Intel ousts its chief engineer, shakes up technical group after delays

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-intel-reorganization/intel-ousts-its-chief-engineer-shakes-up-technical-group-after-delays-idUSKCN24S2O6

by myrandomcomment • 6 years ago

559 499 6 years ago

reuters.com

ghostcluster5• 6 years ago

Ann Kelleher, a 24-year Intel veteran, will lead development of 7-nanometer and 5-nanometer chip technology processes. Last week, the company had said the smaller, faster 7-nanometer chipmaking technology was six months behind schedule and it would have to rely more on outside chipmakers to keep its products competitive.

I hope Intel keeps its US-based fabs and continues to upgrade them. It would be a mistake to cede this capacity to outsourcing like so much of our other manufacturing capacity. Interestingly, it seems the US is almost unique in our mass deindustrialization. Japan, Germany and South Korea have avoided this.

criddell• 6 years ago

Another article I just read says Intel is talking to TSMC. I think they are trying to get out of manufacturing.

segfaultbuserr2• 6 years ago

While I'm not a fan of Intel's monopolistic position on x86, but if Intel really gets rid of manufacturing, it's going to be another accelerator of consolidation in the semiconductor industry. I see it as a threat and I hope it will not happen. The timeline which Intel's in-house fabs survive, is a better timeline.

DC-3• 6 years ago

It is going to be a little bit geopolitically terrifying if Taiwan/TSMC monopolizes cutting edge chip fab.

baybal25• 6 years ago

Yes, I myself heard that Intel CEO been frequenting visits to Hsinchu last year.

There is only one company out there worth visiting in person for a man of his calibre.

jhallenworld2• 6 years ago

Maybe for Altera FPGAs? I don't really understand the scale Intel needs and whether TSMC offers enough for their micros.

rehitman• 6 years ago

half of chip making is in manufacturing it. If they out source it, not much would be left.

hardikgupta• 6 years ago

This is clearly false. None of Nvidia, AMD, or Qualcomm manufacture their own chips. These companies are valuable despite not having in-house manufactures, perhaps because of it.

ksec3• 6 years ago

They dont have to outsource their Core Asset. If Intel ships 250M CPU annually there are also 250M Chipset going alongside with it. Those can go to TSMC or Samsung. ( Or in a turn of an event, Global Foundry )

jjcon3• 6 years ago

Interestingly, it seems the US is almost unique in our mass deindustrialization

The US manufacturing share of real GDP has been pretty much unchanged since the 40s - ie it’s growth has kept up with the rest of the economy.

https://www.stlouisfed.org/~/media/Blog/2017/April/BlogImage...

chrisjarvis2• 6 years ago

this image contradicts everything I've maybe ever heard about "American manufacturing"'s decline. Not saying the image is wrong, it's just impressive how much one segment of industry has been politicized.

ghostcluster5• 6 years ago

Tell that to the industrial midwest. If you look at statistics of # factories in the US over time, in every size category, the number of factories is going down.

Chip manufacturing is a special case as well. China is using massive state spending to build a competitive infrastructure in its country. Intel is the only competetive industrial chip fabrication presence in the US and should receive a similar focus from our leadership if we don't want to fully hollow-out the US' production capacity.

jbay8084• 6 years ago

Wasn't this investigated and found to be a misleading statistic?

For example:

https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2018-03-12/shares...

The graph in this article, from BEA data, shows that when you don't apply inflation tricks, manufacturing has dropped from 28% in the 50s to 12% today. And they're still factoring in adjustments due to the "increase in quality of computers", ie, one computer today is worth some large number of 1980s computers.

wokwokwok• 6 years ago

People love quoting this, but you’re just cherry picking.

This has quite thoroughly been criticised in the past, repeatedly, for the way the data is adjusted.

tesseract• 6 years ago

"Manufacturing" as a business classification sometimes seems to include companies that are in the business of developing and selling manufactured products but don't own or operate any factories themselves and outsource the actual, well, manufacturing. In the semiconductor industry people talk about "fabless" companies as a category but there's not really an analogous shorthand for, say, a factory-less soap manufacturer.

With that said, I wish stats like that were a little more clear about whether they mean that broader definition of the manufacturing industry, or if it is strictly the economic output of actual factories.

nabla93• 6 years ago

it seems the US is almost unique in our mass deindustrialization. Japan, Germany and South Korea have avoided this.

This is very common misconception. The US has not deindustrialized other sectors have grown faster. US is the second largest country by industrial output. Third largest if you count EU as comparable unit.

Industrial era is over in all advanced economies. We live in post-industrial societies.

ghostcluster5• 6 years ago

It's not in China, Germany, Japan, or South Korea. They still have a huge manufcaturing presence. Samsung builds its products in South Korea. Everything has to get manufactured somewhere and, in my view, the US has made a mistake by outsourcing this capacity more than other countries.

As I said elsewhere in the thread, chip manufacturing is a special category as well, and Intel has the only US-based fabrication that is competitive with the state of the art.

It should be as important to protect that capacity as other industrial sectors, like Boeing.

gowld2• 6 years ago

It's not great to be #2 when #1 is run on a commitment to oppose human rights.

It's "deindustrialization" when US has slid down from "#1 by far" to "#3".

StillBored2• 6 years ago

And it would be even more massive if we actually made anything. In fact if it weren't shrinking by volume it might be growing faster than those other sectors considering how much of the economy is "consumer" driven.

Go to the mall/shopping center, and try to find something made in the US that isn't a bulk chemical product, or something so low value in relation to its weight that its still made in the US (paper). If you go back ~30 years it was the complete opposite. If you found something manufactured overseas it was unusual. So in just a couple decades we went from pretty much 100% of consumer electronics, clothing, furniture, general home appliances, cookware, toys, etc made in the US to a tiny fraction. Even in areas where we still manufacture things, its rare that 100% of the products in a particular segment are produced here. Sure, you can buy American made tires, AC units, etc, but most of the volume isn't made here. But even in the case of AC units its frequently assembled of foreign made compressors/etc where the 4 bolts, two pipes and 4 wires that need to be connected (by $15/hour labor in basically warehouses) get more value add than the actual hi tech parts made in high capex factories. All for the purposes of computing "made in America".

misanthropian004• 6 years ago

China is not post-industrial and without their factories US businesses would have no products to sell. China can change its mind about cooperating or drastically raise prices any time they want. The US has put itself in a very precarious position by dumping all manufacturing. Manufacturing is what adds real value to an economy. Without something to sell it's turtles all the way down. OTOH US labor is not competitive and that is a very real problem. Americans have sort of become too rich for their own good. At some point every single person has to start their own business because being an employee will not pay enough to keep up with the cost of living.

vkou• 6 years ago

I hope Intel keeps its US-based fabs and continues to upgrade them. It would be a mistake to cede this capacity to outsourcing like so much of our other manufacturing capacity.

Intel is a publicly traded internationally-owned corporation, with no obligations to the long-term welfare of the United States.

If you'd like a chip manufacturer to make decisions based on what is good for the US, I would recommend bribing it, nationalizing it, or starting a government-backed competitor.

Any of those would be more effective at accomplishing this than hope and prayers. The free market itself is not necessarilly going to deliver the results you wish for, just because you wish for them.

chottocharaii• 6 years ago

Gee save us the free market lecture friend. What he said doesn’t exclude any of the options you’ve brought up.

Also I note you’ve raised carrot strategies when stick strategies exist also.

stass• 6 years ago

You are correct about having no obligations, but as a company that is based in US and employs a large US-based workforce it benefits a lot from US itself being successful.

hammock• 6 years ago

Interestingly, it seems the US is almost unique in our mass deindustrialization. Japan, Germany and South Korea have avoided this.

Related to the dollar being global reserve currency, which encourages a trade deficit. The US has a deficit equal to the next 15 biggest deficits combined. On the other hand, Germany, Japan and South Korea are top 5 trade surpluses.

jake_morrison• 6 years ago

This deindustrialization was driven by Wall Street. The important metric is return on invested capital.

Manufacturing companies use a lot of capital for their factories. Shut down the factory and outsource to China, and you have the same sales with a lot less capital, so the stock goes up. Great success.

Maybe repeat by having your suppliers do more and more of the engineering. At a certain point, you are just a brand, with no actual engineering capability.

You can't compete with the people who actually know how to make the things. Then you die. See Hewlett Packard.

The US taxing companies on global income at high rates also has an effect. Say you have 50% of your sales outside the US. You pay taxes in the country where you sell the product. Then you have profits overseas. If you bring that cash back to the US, you pay the difference between the corporate rate in country X and the US, which can be a lot, say 15%. Might as well take that money and use it to pay for manufacturing at e.g. Foxconn. So it's 15% better to invest in manufacturing capacity outside the US.

The poor health care system in the US drives up costs as well, twice what it is in other industrialized countries for worse outcome. Same for cost of housing because zoning laws won't allow building. Google was allowed to build offices in Mountain View but not residential property for the employees to live in. So everyone has to commute from somewhere else, and cost of rent is driven by how much misery you can handle.

Failures in government policy make US workers much more expensive without creating any more value or improving the quality of life for the employees.

chadcmulligan5• 6 years ago

Maybe repeat by having your suppliers do more and more of the engineering. At a certain point, you are just a brand, with no actual engineering capability.

Don't they teach this in business school? It just seems incredibly obvious to anyone with an engineering background.

kiba• 6 years ago

Reminds me of the old joke about the ideal company is having one person to turn on a factory and then place a logo on it, while engineering and everything else is outsourced.

tanilama2• 6 years ago

Might be controversial to say, but why manufacturing cost is so high in US they making outsourcing so profitable?

A Taiwanese silicon engineer salary, even the top band is probably only higher than the entry level of a web developer in SF.

Something is definitely wrong

hinkley• 6 years ago

This is how we lost a lot of redundancy in the rail system too. Why maintain three routes or two tracks per route when you can boost your gains for a small chance of going out of business?

arcticbull3• 6 years ago

Deindustrialization is great, most industrial jobs are the worst. To the extent other countries want to take them on, it puts America at a huge advantage. Once robotization and full automation happen, there will be no reason to build in one place over another, and all the assembly work will return (as not having to expend energy moving final products from their assembly location to their final destinations will represent an advantage).

The jobs never will though, nor do we actually want them to. This is why we need UBI.

Seriously, why would we want, in the future, to pay people to smack metal with a hammer? Let's get the jobs elsewhere ASAP, unless you can tell me with a straight face the future will involve more humans in the manufacture of goods -- in which case we should be getting a head start. Nobody will say that though because it's crazy.

Trying to add humans back to the manufacturing process, who don't need to be there, amounts to a regressive make-work project we're engaging in, intentionally adding inefficiency, instead of actually changing society and positioning ourselves for the inescapable future of humanity. In my opinion, America is squandering a huge lead by glamorizing crap jobs nobody actually needs to do, let alone wants. Like coal mining.

What's next, a return to whale oil?

zelly• 6 years ago

You can't compete with the people who actually know how to make the things. Then you die. See Hewlett Packard.

Innovation happens on the factory floor. Pretty soon the countries we outsourced to will come up with better designs too. The U.S. thesis for outsourcing is that the manufacturing countries are filled with braindead automatons who can't compete with our "Designed in California". That may have been true in the 20th century when the U.S. brain drained all the top talent, but now other nations are in a position to pay their engineers more than U.S. companies. The "Designed in California" cope can only last so long.

blueblisters• 6 years ago

Unless you're vertically integrated, manufacturing is incredibly difficult to make money from. The traditional South Asian/East Asian medium sized manufacturer is run by people who put in outsized efforts to the returns. The margins are razor thin in most units, and the competition cut-throat. The units simply won't make money if they're delegated to MBA types, because the true cost of managing the unit is much much higher.

It's actually the perfect small/medium business endeavor in developing countries because of the labor cost arbitrage and economic opportunity. But a typical college educated American entrepreneur will not find it appealing, compared to starting a tech business or running a services business.

lenkite2• 6 years ago

The corporate tax rate was lowered from 35% to 21% by the Trump administration to make it in line with the EU. (Though some EU nations have a corporate tax rates as low as 9-15%)

Do companies have any excuse now regarding using taxation as an excuse to move manufacturing outside the US ?

simonh2• 6 years ago

On the other hand those employees are a lot easier to fire at extremely short notice and virtually no cost than any other developed country, so there's that.

mandeepj• 6 years ago

You can't compete with the people who actually know how to make the things. Then you die. See Hewlett Packard.

Not if you are Apple

quotemstr3• 6 years ago

Yes. Intel's failure demonstrates that the US no longer knows how to make chips as good as those of our geopolitical rivals. We're kept safe in large part by our technological edge. If we start falling behind in technology, it's not just a bad decade for Intel, but a hole in national security.

Symmetry2• 6 years ago

Taiwan and South Korea are hardly our geopolitical rivals.

whazor• 6 years ago

But running a fab is a huge cost and liability while all the competition is outsourcing to TSMC. Because the process is so difficult, I think it makes sense to only have fabs that work for multiple companies. I do think US chip companies (Intel, AMD, Nvidia) and government should get together and start a fab by themselves.

beaunative5• 6 years ago

The reason market challengers outsource to TSMC is because they don't have enough revenue to support their own fab line, with Intel taking majority of the revenue. The precise reason Intel kept their own fab is because it's the makret leader that wants to keep their competitive edge, that is under the assumption their own fab is more advance, and for their use only. However, now that TSMC as a fab somehow got more advanced. It meant Intel's in-house fab has failed in that mission. That doesn't mean Intel's challenger's gonna hand their production to Intel's fab. Intel obviously won't just turn over their technology for their competitors to use either. It's quite impossible and unconventional to do.

qserasera• 6 years ago

We really, really, really NEED US based fabs.

US is almost unique in our mass deindustrialization. Japan, Germany and South Korea have avoided this.

yup, I wouldn't necessarily include SK in that list but I'm very displeased at our deindustrialization process. Most/all of it does not make sense outside a tenuous abstract global finance system.

We are losing knowledge and control every time and every day factories are allowed to leave the country.

beaunative5• 6 years ago

There is of little significance advocating a company to do that. Unless it's regulated and legislated. Any company who willingly gave up such advantange in cost would be a fool and lost its market due to such policies unless that company has other unique advantange to keep their market position. People like to talk about how they love "locally-sourced products" until they realized they had to pay double or triple.

oblio• 6 years ago

Interestingly, it seems the US is almost unique in our mass deindustrialization.

The UK, Belgium did the same. The whole Communist Bloc also did it (for different reasons).

dgellow• 6 years ago

France too.

burntoutfire4• 6 years ago

it seems the US is almost unique in our mass deindustrialization. Japan, Germany and South Korea have avoided this.

Entire Central Europe (Poland, Slovakia, Hungary etc.) is filled with German manufacturing plants. The Germans have done plenty of deindustrialization themselves.

barry-cotter6• 6 years ago

47% of German GDP is manufacturing. Hardly deindustrialisation.

https://markets.businessinsider.com/news/stocks/german-econo...

numlock86• 6 years ago

make a lot of short term profit (cut expenses)
invest into long term stability

Well, you have to choose one.

gmtx725• 6 years ago

Interestingly, it seems the US is almost unique in our mass deindustrialization

The UK has vast swathes of poverty in the deindustrialised north of England and other areas. Former mining and heavy industry towns that even today almost 40 years on from deindustrialisation are dominated by insecure, unskilled work and unemployment

noir_lord• 6 years ago

Not that unique.

UK did it as well, we let Arm be sold to foreign investors - I wonder if the French or German government would have allowed that sale.

gspr2• 6 years ago

Arm is hardly a company that manufactures anything. An impressive tech company for sure, but I don't understand how the foreign takeover of a company that licenses processor designs is an example of loss of British manufacturing.

knubie• 6 years ago

Interestingly, it seems the US is almost unique in our mass deindustrialization. Japan, Germany and South Korea have avoided this.

Those countries also have much higher trade barriers. The US is almost unique in how few trade trade restrictions they (used to) have.

Barrin92• 6 years ago

Those countries also have much higher trade barriers.

This isn't true. Here's a comparison of the EU, several individual European countries, Japan and the US[1], and there isn't much difference tariffs or trade barriers.

Global trade-barriers have been reduced to virtually nothing among developed economies, the US isn't unique at all. This is a stale old meme that seems to be popular in the US because it frames the US as a sort of victim of global trade which is a popular political narrative but not evidence backed.

The real difference is in the overfinancialised, laissez-faire capitalism of the anglosphere (the UK suffers from the same issue of deindustrialisation, Australia as well), comopared to the industrial policy and state/big business dominated capitalism of Japan, Germany, France and so on.

[1]https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/brexit/2017/10/24/the-eu-isnt-protec...

curiousllama2• 6 years ago

The US hasn't deindustrialized at all. Industrial production has increased pretty consistently as far back as I can find data.

What has increased in pace, though, is capacity per person, so manufacturing _jobs_ have decreased. It's less of a geopolitical issue and more of a domestic employment issue.

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/INDPRO

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/CAPB50001SQ

jjoonathan3• 6 years ago

Ironically, those numbers were cooked up by counting Intel as manufacturing and over-weighting its success with a hedonic multiplier:

https://qz.com/1269172/the-epic-mistake-about-manufacturing-...

chkaloon• 6 years ago

Just spent 3 months in Hillsboro, Oregon, and Intel construction work there is full speed ahead it seems. Of course that could change pretty quickly, but right now it sure looks like they intend to keep fabs going in the US.

Uhhrrr• 6 years ago

Why does Renduchintala's head roll and not Swan's?

metalliqaz3• 6 years ago

We'll never know, but I imagine strategic positioning in the blame game is very important at the upper rungs of a company like Intel.

exmadscientist• 6 years ago

Reliable sources from within Intel have long indicated that you don't have to imagine :)

The biggest question I have about this news is how much of it is really Murthy's fault, and how much of it is an excuse for Swan to get rid of his biggest rival at the company? It could easily go either way. The previous succession battle can't have left a strong executive team behind... but what else is new for Intel?

emmelaich• 6 years ago

Complete speculation but perhaps Renduchintala wasn't providing the full accurate info to Swan.

KSS42• 6 years ago

Swan has only been CEO for 18 months. Renduchintala has been charge of technology group including fabs for 5 years.

molszanski4• 6 years ago

If you don’t know the motives, judge by the results. It seems that Intel is directed by mba and accounting people.

dm3192• 6 years ago

| If you don’t know the motives, judge by the results.

I like this phrase - can you expand on what it means?

UncleOxidant3• 6 years ago

Swan should be moved back to the CFO position because that's really what he is.

nodesocket2• 6 years ago

It's time for Swan to go back to bean counting and MBA activities and bring in a technical CEO who can push innovation like Lisa Su is doing at AMD. With that said, I am very much considering taking a stock position in Intel. It's very cheap, very solid divvy (2.6%), and eventually will come back.

person_of_color• 6 years ago

What possible evidence do you have for it coming back?

It could be start of a Hertz-like death spiral for all you know.

molszanski4• 6 years ago

Normally I would do the same. But my spidey sense tells me that we might be looking at a slow sunset of x86.

AmVess• 6 years ago

Murthy drove off a lot of talent in his bid to become CEO.

metalliqaz3• 6 years ago

Intel getting beat by both AMD and TSMC. I'm not surprised a Qualcomm guy would be at the helm of that listing ship.

ghostcluster5• 6 years ago

AMD uses TSMC for manufacturing.

reducesuffering• 6 years ago

GP probably meant AMD is beating them on CPU design and TSMC at fab.

paulpan2• 6 years ago

Expected outcome for the delays in 10nm and now the 7nm fabrication nodes...

What I find surprising is:

1. This former chief engineer was originally poached from Qualcomm back in 2016. Qualcomm was (and remains) not comparable to Intel for market and silicon development, so why was this hire made and picked to run the entire division?

2. The original group, Technology, Systems Architecture and Client Group (TSAC) is monolithic. For as a critical item as fabrication node development, that seems counter-intuitive.

Bud3• 6 years ago

Qualcomm was and still is kicking Intel's ass at making modem chips, and I'd imagine that's why this hire was made. At that time, Apple was having Intel attempt to build modem chips for iPhones so that Apple could have an option other than Qualcomm. That didn't pan out.

scarface744• 6 years ago

We don’t know if it is going to pan out or not. Apple bought Intel’s modem business.

paulpan2• 6 years ago

I don't disagree that Intel failed to make competitive modem chips but that's not their proverbial bread and butter.

Instead it was making x86 chips that, while Qualcomm's Snapdragon lineup held a virtual monopoly in mobile space, it's a very much apples and oranges comparison - thermal envelopes, performance targets, size, use cases, etc.

In hindsight perhaps it's unsurprising this hire didn't pan out and unfortunately it may have torpedoed Intel's short term competitiveness.

flywheel• 6 years ago

Apple was having Intel attempt to build modem chips for iPhones so that Apple could have an option other than Qualcomm. That didn't pan out.

It didn't pan out? Well Apple buying Intel's modem chip business seems like the opposite of it not panning out, at least for Apple.

https://www.theverge.com/2019/7/25/8909671/apple-intel-5g-sm...

ngneer• 6 years ago

Not sure kicking butt is the right description. See Intel amicus brief describing how Qualcomm applied their No License No Chips NLNC policy, to shift profits to royalties such that Intel and others could not compete on price without selling at a loss.

https://blogs.intel.com/policy/files/2019/11/Intel-Amicus-Br...

lumberingjack2• 6 years ago

It did'nt pan out to the tune of 12k people losing their jobs at intel

spydum• 6 years ago

Wonder if this has anything to do with Jim Keller also leaving about a month ago?

https://www.anandtech.com/show/15846/jim-keller-resigns-from...

ksec3• 6 years ago

Thinking of the same thing. Really wonder what sort of politics and power play is happening behind the scene. I thought Jim Keller lost when he was obviously pushing for using TSMC.

pushkar29112• 6 years ago

This YT video covers this issue. Lot of politics and power struggles in Intel. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1nsX9nUFIBc

shaklee3• 6 years ago

To be fair, Keller never stays anywhere long

saberience• 6 years ago

Two years is his shortest tenure, not enough time to make a massive difference to a company as big as Intel.

piva002• 6 years ago

But he's almost never left without making an impact where he worked at, no matter how short of a sting: DEC (21164/21264) -> AMD (K7/K8) -> SiByte/Broadcom -> P.A. Semi (bought by Apple, A4/A5) -> AMD (Ryzen) -> Tesla (not sure about his impact) -> Intel (no visible impact so far).

Also, from those only his first stint at AMD can be considered "not staying long", most of the other positions were held for some years.

yvdriess2• 6 years ago

So far everything points to him really taking time off to take care of family.

kilo_bravo_32• 6 years ago

If it was just a firing I would be hopeful.

But a firing coupled with a reorg?

Good luck!

Even a fingerless man could hold up the correct number of digits needed to express the number of times a reorg has solved a problem.

tgtweak3• 6 years ago

I would say that is untrue. In the case of Intel and their issues as of late, some reorganization at this level will go a long way.

CyberDildonics2• 6 years ago

What are you basing that on?

UncleOxidant3• 6 years ago

"Let's do a reorg!" has been Intel's goto action for this kind of thing for years. They're constantly reorg-ing hoping that it will solve the problem. But the problems at Intel right now go way deeper than what a simple reorg can solve.

molszanski4• 6 years ago

They can also try changing the departments names

DylanDmitri• 6 years ago

Re-orgs, at least ones I've seen in Microsoft recently, are necessary acts of creative destruction. Halt stagnant projects and move employees into new growth areas.

TomVDB3• 6 years ago

Even a fingerless man could hold up the correct number of digits needed to express the number of times a reorg has solved a problem.

I couldn't disagree more.

As companies grow/change, existing structures that used to work at some point, can start to break down and a reorg can (and often does) solve that.

A typical example are smaller companies that start with centralized services that support all BUs, but that break up these services as they grow, because per-BU needs might diverge too much or because the distance/sense of ownership of a central group doesn't always align.

It doesn't always work, but I've seen it done right multiple times.

kilo_bravo_32• 6 years ago

Successful reorgs are done in response to growth, changing markets, and new lines of business.

Just like the examples you gave.

This is either a desperation or punitive reorg.

There are also boredom and “make my mark” reorgs and this ain’t them.

25mph• 6 years ago

Reorgs are like fire: they are often used to erase evidence of incompetence.

lambdatronics• 6 years ago

Love it!

busterarm• 6 years ago

I worked at a company that did a reorg every 6 months. Everyone was always on edge and backstabbing each other.

Took me 3 cycles to wise up and look for another job.

baybal25• 6 years ago

Renduchintala,
widely seen as a No. 2 to Swan,
has been on Accenture’s (ACN.N) board since April 2018.
Renduchintala eventually took responsibly for turning around Intel’s process technology,

A very odd choice of a person to develop a fab process

qppo• 6 years ago

Here is is bio page from intel:

Renduchintala has spent a substantial part of his career in the SoC, mobile and internet of things areas. Prior to joining Intel, he was executive vice president of Qualcomm Technologies Inc. and co-president of Qualcomm CDMA Technologies, where he led its semiconductor business in the computing and mobile segments. He joined Qualcomm in 2004 from Skyworks Solutions Inc./Conexant Systems Inc., where he was vice president and general manager of the company’s Cellular Systems Division. Prior to Skyworks, he spent a decade with Philips Electronics, where he progressed to become vice president of engineering for its consumer communications business.

https://newsroom.intel.com/biography/dr-murthy-renduchintala...

baybal25• 6 years ago

But I don't see anything that suggests that he had any practical, and hands on experience with microelectronics, or just EE in general.

Per my standards, the word "Accenture" in the resume alone is just such a giant red flag...

basilgohar• 6 years ago

He was also the VP of Qualcomm, which lends some credence to the decision, albeit I would say that may only strengthen your point rather than weaken, given that Qualcomm also outsources their actual chip manufacturing, i.e., is fabless. So maybe this change in direction is to be expected, even if it was not desired, given his background.

supernova87a• 6 years ago

So what was the underlying story? Progress not as rapid as they had put out as plan, and direct reports to Swan afraid to break the bad news early?

InTheArena• 6 years ago

A CEO who is really a CFO is probably not what Intel needs right now. It's clear that their engineering culture is compromised, and i would hope that Intel would go back to their roots.

UncleOxidant3• 6 years ago

Yep, it was clear when they chose Swan to be the CEO that they were prioritizing cost-cutting over innovation.

dehrmann• 6 years ago

It apparently cost them the Apple deal. At the end of the day, even a CFO-CEO isn't happy about that.

Solstinox• 6 years ago

Companies that get to be as big as Intel are destined for this kind of failure.

BeetleB• 6 years ago

The previous poor performing CEO was a home grown engineer.

Polylactic_acid3• 6 years ago

Take a look at the past achievements and qualifications of AMDs CEO Lisa Su. Its no wonder AMD is doing so well right now.

travbrack2• 6 years ago

Not really a fair comparison since they outsource fab

eklavya• 6 years ago

Is this hindsight attribution of success to an otherwise not related parameter? How much do CEOs make or break a company?

The_rationalist2• 6 years ago

The CEO before Lisa Su was the precursor that initiated most of the future growth, e.g Zen

romanovcode• 6 years ago

A CEO who is really a CFO is probably not what Intel needs right now.

Worked really well for Microsoft. /s

maxpert• 6 years ago

Apple moving away, AMD kick in, ARM taking dominance. I guess we are about to witness the fall (may be death) of another titan.

Zenst• 6 years ago

For me the first sign will be Intel going thru their patent pool and seeing who they can sue.

mappu2• 6 years ago

"Intel fires warning shots at Microsoft, claims x86 emulation is a patent minefield" (2017)

https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2017/06/intel...

MangoCoffee2• 6 years ago

Apple and Amazon moving away looking at ARM for client and server. AMD is winning on values but i don't think Intel will die.

Intel still hold x86 license to make x86 chip. the worst outcome maybe Intel became fab less like AMD and just focus on design.

valine• 6 years ago

I don’t see Intel going fabless. There would be perceived national security implications for the US if Intel lost the ability to manufacture their own chips.

I could see an Intel bail out if things keep going south, but that’s about it.

dreamcompiler2• 6 years ago

Don't forget Spectre and Meltdown.

vondur2• 6 years ago

Well, even using older 14nm tech, their CPUs are still competitive.

theevilsharpie3• 6 years ago

Intel's 14nm processors are only competitive for low-core count, high-clock frequency applications, and only if you disregard power usage.

For use cases where power usage is an important component of performance (e.g., mobile, servers), AMD hardware _substantially_ outperforms Intel's.

Polylactic_acid3• 6 years ago

The Intel i9 is about 1/3 slower than the ryzen 9. It also costs more and uses more power. Intel cpus are such bad value right now its insane.

misanthropian004• 6 years ago

I cannot afford $1000+ CPUs, but can you link to a review that actually shows this? I just read an anandtech review that compares AMD and Intel and I am not seeing that at all. In fact it looks like Intel still has a lead on single threaded performance which is really pathetic at this point. Maybe AMD should start firing and reorganizing too.

I also am not thrilled with the engineering logic of bimodality and other compromises that AMD seems to have made in their engineering to beat Intel on core count. As a purist I hate these sorts of shortcuts. On that alone I would favor Intel. History shows that they tend to go for engineering purity over shotgun approaches, but of course that sort of corporate culture can change at any time. There is something to say for engineering elegance and purity over meaningless benchmarks.

vondur2• 6 years ago

No doubt that their CPU's are missing on the price/peformance ratio, but for gaming, Intel can certainly crank out the FPS. I'm all AMD now, I cant believe what a great machine my Ryzen 3900x is. I was just suprised out how much performance they've been able to wring out the 14nm++++ process. It's only going to get worse for them before it gets better.

zamalek• 6 years ago

Intel has been fumbling stupid executive decisions that are eroding both their competitive advantage and consumer loyalty. Most recently, they decided to lock memory speed behind enthusiast chipsets.

And they oust an engineer? They are clearly searching for blame in all the wrong places.

MrBuddyCasino• 6 years ago

They fired a politician, just a bit too late: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1nsX9nUFIBc

steelframe• 6 years ago

Is it reasonable to oust a lead engineer because of a product delay while COVID-19 is causing such a massive disruption?

Are any tech companies seriously expecting that their engineers can turn on a dime and perform at the same level they were before the sudden mass exodus to WFH?

pushkar29112• 6 years ago

According to reddit comments he was not a good leader https://old.reddit.com/r/intel/comments/hz0ynt/intel_makes_c...

theevilsharpie3• 6 years ago

Intel's manufacturing troubles have been ongoing for years. This is just the latest episode.

mastazi• 6 years ago

So they promoted the CFO to CEO and now they are firing the chief engineer - that tells a lot on where the company is going and I'm afraid it's not a good place.

b34r• 6 years ago

Boeing 2.0

HenryKissinger• 6 years ago

At least no one will die from Intel's mistakes.

coopierez• 6 years ago

As Steve Jobs said:

"If you were a product person at IBM or Xerox, so you make a better copier or computer. So what? When you have monopoly market share, the company's not any more successful.

So the people that can make the company more successful are sales and marketing people, and they end up running the companies. And the product people get driven out of the decision making forums, and the companies forget what it means to make great products. The product sensibility and the product genius that brought them to that monopolistic position gets rotted out by people running these companies that have no conception of a good product versus a bad product."

MarcellusDrum• 6 years ago

Ironically, this happened to Apple.

MangoCoffee2• 6 years ago

its interesting how Intel and TSMC all use ASML EUV and maybe some of machines from the same vendor like LAM research.

TSMC make it work while Intel struggle. craft is real.

edude03• 6 years ago

My understand is intel is in this situation exactly because they don't use EUV - but "older gen" DUV - deep ultra violet and are pushing the technology farther by upping the scaling factor see[0] for more information

[0] https://www.anandtech.com/show/13683/intel-euvenabled-7nm-pr...

mhh__• 6 years ago

If I'm not mistaken, Intel's financials are still very good. Will the rot set in before they run out of safety net?

usr11062• 6 years ago

Intel processor architecture is not a leading design for 2020. Intel security is a nightmare, think Meltdown and many others. The whole BIOS and ME stuff are nightmares. So every setback for Intel could be a step forward for the IT industry and for software development. Who is worried that we don't use steam engines any more and their manufacturers have disappeared from the market? Unfortunately the long-lasting close-to-monopoly of Intel has not left too much room for new winners to develop.

g-b-r3• 6 years ago

AMD is not that much better, unfortunately

usr11062• 6 years ago

How would it be. It's mostly compatible.

jamessmith74• 6 years ago

Intel is a dying company

dschuetz• 6 years ago

And now I understand why Jim Keller left Intel. It's not technology that is lacking at Intel, it's the management.

purpleidea2• 6 years ago

Do Intel's U.S. based fab's really matter _that much_ when all the high-end machines that do the lithography all come from one company (ASML) anyways?

I'd say it's important, and it's an advantage for Intel, but not as big as anyone is making it out to be.

travbrack2• 6 years ago

Isn't that the "hard part"? I wonder why they're having so much trouble compared to tsmc.

purpleidea2• 6 years ago

I was cautiously optimistic for Intel, when they bought Altera in 2015. I was also simultaneously worried for innovation in the FPGA industry.

AFAICT Intel has dropped the ball and failed to produce anything particularly amazing as a result of the 2015 acquisition. I would have been all over that.

Did I miss something? Why didn't they run with this.

headmelted• 6 years ago

"Renduchintala was one of several key hires from outside Intel, which had been famous in Silicon Valley for developing and promoting talent from within. He was hired as part of a strategy to go after broader markets than the central processing units, or CPUs, the company became known for in the PC era."

I feel like this will go down in history as one of technology's most expensive decisions (that's not a knock on Renduchintala as much as it's my own astonishment at Intel thinking they were safe as recently as 2015).

I'm also a bit saddened by this. It confirms what we all suspected but what I secretly hoped wasn't true.

Intel for over a decade coyly hinted they had aces up their sleeves that would already have been played if they faced more competition. Graphene got kicked around in conversations for a while and then when that turned out to be a no go they talked about black phosphorus.

So after all that, aside from marginal tweaks and pretty meager die shrinks here and there, they were doing.. nothing?.. for ten years?

smabie• 6 years ago

I mean, trying and failing isn't the same as doing nothing. But regardless, necessity is the mother of invention, so I'm sure they'll figure something out. They have 20b of cash (1/4 of AMD's total market cap) and their profits are damn good.

Make no mistake, Intel is very much aware this is a do or die situation, and I expect them to deploy all the resources at their disposal to fight both AMD and ARM. They don't have much debt and can borrow heavily and at great rates if necessary.

misanthropian004• 6 years ago

Why is it do or die just because they can't make faster CPUs? AMD can't make them either. It's the end of an entire era technologically. We all knew this day would come.It's a hard problem that requires a whole new paradigm probably. Hopefully both AMD and Intel will have enough money to keep doing research by trying and failing with various radical approaches or we may never see faster CPUs again. Why would they need to worry about ARM? That is low power mobile devices, a sector they got out of a while ago.

gwbas1c• 6 years ago

"Renduchintala was one of several key hires from outside Intel, which had been famous in Silicon Valley for developing and promoting talent from within."

Which was, IMO, one of the reasons why I left Intel. I interned there and did a 2-year stint.

What I saw was a culture where almost everyone who was there began their career at Intel, or at least joined very early in their career. No one was really aware of what the rest of the industry did.

In a way, Intel used to be a FAANG, but became a victim of its success as a great place to work. The culture was so insular that they lost touch with the rest of the field.

atq2119• 6 years ago

The title is misleading. From the article it sounds like the chief engineering manager is leaving. Still not a great sign, but quite different from a chief engineer leaving. Some might argue that that's what happened with the earlier departure if Jim Keller, but Keller probably didn't do that much engineering anymore either.

andrew3019• 6 years ago

Intel said it is reorganizing its technology, systems architecture and client group. Its new leaders will report directly to Chief Executive Officer Bob Swan.

This is similar to Apple in 1997, when the CEO was ousted and Jobs stepped in as interim CEO to restructure Apple's product line. Maybe this will be Intel's comeback?

gigatexal• 6 years ago

Is he a fall guy? A patsy?

klelatti2• 6 years ago

How many hardware engineers were lost in the layoffs in 2016? [1] How much aggregate experience at developing a new process node and fixing the issues was lost in those layoffs?

It's often the senior staff who go in these exercises - they are more expensive and are more likely to be attracted to early retirement.

[1] https://www.oregonlive.com/silicon-forest/2016/04/intel_quar...

elnik• 6 years ago

Nobody seems to want to talk about delays.

I work at a hard tech startup, and all I have been seeing are delays in launching our product. I keep seeing more work as work gets done. Much of our progress till date has been incremental. It came from either fixing bugs in sprints or unlocking new capabilities by solving hard problems.

I have never understood the point of timing work. Work takes as much "time" as it needs for getting done. It can't be accurately estimated with out actually spending time actually working on it. Clarity seems to be the most critical piece for productivity for me. Drive that, and people just can't help but work. Dealing with drudgery seems inevitable.

Add on top of this people's incompetence or I should say unreadiness for situation, it irks the managers and people responsible for delivery. Delays cascade up. But I think most delays are due to unrealistic expectations of people higher up. Irony being the expectations set by the ones that are supposed to carry out the work.

robviren• 6 years ago

It is human issue. Business requires goals and timelines. I agree that the issue comes from a lack of transparency, poor culture, and the human desire to be "right". Not setting a deadline is unacceptable to business though. I can't imagine sales or the end customer would ever accept not knowing when they can expect product delivery. If delays are communicated, engineering is respected, and no one is looking to blame someone for delays then the whole thing runs fine. As long as company culture does not run around making people feel bad about not hitting timelines you get more honest timelines from people. But as a product manager I am forced to ask engineering to try and deliver some things sooner than they estimated. Just like I have to disappoint customers by saying products are delayed, or sales that something is more expensive, I have to disappoint engineering with getting something out there sooner than people are comfortable with. Obvious exceptions are when we are confident we cannot hit the timeline with even an MVP.

yadavrohit• 6 years ago

https://analyticsdrift.com/intels-misery-from-losing-42-bill...

perseusprime11• 6 years ago

Wow! They are losing a genius in Murthy. This is a bear case for Intel.

lbill• 6 years ago

I really hope that Intel wakes up: struggling with fab processes is not their biggest problem, their marketing strategy is. There are some really talented engineers in there, but the product segmentation and the way the "features" are sold is in my opinion not good at all.

Linus Tech Tips made a great video about it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Skry6cKyz50

g-b-r3• 6 years ago

How much of this TSMC dominance is due to the patent system? Could it be that there is no way to manufacture chips at these sizes without using some TSMC patent?

Intel ousts its chief engineer, shakes up technical group after delays

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