
Intel ousts its chief engineer, shakes up technical group after delays - myrandomcomment
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-intel-reorganization/intel-ousts-its-chief-engineer-shakes-up-technical-group-after-delays-idUSKCN24S2O6
======
ghostcluster
> 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.

~~~
jake_morrison
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.

~~~
zelly
> 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.

~~~
ddorian43
> but now other nations are in a position to pay their engineers more than
> U.S. companies.

No. Please write 1 country.

~~~
CraigJPerry
Switzerland? Aiui (on 2nd hand knowledge) salary for a SWE ranges from 80k usd
to 250k usd

~~~
tomerico
The top of your range would be the bottom of the range for a Google beginner
with 3-5 years of experience.

~~~
thu2111
But Google is in Switzerland too. It probably doesn't make sense to compare
country level averages to the pay off a single company famous for huge comp.

~~~
tomerico
The question was whether you can get FAANG like compensation in other
countries. While Google has an office in Switzerland, it is minuscule in
comparison to the US.

~~~
thu2111
There are over 2000 workers there. That's "miniscule" compared to the HQ in
California of course, but it's the biggest engineering office they have in
Europe. The city it's in only has about 350,000 people, so it's a non-trivial
local employer.

------
InTheArena
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.

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

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

~~~
mattferderer
Prior leaders are often underrated.

I don't know the specifics of this case but I know a lot of coaches refuse to
be the person in charge of "rebuilding" because they know they will get 80%
there just in time to get fired & watch someone else get all the credit.

~~~
The_rationalist
It might apply to some extent to some countries Presidents too

------
headmelted
"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
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.

~~~
misanthropian00
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.

~~~
hmottestad
I believe the current super computer leader uses ARM.

~~~
formerly_proven
With crazy wide vector SIMD, which gives you nothing but Linpack Flops.

~~~
dragontamer
The Fujitsu ARM chip has an even MORE impressive HPCG score than Linpack
actually.

I expect the Fujitsu ARM to be the greatest HPCG computer for years to come.
No other design comes close.

~~~
formerly_proven
Is HPC moving away from purely ALU throughput benchmarks? If so, I think that
would be good news.

~~~
dragontamer
HPCG has been reported for years.

Linpack is the "legacy" benchmark on pure FLOPs throughput. But HPCG is the
more realistic benchmark that better tests the interconnects.

HPCG is a sparse-matrix, which more accurately represents many HPC problems.
Linpack is a bit of a legacy, but still represents dense-compute pretty well.

Its still a GFLOPs / TFLops style measurement, but HPCG has a LOT more data
movement.

------
spydum
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...](https://www.anandtech.com/show/15846/jim-keller-resigns-from-intel-
effective-immediately)

~~~
shaklee3
To be fair, Keller never stays anywhere long

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

~~~
yvdriess
He carries enough weight in this industry to have no problem changing the
orbit of even a company the size of Intel. It depends how hard the managers
are going to try and pull it back in the old direction.

------
mastazi
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.

~~~
coopierez
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
Ironically, this happened to Apple.

~~~
lotsofpulp
By what measure? They seem to be moving tons of product, with competing
products that don’t come close to its margins.

~~~
TheRealSteel
I would argue the MacBook Pro. Taking out the SD slot (so you can't expand
storage, and have to buy a more expensive or replacement machine) and
replacing the function keys (with a Touch Bar, which looks good in ads but
sucks to use) were driven by marketing/sales people, not product people.

This machine is awful to use and I'm in the processing of researching
something to replace it with.

I would happily switch back to a 2015 model, even with the drop in CPU and GPU
power.

I actually like typing on the butterfly keyboard, I'm doing it right now - but
it has reliability issues.

They also took the headphone jack off phones - making it a worse device,
because the AirPods/HomePod marketers didn't want anyone plugging their phone
into their existing headphones or speakers.

The awful mess they've made of Lighting/USB-C ports on different devices is
also confusing and irritating.

I wish every device of theirs had the attention to usability the Apple Watch
does. That thing is a pleasure to use, it's just expensive and incompatible
with Android. But the way they're going, they'll put a verification chip in
the strap, to make sure you have to buy those from Apple too.

Unfortunately they have by far the best chips, trackpads, and smartwatches on
the market.

~~~
piva00
Apple has always moved fast into stopping using technologies that didn't fit
their product vision. If removal of the SD card slot (that one isn't even one
of my top 10 feature-removal grievances from Apple and I have music and
photography as hobbies so plenty of use for it), headphone jack, etc. is
shocking for you then you haven't used Apple for long.

Apple really don't care what you think you need as features (or at least Steve
Jobs didn't), they have a vision and they will try to sell you it, not the
opposite.

I don't have strong opinions about this, personally I think it's interesting
that some companies (such as Apple) want to stick to their philosophy instead
of just chasing dollars around by pumping out products designed by committees.

------
usr1106
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-r
AMD is not that much better, unfortunately

~~~
usr1106
How would it be. It's mostly compatible.

~~~
g-b-r
Processor architecture, most bugs, ME and a lot of other things would not need
to be "compatible". Still they copied ME with the same stubborness in refusing
to make it more transparent, they stopped allowing open-source initialization
and they don't have a much better record in security

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

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

[https://arstechnica.com/information-
technology/2017/06/intel...](https://arstechnica.com/information-
technology/2017/06/intel-fires-warning-shots-at-microsoft-
claims-x86-emulation-is-a-patent-minefield/)

~~~
sjwright
Meanwhile, Apple is gearing up for extensive x86 emulation capability within
macOS on Apple Silicon, so I guess the minefield isn't as dangerous as Intel
implies.

Or perhaps Apple is happily licensing patents? If so, that suggests that
Rosetta 2 will be a limited-time feature just like Rosetta 1. Apple won't be
interested in paying for patent licenses forever.

~~~
mappu
Patents have a 20-year lifespan so the common x86_32 patents must have already
expired.

As for x86_64, the patents would expire in either 2020 or 2023 depending on if
you count from the first published documentation or from the first shipping
CPU (IANAL).

Of course that is only the baseline ISA (and SSE2). The future extensions
(SSE3+/FMA/AVX and AES-NI/RDRAND/...) would not yet be patent-free but most
software is really just compiled against the baseline. Apple managed to split
x86_64 into a sub-architecture x86_64h for post-Haswell, but broadly speaking,
nobody else has: [https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Changes/x86-64_micro-
architec...](https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Changes/x86-64_micro-
architecture_update)

~~~
sjwright
> As for x86_64, the patents would expire in either 2020 or 2023

Those patents (if any) would surely be held by its inventor, AMD, to which
Apple has a healthy corporate relationship.

------
paulpan
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.

~~~
Bud
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.

~~~
flywheel
>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...](https://www.theverge.com/2019/7/25/8909671/apple-
intel-5g-smartphone-modems-acquisition)

~~~
fomine3
Apple didn't want to buy modems from Qualcomm so they supported and bought
Intel modems, but Intel failed to develop 5G modem to match 2020 iPhone so
Apple make a agreement with Qualcomm (settle lawsuit) to buy Qualcomm's 5G
modem chip and concurrently buy Intel's modem department to develop own
modems.

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

~~~
ghostcluster
AMD uses TSMC for manufacturing.

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

~~~
nomel
> AMD is beating them on CPU design

How is this possible to know?

~~~
Teever
Can you elaborate on why it isn't possible to know this?

~~~
lend000
As outsiders it's very difficult to tell which aspects of the overall product
are due to design differences and which are due to different manufacturing
technologies. It's possible both design and manufacturing are better (for
AMD/TSMC), but the only one that is obviously true is that the manufacturing
is better. We simply would not have a conclusive answer about who has the
better designs unless they used the same fab, giving them the same possible
feature set. And if they did, I suspect AMD would have a huge advantage from
their existing relationship working with TSMC.

~~~
toast0
TSMC's feature size improvements are shown by chips being released from the
latest fab (and with pretty good yields, too, apparently, as AMD just released
the XT series of higher clocked chips). AMD's designs are good because Zen+
was better than Zen, and Zen 2 is better than Zen+. Some of the gains may be
from die shrink, but if die shrinking was all you needed to do, TSMC would
license a z80, drop it on their latest process and call it a day.

------
elnik
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
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.

------
baybal2
> 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
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...](https://newsroom.intel.com/biography/dr-murthy-
renduchintala/)

~~~
baybal2
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...

~~~
truth_be_told
From [https://newsroom.intel.com/biography/dr-murthy-
renduchintala...](https://newsroom.intel.com/biography/dr-murthy-
renduchintala/)

 _Renduchintala holds a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering, a PhD in
digital communications and a master’s degree in business administration from
the University of Bradford in England._

------
purpleidea
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.

------
klelatti
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...](https://www.oregonlive.com/silicon-
forest/2016/04/intel_quarterly_results.html)

------
zamalek
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
They fired a politician, just a bit too late:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1nsX9nUFIBc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1nsX9nUFIBc)

------
lbill
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](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Skry6cKyz50)

------
supernova87a
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?

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

~~~
nodesocket
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
What possible evidence do you have for it coming back?

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

~~~
nodesocket
The fact that you compare Intel to Hertz is comical. Chips aren't going
anywhere, there is only going to be more and more computers, servers, and
silicon demand. Intel, despite AMD's gigantic moves is still very entrenched
with enterprise (servers). I don't see AMD being the only single player, I see
a resurgence of Intel mid-to-long term and both will split the pizza pie.

------
atq2119
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.

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

------
MangoCoffee
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
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...](https://www.anandtech.com/show/13683/intel-euvenabled-7nm-process-tech-
is-on-track)

------
purpleidea
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.

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

------
steelframe
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?

~~~
pushkar2911
According to reddit comments he was not a good leader
[https://old.reddit.com/r/intel/comments/hz0ynt/intel_makes_c...](https://old.reddit.com/r/intel/comments/hz0ynt/intel_makes_changes_to_technology_organization/fzgddi4/)

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

------
andrew3019
> 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?

------
yadavrohit
[https://analyticsdrift.com/intels-misery-from-
losing-42-bill...](https://analyticsdrift.com/intels-misery-from-
losing-42-billion-to-changing-leadership/)

------
g-b-r
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?

------
kilo_bravo_3
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.

~~~
TomVDB
> 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_3
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.

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

> This is either a desperation or punitive reorg.

One could very well characterize the reorganization of IBM in the mid nineties
as a desperation reorg and a punitive one (100K employees laid off.)

It was also a very successful one.

~~~
toohotatopic
Was it? It could have been IBM who invented the smartphone or hardware as a
service.

~~~
pm90
They survived.

~~~
toohotatopic
Surviving cannot be the ambition of IBM.

~~~
pm90
Clearly you haven't worked at IBM.

------
perseusprime11
Wow! They are losing a genius in Murthy. This is a bear case for Intel.

------
gigatexal
Is he a fall guy? A patsy?

------
jamessmith74
Intel is a dying company

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

~~~
Polylactic_acid
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.

~~~
misanthropian00
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.

~~~
Polylactic_acid
Intel has the tiniest advantage in single threaded which results in close to 0
noticeable improvement. Having double the cores on your cpu results in a
massive noticeable improvement. When performing CPU intensive tasks like
compiling code, AV1 encoding, etc, its all about core count. AMD also manages
to have so much greater performance with a lower power consumption.

