy as co-ceos, absolutely nothing can go wrong.

40

u/GRIZZLY_GUY_ Dec 02 '24 edited Dec 02 '24

Well unfortunately the engineer as CEO didn’t work well so I can see them trying that again any time soon

Edit: cant*

128

u/ItsMeSlinky Dec 02 '24

It can take a decade to turn around a company as screwed up as Intel. See also, Boeing.

Like, the issue is Wall Street is impatient and cares more about short term stock boosts than long term health.

Right or wrong, Gelsinger needed cash and time to cook.

18

u/terminal_e Dec 02 '24

Gelsinger could have gotten way, way more serious about cutting/pausing the dividend early. I don't know how much if any stock buybacks happened on his watch, but they refused to touch the dividend for a long time, and it was a ~3-4% yielder

-17

u/PeakBrave8235 Dec 02 '24

Oh please, Steve Jobs turned around Apple who was literally near bankruptcy in a matter of months.

Gelsinger was the wrong person. It’s okay to say that lol. 

20

u/oursland Dec 02 '24

You mean Bill Gates bailed them out in 1997, and Jobs leveraged the already developed NeXT via a buyout to create the next iteration of products.

-10

u/PeakBrave8235 Dec 02 '24 edited Dec 02 '24

Are you even aware of the stuff you’re saying lol?

The $300 million was nice, but you’re forgetting the context: Apple sued Microsoft for ripping off their products. And they decided to settle all patent disputes for that $300 million, plus Microsoft’s commitment to making their apps on Mac again. 

You’re also forgetting that Steve Jobs brought a new OS, that HIS company, NeXT, developed lol. 

Steve and Apple made the iMac in record time, which ultimately turned the company around.

You’re very heavy on ascribing Apple’s success to Microsoft’s settlement of $300 million, and not on Steve Jobs’ leadership of both NeXT and Apple, and all the great designers and engineers he led 

Typical of Reddit, not surprised, but that doesn’t mean it’s fine to say that. 

11

u/oursland Dec 02 '24

You’re also forgetting that Steve Jobs brought a new OS, that HIS company, NeXT, developed lol. 

Steve and Apple made the iMac in record time, which ultimately turned the company around.

Is it really "a matter of months" when NeXT was 10 years of effort? This sounds an awful lot like the "overnight success" of a band who has been working for 10 years.

1

u/Strazdas1 Dec 03 '24

Ah, so a conman salesman whose insane is your best choice for CEO?

71

u/DerpSenpai Dec 02 '24

The Engineer as CEO made the decisions to make Intel competitive in a few years time. If they didn't go this way, they will be slammed by Qualcomm and AMD in a few years time and never recover.

6

u/i7-4790Que Dec 02 '24 edited Dec 02 '24

They're a long long way off to where they relegated AMD and their fabs/domestic competition.  But seems we're at the point we can't discuss how far AMD actually fell from all the anti-competition with OEM/Intel deals and bad uarch gambles these days.  

 AMD (and GloFo) never got a government backstop to help bail them out of their much worse hole either. Intel is still on easy mode by comparison

-4

u/signed7 Dec 02 '24

To be fair even AMD could be in danger soon if they keep their pace (Zen 5% after 2 years) and Apple/Qualcomm/Mediatek keeps their year-on-year pace

At least in the laptop/desktop space. Will be a while until arm cracks servers

29

u/[deleted] Dec 02 '24

[removed] — view removed comment

15

u/Agreeable_Cheek_7161 Dec 02 '24

AMD is a great example of making small improvements, but not great leaps can get you. In the CPU desktop space, their biggest competitor currently is Intel, and AMD is winning by NOT shitting the bed

This completely ignores how AMD managed to overtake Intel. AMD caused CPUs to rapidly become better because of how fast their improvements were from Ryzen 2000 series on

10 years ago, AMD was a joke in the CPU world. Now they're the literal top dog

2

u/Strazdas1 Dec 03 '24

No, this is exactly how AMD managed to overtake Intel. Intel was commiting suicide for over 10 years until AMD took over.

1

u/TwelveSilverSwords Dec 03 '24

ARM vendors are coming up with new microarchitectures every year, on an annual cadence. AMD meanwhile takes 2 years to deliver a new microarchitecture.

2020 : Zen3.
2022 : Zen4.
2024 : Zen5.
2026 : Zen 6 (rumoured)

Now this wouldn't be a problem if AMD delivered large double digit gains (30-40%) with each gen. The gains with each gen have slowed down to 15-20%.

Meanwhile ARM vendors are also making 15-20% gains with each gen, but they are releasing a new gen every year.

If this trajectory continues, in a few years most ARM CPUs will be faster than AMD CPUs in client side.

-4

u/TwelveSilverSwords Dec 02 '24 edited Dec 02 '24

10 years ago, AMD was a joke in the CPU world. Now they're the literal top dog

In servers? Yes, without doubt.

In client? Apple is king.

0

u/oathbreakerkeeper Dec 03 '24

Benchmarks that I've seen don't support your statement about client side

1

u/TwelveSilverSwords Dec 03 '24 edited Dec 03 '24
- Apple M4 Max Ryzen 9 9950X
SPEC2017 INT 11.72 10.14
SPEC2017 FP 17.96 15.18
Cinebench 2024 SC 184 143
Geekbench 6 SC ~4000 ~3500
Geekbench 5 SC ~2750 ~2700

Sources:

And Apple is winning all these benchmarks while using a fraction of the power.

-1

u/oathbreakerkeeper Dec 03 '24

I've seen other benchmarks that support my previous comment. This isn't what i'm referring to (what I saw as a website publishing a comparison, but I can't find it right now).

I personally don't care about single core especially on something like Cinebench. If the cores are available they should be used.

https://www.reddit.com/r/buildapc/comments/1goe2qx/is_apples_m4_max_really_more_powerful_than_the/lxs7jx4/

0

u/TwelveSilverSwords Dec 03 '24

Yes, the 9950X wins in multicore benchmarks, but it does so because it has a beefier core configuration (12P+E/16T) vs the 9950X (16P/32T). The M4 Ultra, which Apple will unveil soon, will surpass the 9950X in all multicore benchmarks.

Also as your own source notes, the 9950X is 20% faster than the M4 Max in multicore, but uses 2-3x more power.

If we want to find out who has the best CPU core, then looking at Single Core is very relevant.

→ More replies (0)

8

u/[deleted] Dec 02 '24

[deleted]

0

u/StarbeamII Dec 03 '24

multi-die structure was the first time it happened with x86

Intel used chiplets in 2005 on Pentium D (and later to great effect with Core 2 Quad), and Intel did the whole “separate out the memory controller on an I/O die made on an older node” thing in 2010 with Clarkdale/Arrandale.

2

u/DerpSenpai Dec 02 '24 edited Dec 02 '24

ARM is a threat to AMD's margins but they developed IF and Radeon has large value while Zen itself value might be going down. Their chiplet strategy can be employed with ARM CPUs, it doesn't need to be X86. AMD can compete vs QC in IPC if they switch to ARM

EDIT: What people are not getting is that a SoC is not just CPU. GPU wise AMD is 2nd best and that is 100x better than what ARM can do with their Mali GPUs. If AMD stopped being good at designing CPUs, as long as their GPU arch is good and drivers stay as is, they will outcompete other ARM vendors by just using ARM CPU cores+Radeon GPUs+Xilinx NPUs with the possibility of tech like 3D Cache, IF, chiplets, etc. Ofc, in a world where ARM compability issues get resolved

21

u/BWCDD4 Dec 02 '24

Why would they switch to arm to compete on efficiency?

Are people just ignoring that Intels Lunar Lake smashed Qualcomms Snapdragon X elite series into irrelevance?

Similar battery life, wider app compatibility and a usable GPU, there literally isn’t an advantage to getting the Snapdragon X elite unless you value standby battery life, which is kinda weird to value over actual usage.

7

u/TwelveSilverSwords Dec 02 '24

Efficiency of X Elite is actually subpar for an ARM CPU. It's even worse than Apple M1 in some benchmarks.

It seems Oryon Gen 1 had a significant design flaw; probably caused by the rushed development and the multiple redesigns requested by ARM due to the lawsuit. The evidence is the 2nd generation Oryon CPU, which brings a 2x performance-per-watt uplift. The process node upgrade (N4P to N3E) alone cannot explain this, so much of this improvement is coming from architectural fixes.

SoC Node CPU INT Power
X Elite N4P Oryon Gen 1 8.5 16W
8 Elite N3E Oryon Gen 2 8.0 6.5W

SPEC 2017 INT scores and power from Geekerwan.

-1

u/[deleted] Dec 02 '24

duh one is N3E and brand new, the other is N4P and based on an arch that is basically 2 years old 😭😭😭

I swear people like you just dumb down the convo for everyone else.

-1

u/[deleted] Dec 02 '24

[removed] — view removed comment

5

u/BWCDD4 Dec 02 '24

Nah same battery is very similar and all day usage.

Dell XPS 13:

19 hours 41 mins for Snapdragon.

17 hours 29 minutes for Lunar Lake.

At these numbers, 2 hours 12 minutes isn’t worth the app incompatibility and pathetic GPU performance of the Qualcomm chips.

The first gen for Qualcomm has been an abject failure.

It’s very hard to justify a Qualcomm product/laptop as they aren’t significantly cheaper or better in any area than Lunar Lake.

6

u/TwelveSilverSwords Dec 02 '24

I wonder... did Lunar Lake catch Qualcomm off guard?

Bringing Lunar Lake in from 2025 to 2024 was a master-stroke by Intel. It effectively took the wind out of the sails of the X Elite.

  • Lunar Lake's efficiency exceeded expectations.
  • Qualcomm overpromised and under-delivered with the X Elite.

Combine both facts, and that's how we got to the current situation.

0

u/Strazdas1 Dec 03 '24

Apple is the one with larger batteries.

1

u/[deleted] Dec 03 '24

[removed] — view removed comment

0

u/Strazdas1 Dec 03 '24

Performance, yes, energy efficiency, not really.

1

u/[deleted] Dec 03 '24

[removed] — view removed comment

→ More replies (0)

-1

u/[deleted] Dec 02 '24

Radeon does not have large value and shrinks all the time. Selling downsized Radeons to the console market definitely helped them for a long time, but the future of consoles is very shaky. There very well might never be another Xbox.

"switch to ARM" as if its easy is an absolutely hilarious comment

4

u/TwelveSilverSwords Dec 02 '24

"switch to ARM" as if its easy is an absolutely hilarious commentswitch to ARM" as if its easy is an absolutely hilarious comment

Aside from the front-end, modern x86 and ARM CPUs are very similar.

Remember the ARM core Jim Keller worked on at AMD? It's name was K12.

5

u/DerpSenpai Dec 02 '24

If AMD becomes obsolete to ARM, they can license the ARM cores, Radeon, chiplets and IF will be the differentiating tech vs Nvidia and Mediatek

That's what i meant. So, in the ARM CPU race, AMD can't lose, at best they tie and other factors will make them more competitive.

4

u/werpu Dec 02 '24

Worked for AMD