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Intel Businesses

In CEO Search, Intel Still Hasn't Found What It's Looking For (bloomberg.com) 78

Posted by msmash from the quest-continues dept.
Intel has been trying to fill the most prominent role in the $400-billion chip industry for more than six months. The company's board still hasn't found what it's looking for. From a report: Intel directors have ruled out some candidates for the vacant chief executive officer post, passed up obvious ones, been rejected by some and decided to go back and re-interview others, extending the search, according to people familiar with the process. Chairman Andy Bryant told some employees recently that the chipmaker may go with a "non-traditional" candidate, suggesting a CEO from outside the company is a possibility.

Whoever is chosen will take the reins at a company that's churning out record results, but is facing rising competition. The new CEO will have to convince investors that Intel's loss of manufacturing leadership -- a cornerstone of its dominance -- won't cost it market share in the lucrative semiconductor market. He or she will also have to deliver on the company's promise to maintain growth by winning orders beyond personal computer and server chips. "The new CEO will have many difficult decisions to make in a short amount of time," said Kevin Cassidy, an analyst at Stifel Nicolaus & Co. "The company can perform well in the near term due to good demand for PC and servers, but longer-term decisions and strategy need a CEO soon."
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In CEO Search, Intel Still Hasn't Found What It's Looking For More

In CEO Search, Intel Still Hasn't Found What It's Looking For

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  • Good luck with that (Score:3)

    by alvinrod ( 889928 ) on Monday January 14, 2019 @11:29AM (#57959414)
    Intel is going to have a few rocky years ahead of them. They rested on their laurels and didn't take the competition seriously. They also threw a lot of money at useless projects and tried to shoehorn x86 into every possible market rather than trying to build the best product for that market.

    They need a CEO that will put an end to the idiocy and refocus Intel, but no one wants to be the one that has to go out back and shoot Old Yeller. Hopefully they do find someone, because as much fun as it is to see Intel eat some humble pie, if they don't get their shit together AMD will eventually turn out the same and we'll just be back to a stagnant computer market.

    • "They also threw a lot of money at useless projects"

      Ah, they're Commodored themselves? What is Intel's Plus 4 or 128?

    • Nope (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      The Chicoms will buy a first rate CPU design from Fujistsu and sell it at 1/10th of cost ($50) and steamroll the competition.

    • Intel is dead... (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Intel's success is down to one factor, and one factor alone- the fact that IBM chose the WORST of all the 16-bit processor designs at the time for their first IBM PC, simple down to Intel's desperate need to sell at any cost. In comparison, Motorola's 68000 was at least FIVE years more advanced than the 8088/8086.

      After Intel started making mountains of cash, thanks to its monopoly in the merging PC-compatible market, it sank much of this money into two key areas:

      1) R+D focused entirely on improving the x64

    • They are doing fine without a CEO, so not like
      a CEO does anything useful in giant corps.

      Why not just have no CEO, and have all decisions voted by the board.

    • Quoting the parent comment: "They need a CEO that will put an end to the idiocy and refocus Intel..."

      I posted this comment 12 1/2 years ago: "It's very, very sad to see Intel on the way down." (2nd paragraph) [slashdot.org]

      Quote: "Self-destructive behavior at Intel did not start with Otellini. Long ago, Intel closed its consumer division because it could not manage it effectively."

      Another quote: "Intel's marketing ... has become Zombie-like in that it has been minimally connected with reality."

      Intel's marketin

    • Intel is going to have a few rocky years ahead of them. They rested on their laurels and didn't take the competition seriously. They also threw a lot of money at useless projects and tried to shoehorn x86 into every possible market rather than trying to build the best product for that market.

      Except that every other processor they had went nowhere. The i860, the i960, the Itanic, the StrongArm... And even though they got rights to the PA-RISC and the DEC Alpha, they went nowhere w/ those.

      Instead of trying to demonstrate the shortcomings of RISC, which they did when they started the Itanic project, had they taken, say, a RISC CPU that they had some rights to, such as PA-RISC, and built embedded versions of those, they would have done better.

      They need a CEO that will put an end to the idiocy and refocus Intel, but no one wants to be the one that has to go out back and shoot Old Yeller. Hopefully they do find someone, because as much fun as it is to see Intel eat some humble pie, if they don't get their shit together AMD will eventually turn out the same and we'll just be back to a stagnant computer market.

      But what should they refocus on? Intel is Intel du

      • AMD is AMD because of the AMD64 processor. Take that away, and AMD is nothing. What's your point?

        • Well, AMD64 is a backwards compatible extension of the x86 instruction set. AMD pulled a coup on Intel w/ that one, while Intel was contemplating on how to switch the world from CISC/RISC to its EPIC architecture

          My point is that every non-x86 platform that Intel either created itself (i860/i960), acquired (StrongArm/xSCALE) or collaborated on (Itanic) was a fiasco. Unlike in the 70s, one instruction set has clearly won the instruction set war, and that's x86. It's irrelevant as to whether they are a be

    • They should have offered it to Aicha Evans before they lost her. Then they would have at least been walking the talk of diversity.

  • >> Intel's loss of manufacturing leadership -- a cornerstone of its dominance

    If you think manufacturing is the cornerstone of Intel's dominance, then you haven't been paying attention. MARKETING the "Intel" brand (slapped onto almost every PC for a while) and the "duh duh duh dun" sound is the cornerstone of Intel's dominance. Once the masses realize(d) that you could get the same or similar chips from other places, cheaper, and without giving up much (if any) performance, Intel was in trouble.

    • If you think manufacturing is the cornerstone of Intel's dominance, then you haven't been paying attention.

      Manufacturing absolutely has been the cornerstone of Intel's dominance for a long time. The main reason AMD could not compete with Intel on CPUs was because Intel had an absolute cost advantage because of their manufacturing. The only reason Intel didn't put AMD out of business a long time ago was because of anti-trust concerns. For a long time they could sell their x86 CPUs for less money than AMD's cost while still making a profit. Intel didn't get to be the biggest chip maker in the world by accident

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Shaitan ( 22585 )

        Right now their biggest advantage is inertia. Having the best product isn't instantly turning into wins across the board for AMD in the enterprise space. The same is true for AMD vs the likes of ARM. The ARM chips have huge power savings but no matter what their clockspeeds they just don't come close to outperforming intel or AMD chips. AMD chips on the other hand wipe ARM and crush Intel in multiprocessing which is what it is all about in the enterprise space.

        It isn't marketing that is keeping them there.

        • Right now their biggest advantage is inertia. Having the best product isn't instantly turning into wins across the board for AMD in the enterprise space.

          That's because AMD doesn't have a cost advantage in manufacturing CPUs for PCs. AMD is reliant on other companies to actually make their chips. They have to pay these companies for the chips and importantly a profit margin. Intel has several advantages. 1) They don't have to pay the profit margin to a third party. All other things being equal this gives Intel a 10-20% cost advantage right out the gate. 2) Intel also has technology advantages and manufacturing scale advantages that increase this cost a

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by Shaitan ( 22585 )

            "That's because AMD doesn't have a cost advantage in manufacturing CPUs for PCs. AMD is reliant on other companies to actually make their chips. They have to pay these companies for the chips and importantly a profit margin."

            AMD has the higher performing chips and they are selling them for a lower price. I'm sure they could have a better margin but the fab they are buying from is actually their own which they sold.

            "Enterprise computing is FAR more complicated than who has the best multi-core performance on

      • And to strengthen your point, Intel's turn to marketing is part of what got them into this situation. They started to believe that they could hold market dominance through marketing rather than through superior products. This strategy worked as long as they actually had superior products. As soon as they stopped having distinctly superior products, it all fell apart.

    • and the "duh duh duh dun" sound

      That would be bong, as in the Bong Song. Really, it's called the bong song. Coming from an ex Intel employee.

    • The issue is more the fact that we are no longer dependent on the Wintell PC market like we were 10 years ago.

      Think back 10 years ago. the iPhone was still mostly a gimmick then a suitable computing replacement. Microsoft while suffering for the mistake of Vista still had dominance, to a point no one would seriously think (Outside the Linux and Apple Zealots) that an other Operating System can be used for the normal home desktop. Intel had the Windows PC Market, recently got into the Apple market (which

    • No other company has the fabs or the capacity that Intel has - all developed w/ just its own cash. In sharp contrast to, say, TSMC, which is heavily subsidized by the Taiwan government. Intel won the CPU wars due to the fact that it was several generations ahead of the competition in terms of manufacturing, had the volumes to drive margins and could therefore drop a dual-core CPU for the same price or less of a comparable RISC CPU
  • Hiring another CEO to be your CEO sounds as traditional as it gets, unless you mean the OLD traditions, like pre-war era. Something like calling your Christmas Tree non-traditional because it has electric lights on it.

  • They'll do what companies always do (Score:3)

    by Larry Lightbulb ( 781175 ) on Monday January 14, 2019 @11:34AM (#57959468)
    They'll hire someone who is already a CEO, regardless of how badly they've screwed up their previous companies.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Tablizer ( 95088 )

      They'll hire someone who is already a CEO, regardless of how badly they've screwed up their previous companies.

      That's not necessarily bad. The important thing is that one learn from mistakes. It's difficult to get good without making and learning from mistakes. The risk is that some don't learn from mistakes due to bullheaded obsessions. But all the obvious good CEO's are taken already such that they'll have to take some risk no matter what.

  • Comment removed (Score:3)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Monday January 14, 2019 @12:06PM (#57959744)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • Nobody willl notice the difference from a PHB.

  • The new CEO will have to convince investors that Intel's loss of manufacturing leadership -- a cornerstone of its dominance -- won't cost it market share in the lucrative semiconductor market. He or she will also have to deliver on the company's promise to maintain growth by winning orders beyond personal computer and server chips.

    The list of demands and assurances for the new CEO are too long. They just need someone who can walk on water.

  • Comment removed (Score:3)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Monday January 14, 2019 @02:03PM (#57960700)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • Get security correct on the next CPU products.
    Have the skilled people who can do security review the CPU before production and sale.

    Understand what people want to do with 4K and 8K games and content.
    Have a CPU that can support games with the needed speed and be used for content creation and encoding.
    Speed and cores.
    Get every part of the CPU to keep up with the CPU speed needed for the new games in production.
    Make every part of the CPU ready for new games and tell CPU and game reviewers that.
    A ne

  • Why Robert Swan (interim CEO) doesn't want the job is probably the more interesting story.

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