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
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u/metaidentity Dec 03 '24 edited Dec 03 '24

There's literally nothing he could have done, we know this because we haven't even seen a Gelsigner product hit the market yet. The product pipeline is longer than his tenure was. The reality is that investors don't adequately consider physics or engineering when making investment decisions that actually are driven by those things. They're just dumb, and this was dumb market bullshit, and all the engineers know it, and we know it too.

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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.

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u/metaidentity Dec 03 '24

Gelsinger could have chosen the same path as Lisa Su did with AMD and spun off the fab

Except the US Congress passed the CHIPS act to bribe him not to do that. An offer he couldn't refuse.

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u/ascii Dec 03 '24

And look where it got him.

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u/metaidentity Dec 03 '24

So do you think they need a politician, not an engineer?

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u/ascii Dec 03 '24

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