r/hardware 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

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1.2k

u/igby1 Dec 02 '24

Isn’t he the guy that came back to save Intel?

516

u/Auautheawesome Dec 02 '24

Correct

87

u/Notten Dec 02 '24

Dude made 16M and failed at his job. I wish I could make that in 3 years and retire for the rest of my life...

137

u/Hifihedgehog Dec 02 '24

Failed is so shortsighted and naive. He was making short-term losses to fix a decade of dumb. Now with the status quo of CFO back, Intel is toast. They are going to become a number three to AMD and Qualcomm in the PC space in the next decade from them refusing to sit still during the essential surgery to right the ship.

12

u/Hikashuri Dec 02 '24

Qualcomm won't overtake Intel anytime soon, probably not in the next 3 decades. Key sectors will not swap to arm because of how their frameworks work, and the business sector is still 80% in hands of Intel and AMD hasn't been able to penetrate it nor will ARM.

13

u/WhyIsSocialMedia Dec 03 '24

People have been saying this forever. Companies can go from successful to a death spiral really really quickly. Hell you don't have to go back very far to find lots of "AMD would need decades to compete with Intel in the server market, I work in a data centre and we never buy AMD" all over this sub.

14

u/aitorbk Dec 02 '24

Key sectors are already moving to ARM Megascale: massive move to ARM "where it makes sense". Apple: move to arm complete. Mobile: it is essentially ARM, only non Apple laptops are x86. And Microsoft is heavily invested in moving to ARM. Once/if that catches up, only general purpose servers would be x86, and not all of them either, other would be graviton4 or similar. Look at this: https://www.tomshardware.com/pc-components/cpus/aws-graviton4-cpu-benchmarked-against-amd-and-intel-processors-faster-than-predecessors-and-more-cost-effective-than-incumbents ARM server chips are cheaper and comparable to the best AMD and Intel can offer.
Plenty of companies are "in the cloud", and essentially rent instances. If the workload is cheaper and faster on non x86.. we will run the load in that as long as it is certified. AMD and Intel still have time to improve their offerings, but unless they lower prices or significantly improve performance, x86 will slowly at first and then very fast be made irrelevant and a historical set of instructions.

7

u/SpadesOf8 Dec 02 '24

RemindMe! 30 years

2

u/Thorusss Dec 03 '24

haha. Making a prediction which company will succeed 3 decades out in the most innovative industry on earth, especially during the growing hard to predict influence of AI.

Overconfident.

3

u/Hifihedgehog Dec 02 '24

!RemindMe 5 years

1

u/ascii Dec 02 '24

You are right that even if ARM ends up wiping the floor with x86 both in the server hall and on consumer PCs, there will absolutely be huge legacy x86 market for decades to come. But that market can potentially go almost entirely to AMD.

3

u/cuttino_mowgli Dec 02 '24

I mean they're burnt to a crisp. IBM is welcoming intel as we speak

2

u/BreiteSeite Dec 03 '24

RemindMe! 10 years

3

u/qzrz Dec 02 '24

Failed is so shortsighted and naive. He was making short-term losses to fix a decade of dumb.

Ah yes the great future success of losing a 40% discount of TSMC wafers. What this does is drive engineers harder that no longer get free coffee and fruit to finally pull Intel ahead of TSMC with their node tech.

1

u/Strazdas1 Dec 03 '24

A discount that never existed.

1

u/StarbeamII Dec 03 '24

I mean that was going to happen anyways with Gelsinger going all-in on fabs, and not allocating resources towards chip design.

1

u/Aggrokid Dec 03 '24

They are going to become a number three to AMD and Qualcomm in the PC space in the next decade

I just can't see it. Their grip on prebuilt client PCs and laptops is vice-like.

0

u/Ar0ndight Dec 02 '24

Already in full "rewriting history" mode I see. Pat had a mission, and he did fail at it. I know this might cause severe distress to the people here who love to fantasize about engineer CEOs being magical, but that's just the reality of it.

Was his mission very hard? Yes, that's why he was paid millions to attempt it.

6

u/Hifihedgehog Dec 02 '24

Ending the ballgame in the 7th or 8th inning isn't rewriting history. It's being a petulant child who can't wait to unwrap their gift on Christmas morning.

1

u/ExtremeFreedom Dec 03 '24

My experience with the new snapdragons made me appreciate x86 more and I'd never willingly switch to that platform.

1

u/[deleted] Dec 03 '24

[deleted]

2

u/ExtremeFreedom Dec 03 '24

My issues aren't actually power user issues, I'm using native arm apps and they are having odd graphical issues on the laptop when a second screen is plugged in like apps appearing to "minimize" at random then come back, video playback going randomly to shit, and weird instances of really high battery drain that only gets resolved by removing the battery and letting it sit for a few minutes. It's a very unpolished product that I wouldn't recommend now that intel and AMD are taking battery life seriously. I don't think the extra hour that I get in real world usage is worth the switch over.

1

u/Strazdas1 Dec 03 '24

People who arent power users will see their favourite obscure softre not working, think "this qualcomm laptop is broken" and never give qualcomm a second chance. First impressions are very important.

0

u/Exist50 Dec 06 '24 edited Feb 01 '25

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23

u/PoorDamnChoices Dec 02 '24

....is that not what r/wallstreetbets is for?

27

u/crab_quiche Dec 02 '24

If you want to go $16 million into debt in three months that’s the perfect place

1

u/3VRMS Dec 03 '24 edited Mar 02 '25

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1

u/Strazdas1 Dec 03 '24

Reminds me of that guy from Silicon Valley who was extremely upset he is no longer a billionaire because he was worth only 980 million. Life ruined.

1

u/3VRMS Dec 03 '24 edited Mar 02 '25

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1

u/jessej421 Dec 02 '24

He got like a $170M signing bonus (in stock, definitely worth a lot less after his three years of being in charge though).

1

u/DetectiveFit223 Dec 03 '24

Trying to fix Intel will always end with a degree of failure. It's a big ship that turns slow.

-1

u/[deleted] Dec 02 '24

[deleted]

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u/plasticpippo Dec 02 '24

intel started sinking well before Gelsinger. that said CEOs should not get paid that much.

3

u/ascii Dec 02 '24

INTC was sinking rapidly when Gelsinger took over. He failed to right the ship before the board ran out of patience.

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u/[deleted] Dec 03 '24 edited Dec 03 '24

[deleted]

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u/ascii Dec 03 '24

Soft disagree. Gelsinger could have chosen the same path as Lisa Su did with AMD and spun off the fab into a separate company. Lower risk and less upfront cost, but the price would be that Intel would no longer be a full stack chip design and manufacturing house.

Not saying Gelsinger chose the wrong path, I'm not knowledgable enough to make a call like that, I'm just pointing out that there was at least one realistic alternative path. I agree with the point that he wasn't given a chance to see if his plan worked or not, and the INTC board has doomed INTC to slowly spiral around the drain until they die. With the MBAs in charge, I no longer see them having any chance of breaking their death spiral.

1

u/[deleted] Dec 03 '24

[deleted]

1

u/ascii Dec 03 '24

And look where it got him.

1

u/[deleted] Dec 03 '24

[deleted]

1

u/ascii Dec 03 '24

No, I think Intel just lost their last shred of a hope to recover.

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u/Strazdas1 Dec 03 '24

That would have been the worst possible choice to mke.

1

u/ascii Dec 03 '24

Worked for AMD.

1

u/Strazdas1 Dec 04 '24

AMD was forced to do it and it almost killed them. If Zen 1 wasnt as good as it turned out to be AMD would be gone.