| I have followed Intel's products closely. While they suck enough that there have passed more than 5 years since I have bought for the last time Intel CPUs (but before that I had spent a lot of money on Intel CPUs and other products), I have not seen any problem that can be attributed directly to Pat Gelsinger. Unlike most companies, Intel publishes relatively detailed roadmaps with years in advance. Since Pat Gelsinger has become CEO, all those roadmaps have been accomplished in time, even if the products have not been as good as they could have been, due to things like low clock frequencies for any new fabrication process at launch (but this is a problem that has plagued Intel for the entirety of the last 10 years) or high intercommunication latencies for the first Intel multi-tile CPUs, like Sapphire Rapids and Arrow Lake, which can be attributed to an unavoidable lack of experience with such designs (because the former Intel management has delayed for too many years the transition to such designs, with jokes about the "glued" CPUs of the competition). According to the roadmaps published years ago, the recent years have been intended as transitional years, with the first really competitive Intel products being launched only in the second half of 2025. Only then it would have been possible to judge correctly whether Pat Gelsinger had done a good job or a bad job as CEO. As outsiders, we do not have enough information about what Pat Gelsinger has done. The roadmaps have been reasonable, the main thing that could be criticized is that there have been too many intermediate steps before reaching desirable products. However, it is likely that Intel could not have sustained financially a more abrupt transition. Even with this slower transition that has included the launch of many intermediate products intended to avoid a collapse of the sales, the financial losses have been high enough that they have been used as an excuse to eject Pat Gelsinger. It seems that Pat Gelsinger did not have the power to do a real cleanup of the Intel managers, especially of those from the fabs. For years many of those managers must have lied continuously both to other Intel divisions and in the public presentations. There is no public information that any of those managers have suffered adequate consequences for their actions. Also, it does not seem that he has succeeded to improve the internal cooperation between various Intel divisions. Some internal competition is good, but withholding information and lack of cooperation is bad. At Intel, too many products appear to have been developed independently by different teams, instead of all teams sharing some common designs as a base for their products. |