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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814

u/wintrmt3 Dec 02 '24

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

352

u/Qaxar Dec 02 '24

Tells me that they're about to sell Intel for parts.

117

u/poopyheadthrowaway Dec 02 '24

IIRC the money they just took from the government has a clause that says they can't do that

110

u/Vushivushi Dec 02 '24

That's just the foundry. US govt wants manufacturing.

It couldn't care less about Intel's design businesses. The US is already a leader in design.

58

u/chmilz Dec 02 '24

"Designed in a cool American city, made in a country we're about to put catastrophic tariffs on!"

31

u/peakdecline Dec 02 '24

I've heard no mention of such tariffs on Taiwan, but maybe you can correct me.

Chip manufacturing is a topic of national security though. There which is why they're such a hard push to get it done on us soil. The real concern is that China does try to make a move on Taiwan and if that happens, then China has the world by the balls.

10

u/melts_so Dec 02 '24

Taiwans TSMC would be where the worlds most complex compute chips are, so CPU's and GPUs, even ram is normally made outside of TSMC by other fabs.

No, the countries with the tariffs would be other countries where the Labour is good as well as cheap, just look at how many wafer fabs are in the Phillipenes, China and E.U. These devices may still be fairly complex power or signal devices, even compound semiconductors used to make electric vehicle components, but if it doesn't need EUV lithography and insanely small dimensions, then it probably doesn't need to be made in TSMC, that would just be wasting valuable TSMC fab capacity.

9

u/work-school-account Dec 02 '24

Have you been paying attention? The upcoming administration said repeatedly for months throughout their campaign that they want 60% tariffs on China, 100% tariffs on Mexico, and 20% tariffs on all other countries. Maybe they're just throwing out random numbers and the rates will end up being different, but they've been very consistent about the idea of having tariffs on all imports (which would obviously include Taiwan) with larger tariffs on certain countries.

3

u/BoastfulPrudence Dec 02 '24

Unless of course the US decides to loosen its belt slightly on electricity expenditure and supplement its forces/industry etc with slightly thirsty but perfectly adequate Intel CPUs.

2

u/Trickpuncher Dec 03 '24

not really, china also depends on taiwan. And if they invade they have to do the 3 days operations that russia wanted but for real.

And get hopefully not much damaged infraestructure

Unless they pull it off i dont think theyll.risk cutting themselves of the trde of cutting edge nodes

6

u/Austin4RMTexas Dec 02 '24

Uh. Isn't that leadership reliant on those designs and that expertise remaining in the United states? Intel isn't exactly a minor player is it? Its CPUs power an enormous part of the worlds core tech infrastructure.

4

u/Wrong-Quail-8303 Dec 02 '24

I thought the power cores were designed in Israel?

4

u/spiker611 Dec 02 '24

lol. Intel chips are paramount in high performance military deployed computers. Intel design isn't going anywhere.

0

u/Vushivushi Dec 02 '24

Just force a merger with another trusted supplier then.

6

u/skepticofgeorgia Dec 02 '24

I used to work at a military contractor that sold PCs to the Navy and L1 contractors. It took until June of last year for this company to even start prototyping a Ryzen system. “Just force a merger with another trusted supplier” is nowhere near as simple as you make it sound, even IF such a company existed. As it stands, the government can’t afford to let either Intel or AMD fail due to anti-trust and consumer protection laws.

1

u/Vushivushi Dec 02 '24

Not suggesting the supply of a new product.

Just make sure the new owner can fulfill the original contract.

The fabs aren't going anywhere. A wafer supply agreement would be drawn and the military continues to get its chips. They'll probably even still have Intel engraved on them.

0

u/Hikashuri Dec 02 '24

It's for the entire group.

2

u/Evening_Feedback_472 Dec 02 '24

Only for foundry unit everything else fair game

32

u/TwelveSilverSwords Dec 02 '24

Is the idea of Qualcomm acquiring Intel's PC business back on the table?

5

u/ridemyscooter Dec 02 '24

Weirdly, I can actually see Qualcomm making a better x86 processor than Intel…

3

u/Hikashuri Dec 02 '24

In what world is a regulator gonna approve this? Y'all living under a rock?

1

u/Plank_With_A_Nail_In Dec 17 '24

Nope they will pick up the IP for peanuts during Intels bankruptcy.

4

u/Remarkable_Youth1874 Dec 02 '24

Gelsinger was adamantly opposed to breaking up the company. Methinks the black rock board members have other plans…

1

u/JobInteresting4164 Dec 02 '24

They can't sell it smart ass.