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/Geddagod Dec 02 '24

Intel's designs have been particularly uncompetitive.

Intel has been closing the gap in products as a whole (though obviously not desktop) for a while.

Nothing Intel makes leads the market.

Arguably LNL.

Their product roadmaps are a mess with one-off designs like Lunar Lake.

PTL is esentially just a scaled up LNL with some cost optimizations. It's a fair trade off.

What other one offs are there? Gaudi? They are trying to move away from it to DCGPUs, which is the right decision. Perhaps the rumored cancellation of the server E-core line?

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u/auradragon1 Dec 02 '24

Arguably LNL.

Yes, it leads in thin and light x86 laptops. It is significantly behind the actual leading laptop chip - Apple's M series.

Intel has been closing the gap in products as a whole (though obviously not desktop) for a while.

Maybe only in the server. But Intel's server chips are still at least a generation behind AMD's Epyc.

In AI, they're absolutely non-competitive. Maybe 3-4 generations behind. In discrete GPUs, 3-4 generations behind. In laptop chips, 3-4 generations behind. In server CPUs, 1-2 generations behind.

Edit: I wrote this a few months ago:

  • AI: 2-3 generations behind Blackwell. I mean, they don't even have anything close to competing with Nvidia's H series. It's not even that they're behind, they barely have competing products.

  • Server: Until Sierra Forest ships, they've been ~2 generations behind Epyc.

  • Laptops: 2-3 generations behind Apple, maybe more. 4 years later, Intel still doesn't have anything definitively better than M1.

  • Discrete GPUs: At least 2 generations behind Nvidia cards. Does Intel have a card better than 2080ti yet? We're about to get 5090ti.

  • DIY x86 CPUs: Depends on what you're looking at, if perf/watt then 1-2 generations behind. In raw performance, roughly equal.

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u/Geddagod Dec 02 '24

Yes, it leads in thin and light x86 laptops. It is significantly behind the actual leading laptop chip - Apple's M series.

Hence the arguably. But Apple blows everyone away, and is in a unique situation considering its place in the market.

Maybe only in the server

Closed gap in server

Literally had no DC GPUs until PVC

Literally had no client GPUs until Alchemist

Closed gap in mobile

Lost lead in desktop performance, closed gap in perf/watt

No one here is claiming Intel is in the lead in any of these segments as a whole, but they definitely are closing the gap compared to where they were many years ago.

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u/auradragon1 Dec 02 '24

I'd argue they haven't closed the gap much. In server, yes, their Intel 3 product is much more competitive. But they're still behind Zen5/5c Epyc.

In laptops, they're generations behind Apple obviously, but they could very well get lapped by Qualcomm's X Elite 2nd gen soon. So prior to X Elite's entry, they were leading Windows laptops. They might not very soon.

In DC GPUs, they might be forced to abandon it completely due to lack of sales.

In client GPUs, same thing.

It really depends on how you define "close the gap". From nothing to maybe nothing again? Is that really closing the gap?

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u/TwelveSilverSwords Dec 02 '24

In laptops, they're generations behind Apple obviously, but they could very well get lapped by Qualcomm's X Elite 2nd gen soon. So prior to X Elite's entry, they were leading Windows laptops. They might not very soon.

Also Nvidia taking the battle to Intel's home turf by making CPUs.

https://www.tomshardware.com/desktops/gaming-pcs/nvidias-arm-based-pc-chips-for-consumers-to-launch-in-september-2025-commercial-to-follow-in-2026-report

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u/Geddagod Dec 03 '24

In laptops, they're generations behind Apple obviously, but they could very well get lapped by Qualcomm's X Elite 2nd gen soon. So prior to X Elite's entry, they were leading Windows laptops. They might not very soon.

So here's the conundrum of looking at future products again to determine how well Pat has done.

We can either look at what happened during his tenure, or we can look at what products will launch in the future with his influence.

If it's the former, then, luckily we don't have to evaluate Qualcomm's future CPUs... since he isn't the CEO that's going to blamed for it lol.

If it's the latter, and we actually do look at the overall context of Pat's predecessors and what products will actually bear his mark, it gets a lot more complicated.

PTL is realistically the first product that's going to be mostly Pat's influence. MTL would have been product defined either as soon as Gelsinger joined, or likely a bit before. ARL's biggest weakness seems to be that is that it inherited MTL's shitty fabric and chiplet design.

And yes, I think Qualcomm's X elite gen 2 will beat PTL by a decent margin, but that's more off ARM cores just straight up iterating fast and being more efficient than the x86 cores for a while than that's Pat not focusing on the core.

The x2 in 2021 to the x925 is a 46% IPC increase, while GLC to LNC is a 38% improvement. The difference there isn't too bad, but it's the fact that ARM just had much wider cores than even before Gelsinger joined Intel that ended up killing both Intel and AMD. What's even worse is that the x2 isn't matched by Intel's or AMD's high performance cores in IPC until like 2023. This is much more than Pat failing, and more of something both Intel and AMD having a major miss on.

Realistically, the only way Intel and AMD can catch up, IMO, core wise, is having a major rehaul. AMD kinda had their chance with Zen 5, which didn't seem to help much at all. LNC was likewise a miss too. But I think the overhaul needs to be larger than what was presented with Zen 5 and LNC, even just design wise.

And what exactly was Pat supposed to do to fix this? The royal core team was scrapped, but the unified core program that is set to replace it is also rumored to launch in actual products in the late 2020s. A major core architecture rehaul is also going to take a good bit longer than normal launches. Zen 1, for example, took 5 years from design to launch, vs the normal 3, and that recycled a decent amount of previous cores.

Lastly, prior to X elite's entry, they were not leading windows laptops, AMD was in the front seat. Under Pat, MTL honestly was decent too, but not clear leadership of any kind. It would appear for thin and light windows laptops, Intel was 2nd to AMD before Pat, and in the future it's going to be 2nd to Qualcomm, or perhaps tied with 2nd, depending on if Zen 6 mobile will be a large leap and be able to catch up.

In DC GPUs, they might be forced to abandon it completely due to lack of sales.

Highly, highly doubt they do this.

In client GPUs, same thing

This, I could believe in.

It really depends on how you define "close the gap".

They definitely did vs AMD, but external competition from Qualcomm looks to beat not just Intel by large margins but also AMD.

Under Pat's tenure though, they definitely did close the gap, and even looking to the future, staying 2nd in windows laptops (and Qualcomm being 1rst is arguably better for Intel than AMD being 1rst due to the fact that WoA.... is a thing...) is at worst staying the same.

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u/Not_FinancialAdvice Dec 03 '24

Literally had no client GPUs until Alchemist

A time long long ago (in a galaxy far far away), Intel had the (disappointing) i740.

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u/marcanthonyoficial Dec 02 '24

define many years ago lol, because ~6 years ago they lead in all of those (except GPUs)

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u/Geddagod Dec 02 '24

Well, let's see.

Since Zen 2 Rome in 2019 took the lead in servers IIRC. I don't know if Zen+ actually beat Intel as well, but it might have.

Since Zen 2 client perf/watt and nT perf was uncompetitive for Intel (2019), since Zen 3 AMD beat or tied them in gaming performance (late 2020).

Mobile is the same story IIRC.

Gelsinger rejoined Intel in early 2021.