AnotherReaderI don't recall any stories about threats of violence. Do you have any sources?

I have a vague recollection of some threats against the then Gateway CEOs family when they were considering AMD processors. I want to say some of these threats were listed in the brief filed in the AMD v. Intel lawsuit of the early 2000s. Either way it was a rough time period and for no reason other than pure, unadulterated greed.

dyonoctisGoing external happened under Pat.

That's just utter nonsense – Stop the revisionism already, please!
Outsourcing started under Bob (together with Jim Keller), who just tried to grin and bear it (while being smeared as being allegedly Intel'S worst CEO from Intel's BoD by proxy through their media-outlets on pay-roll), while he tried to mime “The Dying Swan” for the time being and act as a makeshift, for when the delulu board could finally get their beloved and well-hailed Pat "God of the Gaps" Gelsinger aboard.

Bob Swan already moved good parts of Intel's volume to Samsung in 2019 (Chipsets, Pentiums, lower i3s), closed the deals on outsourcing with TSMC in 2021 (still as CEO) and already booked large volumes at TSMC's N6 and N3, when Gelsinger wasn't even back yet for his last and final stint (to lay Intel in ashes) – That's why Bob Swan got ousted;
For merely suggesting Intel to start outsourcing to stay any competitive. Even Jim Keller actually suggested outsourcing to TSMC, since everyone knew for a fact, that their 7nm wasn't goign to come on time and will get delayed again.

Outsourcing was seen by the BoD as lèse majesté before big 'ol Intel, and so Bob was ousted for the mere suggestion that Intel wouldn't be able to sport their own products.

So no, outsourcing did explicitly not start under Gelsinger – That may your reality you just completely made up though!

DavenI have a vague recollection of some threats against the then Gateway CEOs family when they were considering AMD processors. I want to say some of these threats were listed in the brief filed in the AMD v. Intel lawsuit of the early 2000s. Either way it was a rough time period and for no reason other than pure, unadulterated greed.

The only threat I remember was PC builders would lose their Intel discount, if not buying Intel exclusively. Which may have sounded like it was a legit option for Intel (a company should be able to decide if and how they offer discounts), but the courts decided Intel's terms weren't legal after all.

Smartcom5That's just utter nonsense – Stop the revisionism already, please!
Outsourcing started under Bob (together with Jim Keller), who just tried to grin and bear it (while being smeared as being allegedly Intel'S worst CEO from Intel's BoD by proxy through their media-outlets on pay-roll), while he tried to mime “The Dying Swan” for the time being and act as a makeshift, for when the delulu board could finally get their beloved and well-hailed Pat "God of the Gaps" Gelsinger aboard.

Bob Swan already moved good parts of Intel's volume to Samsung in 2019 (Chipsets, Pentiums, lower i3s), closed the deals on outsourcing with TSMC in 2021 (still as CEO) and already booked large volumes at TSMC's N6 and N3, when Gelsinger wasn't even back yet for his last and final stint (to lay Intel in ashes) – That's why Bob Swan got ousted;
For merely suggesting Intel to start outsourcing to stay any competitive. Even Jim Keller actually suggested outsourcing to TSMC, since everyone knew for a fact, that their 7nm wasn't goign to come on time and will get delayed again.

Outsourcing was seen by the BoD as lèse majesté before big 'ol Intel, and so Bob was ousted for the mere suggestion that Intel wouldn't be able to sport their own products.

So no, outsourcing did explicitly not start under Gelsinger – That may your reality you just completely made up though!

My bad then, but a lot of Intel older presentation (for the now fabbed on external) arch made it look like going internal was the plan, until they realized that it couldn't happen.

3valatzyIs the culture at TSMC better? It's only the inertia that keeps TSMC still looking good, but because you can't shrink the transistors indefinitely, and the Moore's law is dead, that same thing will strike all of them. It's matter of time. The sooner, the better.

If what I've heard is true they are worse, very long days and high stress work environments like a lot of companies in that part of the world. They always had a work very hard attitude in you Ork day but then western hours started seeping in now you have a culture that is work till you drop then get a few hours sleep and repeat 7 days a week because they got zero employment laws to protect them like maximum shift or weekly hours limit well maybe have official laws that are flat out ignored. Just modern slavery imo.

I'm not sure how you can blame everything on the CEO of a company that has had over 130,000 employees on everything that has gone wrong within the company, as much of if it will have to do with lower level management as well.
Yes, the CEO has ultimate responsibility, which is why they get fired at times, but the issues here are not things that happened just because of Pat.
Did he promise a lot and under deliver? Sure, he was talking big and was unable to get the company to deliver on those promises.

However, at the same time, look at how unfocused the company has become over the past 20 years.
Intel tried to branch out and make everything from antivirus software (McAfee) to self driving cars, things they knew nothing about, but apparently wanted to dabble in.

They did alright early on in the SSD market, but with failures (not in terms of performance) like Optane, which must've cost them a ton of cash, it wasn't so strange that they sold that part of the company in the end.

Intel also bought companies like Altera and hoped that was going to be the next big thing, but apparently it wasn't a roaring success either, but I don't think they're losing money here.

Then there was the cable router/modem business that never really took off, largely due to them using a really broken Atom core in their SoCs and that was a business that was bought and then sold on for pennies compared to what they paid for it.

How about the XMM modem business they sold to Apple in the end? I don't think they ever made any money out of the few products they produced. Outside of laptop add-in cards, almost no-one except Apple used their modems and they never managed to deliver any 5G products.

Prior to that, Intel bet hard on making it in the mobile phone processor business, I can't remember how many Computex press events I attended where they showed off new, hot (running) hardware from smaller device makers that never really ended up taking any market share (ok, Asus isn't that small, but they are tiny in the mobile phone space).

Do companies have to diversify? Well, maybe, it depends on what you're doing, but when you neglect your core products at the cost of diversifying your product range, then something is seriously wrong.

Broken ProcessorIf what I've heard is true they are worse, very long days and high stress work environments like a lot of companies in that part of the world. They always had a work very hard attitude in you Ork day but then western hours started seeping in now you have a culture that is work till you drop then get a few hours sleep and repeat 7 days a week because they got zero employment laws to protect them like maximum shift or weekly hours limit well maybe have official laws that are flat out ignored. Just modern slavery imo.

Yeah, no, Taiwan has employment protection laws, although they're quite weak. TSMC run shift work, as their factories operate 24/7/365, except when there's an earthquake. If it was a horrible company to work for, why would so many Taiwanese want to work for them?
Have there been incidents? Sure, but it's also a big company with over 75,000 employees worldwide and not all of them work in the fabs.
I highly doubt it's the best company in the world to work for if you work in the fabs, but you don't see much in terms of complaints about them in Taiwan. Most of the complaints and issues (even deaths) appear to have happened in the Arizona plant in the US. Most of the deaths appears to be construction related though and even if that's awful too, it's a more likely environment for something like that to happen.
Unfortunately I don't know any of the fab workers, but I know a German that have worked for them for over 15 years, admittedly in a different capacity and most likely he earns many times more than the fab workers, but if it was such a horrible company, I'm sure he wouldn't have stayed there for that long.
I also don't know how TSMC treats their staff in xina and Singapore, maybe it's different there.

TheLostSwedeI'm not sure how you can blame everything on the CEO of a company that has had over 130,000 employees on everything that has gone wrong within the company, as much of if it will have to do with lower level management as well.
Yes, the CEO has ultimate responsibility, which is why they get fired at times, but the issues here are not things that happened just because of Pat.
Did he promise a lot and under deliver? Sure, he was talking big and was unable to get the company to deliver on those promises.

However, at the same time, look at how unfocused the company has become over the past 20 years.
Intel tried to branch out and make everything from antivirus software (McAfee) to self driving cars, things they knew nothing about, but apparently wanted to dabble in.

They did alright early on in the SSD market, but with failures (not in terms of performance) like Optane, which must've cost them a ton of cash, it wasn't so strange that they sold that part of the company in the end.

Intel also bought companies like Altera and hoped that was going to be the next big thing, but apparently it wasn't a roaring success either, but I don't think they're losing money here.

Then there was the cable router/modem business that never really took off, largely due to them using a really broken Atom core in their SoCs and that was a business that was bought and then sold on for pennies compared to what they paid for it.

How about the XMM modem business they sold to Apple in the end? I don't think they ever made any money out of the few products they produced. Outside of laptop add-in cards, almost no-one except Apple used their modems and they never managed to deliver any 5G products.

Prior to that, Intel bet hard on making it in the mobile phone processor business, I can't remember how many Computex press events I attended where they showed off new, hot (running) hardware from smaller device makers that never really ended up taking any market share (ok, Asus isn't that small, but they are tiny in the mobile phone space).

Do companies have to diversify? Well, maybe, it depends on what you're doing, but when you neglect your core products at the cost of diversifying your product range, then something is seriously wrong.


Yeah, no, Taiwan has employment protection laws, although they're quite weak. TSMC run shift work, as their factories operate 24/7/365, except when there's an earthquake. If it was a horrible company to work for, why would so many Taiwanese want to work for them?
Have there been incidents? Sure, but it's also a big company with over 75,000 employees worldwide and not all of them work in the fabs.
I highly doubt it's the best company in the world to work for if you work in the fabs, but you don't see much in terms of complaints about them in Taiwan. Most of the complaints and issues (even deaths) appear to have happened in the Arizona plant in the US. Most of the deaths appears to be construction related though and even if that's awful too, it's a more likely environment for something like that to happen.
Unfortunately I don't know any of the fab workers, but I know a German that have worked for them for over 15 years, admittedly in a different capacity and most likely he earns many times more than the fab workers, but if it was such a horrible company, I'm sure he wouldn't have stayed there for that long.
I also don't know how TSMC treats their staff in xina and Singapore, maybe it's different there.

CEO over the company is a type of: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attribute_substitution

Smartcom5That's just utter nonsense – Stop the revisionism already, please!
Outsourcing started under Bob (together with Jim Keller), who just tried to grin and bear it (while being smeared as being allegedly Intel'S worst CEO from Intel's BoD by proxy through their media-outlets on pay-roll), while he tried to mime “The Dying Swan” for the time being and act as a makeshift, for when the delulu board could finally get their beloved and well-hailed Pat "God of the Gaps" Gelsinger aboard.

Bob Swan already moved good parts of Intel's volume to Samsung in 2019 (Chipsets, Pentiums, lower i3s), closed the deals on outsourcing with TSMC in 2021 (still as CEO) and already booked large volumes at TSMC's N6 and N3, when Gelsinger wasn't even back yet for his last and final stint (to lay Intel in ashes) – That's why Bob Swan got ousted;
For merely suggesting Intel to start outsourcing to stay any competitive. Even Jim Keller actually suggested outsourcing to TSMC, since everyone knew for a fact, that their 7nm wasn't goign to come on time and will get delayed again.

Outsourcing was seen by the BoD as lèse majesté before big 'ol Intel, and so Bob was ousted for the mere suggestion that Intel wouldn't be able to sport their own products.

So no, outsourcing did explicitly not start under Gelsinger – That may your reality you just completely made up though!

I’ve got a big surprise for you - TSMC has been building chips for Intel for over 30 years. Before AMD fully canned Global Foundries, Intel was actually a larger customer of TSMC than AMD.

dyonoctisPat was also around when the Core 2 Duo did a number on AMD and won Apple over.
There's literally a picture of him holding a frame with a core 2 duo CPU. He also presented the arch at IDF 2006. Man, sometimes tech forums are really being too hardcore on the hate. As it's been said above, a lot of Intel trouble started way before Pat took the lead. He's a CEO, not the second coming of Jesus who could single handedly fix chips arch issues, software issues, fabs issues both CPU and GPU side. Reminder that MTL design started before he was CEO, various issued forced Intel to scramble together Raptor lake while they fix what prevented them to launch MTL. And arrow lake is an evolution of the MTL design...design that was initially planned to come after Alder lake in 2022. And alder lake itself was also delayed while Intel was in foundry hell, and refused to go external.
www.anandtech.com/show/1962

All Conroe (Core 2 Duo) was, was a beefed up Pentium 3. They have not really innovated, ever .... just flexed their name and position on vendors.

Granted that ''Pentium 3'' almost killed AMD. If anybody was lucky, it was AMD.

In my opinion, removing Patrick Gelsinger was the first mistake that the board made. From now on, they are going to struggle from their own lack of adequacy, competence and vision. And it is not only related to the foundry business, but also to the fact that Altera has been completely stuck from the early days of its acquisition by Intel. That was also one of the reasons (again, IMHO) for the so-called missed AI opportunity. Not to mention the communications, data center and other niches that could have been lucrative if Intel had to offer good programmable logic, competing Xilinx.

Without or without a new CEO from somewhere else, absolutely nothing will change for the better until solving the actual issues that have been there for many years.

For the foundry business - Intel's first priority nowadays should be hiring the best physicists and material scientists, instead of new CEOs, directors; or managers that barely know the difference between resistor and transistor...

TheLostSwedeI also don't know how TSMC treats their staff in xina and Singapore, maybe it's different there.

That's the issue all we have is 3rd party gossip so perspectives can be different and the secretive nature of this industry doesn't make it easy.

Broken ProcessorThat's the issue all we have is 3rd party gossip so perspectives can be different and the secretive nature of this industry doesn't make it easy.

I mean, it's the same in so many industries. Take fashion as an example, they claim they only use certified materials and only work with vetted manufacturing partners and suppliers, yet every so often there are child labour issues and people being abused in slave like conditions. I would say those people still have it a lot worse than people working for TSMC at any level of the company.