[brindlejim]

Intel spent more than a decade under Otellini, Krzanich and Swan. Bean counters. Gelsinger was appointed out of desperation, but the problem runs much deeper. I doubt that culture is gone. It has already cost Intel many opportunities.

[alexey-salmin]

Otellini wasn't an engineer but still he made the historical x86-mac deal, pushed like crazy for x86-android and owned the top500 with xeon phi.

The downfall began with Krzanich who had no goal besides raising the stock price and no strategy other than cutting long-term projects and other costs that got in the way. What a shame.

[selimthegrim]

Krzanich started out as an engineer

[bell-cot]

"Optimize for Wall Street" is a disease to which even the seemingly-best minds can succumb.

[SilverBirch]

>owned the top500 with xeon phi.

This is interesting - because what I heard (within Intel at the time, circa 2015) was Xeon Phi was a disaster. The programming model was bad and they couldn't sell them.

[alexey-salmin]

It definitely had its downsides, but holding TOP1 for 6 lists (3 years straight) was an achievement. Biggest issues weren't in engineering IMO.

GPUs also have a weird programming model and yet here we are. I think in the end what mattered the most was the strategic failure to address the low-end market with Phi. When the right time came everyone did CUDA because everyone already had a GPU -- basically the same reason why x86 won the server market against SPARC decades ago.

In the meanwhile came the 2015 US export ban, then loss of interest by the management right before matrix multiplication stopped being an HPC problem and came into every segment in the form of ML.

Based on what we know now probably the best strategy was to bet everything on Intel Graphics and leverage the widespread of built-in graphics while it was dominated by Intel. From there it was possible to eat Nvidia's lunch in hi-end and HPC too. However in 2010 it wasn't certain at all. No one was talking about AI, the buzzword of the time was "big data" which relied on conventional computing methods. Deep learning revolution didn't happen yet, even GBDTs weren't a thing, ML was about linear regression. MPP architectures were confined to physics simulation and 3d graphics (which is a physics simulation of a sort).

[baq]

Otellini also made the historical decision to pass on the iPhone chip...

[tester756]

>Intel spent more than a decade under Otellini, Krzanich and Swan. Bean counters.

It still doesn't change mistake in your original message.

>Gelsinger was appointed out of desperation, but the problem runs much deeper.

How much "much deeper"? VPs? middle level managers? engineers?

The example goes from the top, so if he can change the culture at the top, it will eventually get deeper.

[jbm]

> as technical and strategic

It seems that this is an AND not an OR.

[tester756]

Point is valid regardless of "AND" or "OR"

He is both - technical and has a vision

[ksec]

>It still doesn't change mistake in your original message.

Precisely. The problem I found on HN is that It is hard to have any meaningful discussion on anything Hardware. Especially when it is mixed with business or economics models.

I was greedy and was hoping Intel could fall closer to $20 in early 2023 before I load up more of their stock. Otherwise I would put more money where my mouth is.

[ksec]

>Gelsinger was appointed out of desperation,

You will need to observe Intel more closely. It was not out of desperation. And Gelsinger is more technical and strategic than you implies.