Intel Makes Changes to Executive Team, Raja got Promoted

[btarunr]

Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger announced the addition of two new technology leaders to its executive leadership team, as well as several changes to Intel business units. Current Intel executives Sandra Rivera and Raja Koduri will each take on new senior leadership roles, and technology industry veterans Nick McKeown and Greg Lavender will join the company.

"Since re-joining Intel, I have been impressed with the depth of talent and incredible innovation throughout the company, but we must move faster to fulfill our ambitions," said Gelsinger. "By putting Sandra, Raja, Nick and Greg - with their decades of technology expertise - at the forefront of some of our most essential work, we will sharpen our focus and execution, accelerate innovation, and unleash the deep well of talent across the company."



As part of these changes, Intel's Data Platform Group (DPG) will be restructured into two new business units.

• Sandra Rivera will take on a new role as executive vice president and general manager of Datacenter and AI. Rivera will lead this organization's focus on developing leadership data center products for a cloud-based world, including Intel Xeon and field programmable gate array (FPGA) products. She will also drive the company's overall artificial intelligence (AI) strategy. Rivera has a deep history in data center technology and a track record of integrating Intel's silicon and software portfolios to drive customer value. Prior to her role serving as Intel's chief people officer, she led Intel's Network Platforms Group. (Sandra Rivera's biography)
• Nick McKeown will join Intel full-time on July 6 as senior vice president and general manager of a new Network and Edge Group. This brings Intel's Network Platforms Group, Internet of Things Group and Connectivity Group into a single business unit chartered to drive technology and product leadership throughout the network to the intelligent edge. Renown in the networking technology industry and recipient of the 2021 IEEE Alexander Graham Bell Medal, McKeown was previously a part-time Intel Senior Fellow who joined the company with its 2019 acquisition of Barefoot Networks, which he co-founded. (Nick McKeown's biography)

Intel will also create two new business units, one focused on software and one on high performance computing (HPC) and graphics.

• Greg Lavender has joined Intel as chief technology officer (CTO) and senior vice president and general manager of the new Software and Advanced Technology Group. This group will drive Intel's unified vision for software, ensuring it remains a powerful competitive differentiator for the company. As CTO, Lavender will also be responsible for driving Intel's technical innovation and research programs, including Intel Labs. He brings more than 35 years of experience in software and hardware product engineering and advanced research and development to Intel, most recently serving as senior vice president and CTO of VMware. He has also held key leadership roles at Citigroup, Cisco and Sun Microsystems. (Greg Lavender's biography)
• Raja Koduri, a well-known innovator in GPU computing technology, will lead the Accelerated Computing Systems and Graphics Group, a newly formed business unit that will increase the company's focus in the key growth areas of high performance computing and graphics. AXG is chartered with delivering HPC and graphics solutions for integrated and discrete segments across client, enterprise and data center. Koduri previously served as Intel's general manager of Architecture, Graphics and Software. (Raja Koduri's biography)

Rivera, McKeown, Lavender and Koduri will report directly to Pat Gelsinger. Navin Shenoy, who has been serving as executive vice president and general manager of the Data Platforms Group, will assist with the transition and leave Intel on July 6. The company is grateful to Shenoy for his 26 years of service, including his contributions as leader of DPG, as well as his previous leadership of the Client Computing Group and Intel Asia Pacific.

View at TechPowerUp Main Site

 

[persondb]

I guess that they are satisfied with Raja work then.

Honestly, I think he has been vilified a lot more than what he deserve. He did some great work with GCN and probably even worked/influenced RDNA as it takes many many years to create architectures and he would still be in the AMD while RDNA was shaping up.

What he deserves shit is for overhyping and overpromising though.

 

[Mussels]

Do these guys just leave and come back so they can haggle higher wages and shit every change?

 

[InVasMani]

I guess that they are satisfied with Raja work then.

Honestly, I think he has been vilified a lot more than what he deserve. He did some great work with GCN and probably even worked/influenced RDNA as it takes many many years to create architectures and he would still be in the AMD while RDNA was shaping up.

What he deserves shit is for overhyping and overpromising though.

I do agree he has been a bit vilified more than he deserves. At the same time he did do lots of hyping, but under delivering in a lot of people's minds. Hopefully he has better success at Intel.

 

[Tomgang]

I have not read the article. But if Raja got promoted, I would think he Dit something right.

So Gratz to raja.

 

[Space Lynx]

Do these guys just leave and come back so they can haggle higher wages and shit every change?

Something else I find curious, why are there only a handful of guys considered to be the best of the best... surely there have been plenty of graduates since them, and apprentices under them... I find it very confusing they are like the "The Chosen Ones" and irreplaceable, just seems odd to me.

 

[64K]

I suspect Koduri left AMD due to Lisa Su focusing resources on the CPU line and skimping on the GPU line. She was right to do that as evidenced by the major turn around in profitability but Koduri might have felt like he could do more at Intel with their nearly bottomless well of resources. We will see when the GPU line from Intel is launched.

 

[ZoneDymo]

Ill say it again, I welcomed Pat as a no nonsense engineer who would light a fire under Intel's ass but so far he comes across as such a personality lacking business puppet.
Lets save all the praise and being proud till AFTER you release a product worthy of it shall we?

 

[stimpy88]

Koduri, Intels own little Peter Molyneux.

 

[_Flare]

Intel is redoing its Semi-Endboss Tier Personal Layout, a lot of people had to go over the last couple of month, now Intel has basically redone all of the stage wich directly reports back to its CEO, dunno what Navin did wrong or not good enough, but there must be something i guess.

 

[watzupken]

I feel Raja is someone they need at this point to grow the GPU side of things. So not surprising he got a bump up. But as to whether he deserves it or not, we can't really tell until the product is out of the door. XE LP for iGPU seems to be a success, but that is after they dedicated significant die to the GPU. Looking forward to see what the bigger counterparts will catch up with competition in the various segments.

 

[Wirko]

Something else I find curious, why are there only a handful of guys considered to be the best of the best... surely there have been plenty of graduates since them, and apprentices under them... I find it very confusing they are like the "The Chosen Ones" and irreplaceable, just seems odd to me.

The Peter Principle is as powerful as Moore's Law, the difference is that it's been with us since ever and will stay forever.

 

[Caring1]

I guess that they are satisfied with Raja work then.

Or he was that incompetent they promoted him out of the area he was in.

 

[Vayra86]

I guess that they are satisfied with Raja work then.

Honestly, I think he has been vilified a lot more than what he deserve. He did some great work with GCN and probably even worked/influenced RDNA as it takes many many years to create architectures and he would still be in the AMD while RDNA was shaping up.

What he deserves shit is for overhyping and overpromising though.

Great work, but let's talk about actual deliveries here, so you can understand the reason to the madness.

His most impressive one was dropping a Polaris GPU in front of Linus on TeeVee. Slapping GDDR on GCN to give us midrange crap of yesteryear that we could 'use in Crossfire' to achieve Nvidia's midrange perf. Never mind the fact multi GPU was already on the way out with DX12. Oh, yeah, the man truly is a visionary. Next, he developed Vega with the well known Poor Volta (never materialized into gaming GPU, again, an utter misfire) line and some press events that looked like scrapyards with big marketing lines of revolutionizing gaming. Just PR? Nope, the product Vega was equally shite - too expensive, too big, memory that was unobtanium and here we are today looking at RDNA2 that has axed HBM entirely in the gaming range and being the first decent AMD GPU stack in half a decade. Its not a coincidence that the whole GPU division gained momentum the moment Lisa Su took over.

Need more? All the man has produced was in-between crap that had no place in any sustainable market or product stack. Please. Only press releases and executives speak of his great achievements - and only when he leaves the company. That alone is saying enough. The man is not special, not a Jim Keller and certainly not a force of leather nature like Jensen Huang who can single handedly nudge an industry in a new direction. When Huang misfires, its not that the tech is lost, but that he's not making money off it - look at G-Sync; and possibly the investment into pre-empting RT.

Commercially or in technology Raja has no semblance of an idea of what's a great next move for the industry. He can build things, that is certain. But he has no vision and the vision he does have is kindergarten level 'look how big it is!'.

Look at what's he playing with at Intel - the technology he brought in from AMD (old news) combined with the technology he found at Intel so he can now finally glue some dies together, to meet a performance target he markets us now that is 'hopefully somewhat equal' with an upper midrange gaming GPU that was released last year. History repeats, that is all this really is, and it will fail in equal measure at this rate. The man is literally building a bigger floorplan of Intel integrated execution units and calls it new, but now wants to sell that single product in many shapes to many markets. A road that Nvidia has been tightly readjusting and refining around and onto since... forever, and they have more and more dedicated product lines as a result. Every time a competitor wanted to attack those stacks with a single catch-em-all, cut down derivative, they failed, quite simply because its not as refined. Nvidia simply beats it by having much more development time and a long-term plan of new iterations. Look at how they can cut down their GPUs. Its almost like Lego, whatever you want, you get, and it 'just works'. They can slot in new products for every 5% of performance as they want.

Ill say it again, I welcomed Pat as a no nonsense engineer who would light a fire under Intel's ass but so far he comes across as such a personality lacking business puppet.
Lets save all the praise and being proud till AFTER you release a product worthy of it shall we?

Look at the guy. He's supposed to be retired, not an innovation leader for a revamped company. The man is old news. As is Raja and the rest of those old boys. And note, this picture has him all polished up and well-lit for show. Best you're gonna get.

Irony has it, its a middle aged woman pulling AMD out of the swamp right now, steady as it goes for quite a while. Similarly, Huang might be getting older, but he's trying hard not to look like it.

Age matters and there is some turning point where experience can be a burden; and you should know when to make place for new talent. Intel is typically a company with a hierarchy that lacks this conviction. I have absolutely zero faith in Pat G or Raja in that regard. They're like the second rate guys that never did make it initially and now get a second chance saving a burning ship.

Something else I find curious, why are there only a handful of guys considered to be the best of the best... surely there have been plenty of graduates since them, and apprentices under them... I find it very confusing they are like the "The Chosen Ones" and irreplaceable, just seems odd to me.

Old boys network.

 

[Hawkster222]

Everybody loves a good underdog story like AMD INTEL .

 

[Vayra86]

I feel Raja is someone they need at this point to grow the GPU side of things. So not surprising he got a bump up. But as to whether he deserves it or not, we can't really tell until the product is out of the door. XE LP for iGPU seems to be a success, but that is after they dedicated significant die to the GPU. Looking forward to see what the bigger counterparts will catch up with competition in the various segments.

How is XE LP a success? Intel has always reserved a shit ton of die space for IGP and never really turned it into tremendous performance. Perf/watt is also not something to write home about - only very situationally does it outperform a (Vega based) Ryzen 4800U at the same power budget. More often though it does not, and lets not even begin speaking of the CPU performance alongside it then.

Its nothing revolutionary.

 

[Chrispy_]

How is XE LP a success? Intel has always reserved a shit ton of die space for IGP and never really turned it into tremendous performance. Perf/watt is also not something to write home about - only very situationally does it outperform a (Vega based) Ryzen 4800U at the same power budget. More often though it does not, and lets not even begin speaking of the CPU performance alongside it then.

View attachment 205093

Its nothing revolutionary.

XE LP is a success because it's a big improvement over previous Iris IGPs. Whilst it's nothing to write home about, 15W comparisons to the 4800U are flattering, only because one is on an excellent, refined, proven process (7nm TSMC) and the other is on Intel's troubled, delayed, shaky 10nm+

To get within 5% of a 4800U's IGP performance at the same power draw is "competitive", especially when taking the process node disadvantage into consideration, and it looks downright impressive when you consider the previous Iris architecture was a far worse performer. Intel's generational improvement in graphics architecture is enormous compared to AMD's complete lack of resources to move beyond the same Vega cores they offered us in 2017.