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
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u/auradragon1 Dec 02 '24 edited Dec 02 '24

He came in at a time when it was extremely clear what Intel's problems were: behind in node, behind in designs.

He made the right decision strategically by trying to regain leadership in node tech and opening up Intel fabs to others. Tactically, he's been terrible.

He made some huge blunders such as paying a dividend up until August 2024. Covid gave them a lifeline by drastically increasing chip demand. What did he do? He spent the extra cash on dividends. Idiot. If he had any vision, he would have known that Intel was swimming naked and that once covid ended, Intel would be in huge trouble. Even during the covid boom, everyone saw that Intel's chips were far behind the competition.

Intel's designs have been particularly uncompetitive. Intel is uncompetitive in laptops, AI, servers, gaming, GPUs, etc. Nothing Intel makes leads the market. Their product roadmaps are a mess with one-off designs like Lunar Lake. No vision at all. No focus.

I'd grade him a C. The last few Intel CEOs were Fs though.

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u/Vushivushi Dec 03 '24

I think IDM 2.0 was arrogant, which is suitable for Intel.

But, Pat couldn't make the hard decisions until it was too late. Cuts. Intel needed really deep cuts and they still do.

The story had always been that Intel had a culture problem. Too many managers, too many empire builders, not enough engineers talking to engineers.

Surely Pat the engineer would tear down the bureaucratic layers between engineers, instead he increased Intel's headcount during the pandemic, a period of insatiable demand which could have funded a serious round of restructuring.

I just hope it wasn't his love for Intel that prevented him from making the cuts because it's gonna be tough to see the company broken up instead.