Intel CEO blames his predecessors for declining competitive position

That's what you get for putting MBAs as CEO, Intel. Those bean-counting MBAs are not interested in innovations, only money.

 

Well said!

 

Blame it on the bloke who's left, I've done that many a time.

 

This reminds me of the classic Ulysses 31 series episode where Sisyphus had the chance to escape with Ulysses but chose to betray him instead and ended up stuck for eternity - and the Gods of Olympus said "too late Sisyphus, too late"

 

^^
If MS had not invested $150M in basically bankrupt Apple, someone would be making a video like that about him.
But MS did just that, so Jobs gets to be a genius. And then drinks pineapple juice and puts lemon on his eyes to fight cancer.

 

You do remember that Apple's darkest times where when he was kicked out of the company.
And it only started to become the giant it is today, after he got back.
He was far from being perfect, but he was a great tech sales man.

 

Intel will be the first on 3nm euv ? Bold claims after the 10nm delays for almost half a decade .... Will see though , he is not wrong thought such companies need an engineer in the wheel!

 

I remember a gloom even when he came back. I am just saying that far more randomness and chaos is involved than what's usually recognized.

 

Who is he gonna blame if he fails with Alder Lake? Guy seems whiny and his trash talk is doing no good.

 

I don´t agree with this ideas that CEOs have to be engineers and that business guys are automatically bad because they only care about money, things are not that simple.

The CEO is the leader and the most visible part of a small multidisciplinary group/team tasked with the job of guiding a company towards certains goals, meaning that no matter the background of the CEO, he´s going to need finance, marketing engineers and others in his group to succeed. And a good CEO listens to advice and doesn´t decide important stuff alone, or it shouldn´t.

Past CEOs failed for many reasons but not being engineers is the least important of them.

Also, starting to blame is predecessors is not a good sign...

So much truth in this sentence, luck, chance, faith, randomness or whatever plays such a big part in companies success or failure and nobody wants to recognise this fact instead thinking that some guys are super genius that single handedly turned their ideas into giant corporations...

Picking up the example of Apple and Microsoft, if it wasn´t for the stupidity/naivity of the guys from Xerox, those two companies could/would probably be a small footnote in history...

And there are so many examples like this.

 

So far, I like Gelsinger. A little too ambitious, but that's not necessarily a bad thing since his ambitions are much more vague (compared to the ambitions of someone like Elon Musk).
That being said, even if Intel can do better than Apple (I highly doubt that; Intel can only do better on paper, but not in reality), there's no chance Apple will come back to them. Apple would have had a much easier time switching to AMD (remember, AMD will do contracts for custom chips, where a lot of Apple's instruction sets could have been implemented) when AMD was the better overall choice for at least 3 years, yet, that didn't happen either.

Also, I'd say Gelsinger was right to criticize his predecessors, as Intel very obviously prioritized shareholders over technology.

 

I think that ship has sailed for both Intel and AMD now that Apple has proven that it can make CPUs as good or even better than them.

No point into going back to using their parts with maybe the exception of their workstations rigs.

As for Gelsinger critics, he may have some reason but i prefer actions over "trash talk"...

 

Exactly, and since ARM has some inherent disadvantages to x86, Apple doesn't want their own product being compared to Intel's, especially out of context. So, it's just not going to happen, especially if AMD's 6000/7000 series (whichever it will be called) outperforms Alder Lake.
As for workstations, Apple is already increasing core counts. It hasn't even been a full year since the M1 was released, and with chip shortages, it's going to take some time for Apple to really expand. They can continue with Intel a little while longer for high-end workstations if necessary.

I agree, but keep in mind that he acknowledges his competition's successes, even when unprompted. That's important, because although he's a bit cocky, there's also a sense of humility in that he points out Intel is under-performing. It all comes down to whether Gelsinger pushes more money into R&D and doesn't just make a bunch of empty promises like Krzanich.

 

i agree with a lot of what you have to say but not all.

it is extremely important for engineering companies to have engineers as the C.E.O.
and not just Intel is the poster child for that but Boeing also.

it takes an engineer to understand engineering. other positions in the companies can be ably run by MBA's (i.e. marketing, financials, etc...) but they barely understand the mission and they definitely will interfere with a cost based analysis when a performance based analysis is called for.

i know this because my job was to translate engineering into "English" for one of the "big three" Japanese electronics manufacturers for 30 years.

 

It seems like media is doing far more of that then he himself. None of the quotes sound overly like "blaming", just achknowledging that the previous direction was not ideal, and how he plans to steer the company forwards.

 

He's not going to get Apple back--he's trying to plant the seed of possibly another CPU transition for Apple--the king of CPU transitions... Anyone considering an Apple Mac purchase should certainly think about that--I know I would. But Apple will stick with its own custom ARM CPUs for awhile, I think. Intel is grossly unreliable--if not for Ryzen it's doubtful Intel would have anything new to show at all and Gelsinger would be elsewhere. I agree with Gelsinger about that.

 

Remember intel is also willing to make chips on demand for other companies, if they have the tech they could make Apple's own silicone for them and get paid for doing that.