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Intel: An Open Letter to an Open Ecosystem

Daniel Nenni

Admin
Staff member
Pat Gelsinger

When I joined Intel at the age of 18, I was deeply inspired – frankly, awestruck – at the prospect of working for a company with technology that can create a positive impact for so many people around the world. Forty years later, I still feel this way. And I believe this level of impact and depth of purpose should be open to all technologies, including every developer and every company.

Innovation thrives in an open, democratized environment where people can connect, communicate, and respond together to new stimuli. Back in 1997, I introduced the Intel Developer Forum to bring together a diverse audience of developers, partners, and customers to shape the future of cross-platform technologies. This free exchange increased our ability to learn from one another.

Today’s technologists stand on the shoulders of those who came before us. At the dawn of the Information Age, enterprise, academia and government collaborated, building upon one another’s discoveries to create the foundations so pivotal to our world today: personal computing, the internet, the networks that make us a global society. There were healthy rivalries, but the ecosystem was open.

Now more than ever, the challenges of the world demand innovation. They demand transparency. They are solved in the open. As one example, the Texas Advanced Computing Center’s Frontera supercomputer played an instrumental role in mapping the novel SARS COVID-19 virus at the molecular and atomic levels early in the pandemic. Researchers needed these details to understand which medicines and vaccination approaches might most successfully fight and mitigate the disease. But the thousands of servers, hundreds of thousands of nodes, software infrastructure and modeling software necessary were not created overnight. Collaboration among universities, government agencies and corporations sought to solve critical challenges – like cancer and climate change – long before the current viral crisis overtook the globe.

An example like this shows how our collective future – our collective potential – is unlocked when we enable openness, choice, and trust among us.

This is why I fundamentally believe in an open source bias, which powers the software-defined infrastructure that transformed the modern data center and ushered in the data-centric era. Intel has a rich history in driving open platforms and industry-shaping standards like USB, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth – and many more – and all the APIs that enabled them. I believe in enabling all end-users, developers, partners and enterprises to be successful, because it drives renewed R&D excitement. And I believe a powerful, open ecosystem will always triumph. Only together can we ensure technology, which is inherently neither good nor evil, is ultimately applied for good.

Whether you create devices, mobile or desktop; enterprise systems, infrastructure on-premises or in the cloud; networks, wireless or platforms; whether you develop hardware or software; analyze IoT or big data; lead an established company or incubated startup; we must make an open ecosystem experience compelling, easy, secure and better.

This is why today Intel is making a pledge to openness. We will:
  • Double-down on our deep legacy in open platforms, with the specific intention of enabling innovation and accelerating our shared future.

  • Invest in open software stacks like Intel oneAPI and drive industry-shaping standards.

  • Empower developer choice through collaboration with the broad ecosystem.

  • Collaborate with our industry partners to solve systemic challenges of security and distribution.

  • Work with academia and developers to innovate on future challenges like neuromorphic and quantum computing – all in the open.

  • And, as is core to the Intel values, we will be inclusive in our approach and support of communities’ efforts, while embracing diversity and our differences because they make us better.
And this is why we’ve brought back the spirit of the Intel Developer Forum with our inaugural Intel Innovation event on Oct. 27 and 28, where I’ll be speaking more about the impact and importance of openness, choice and trust.

I call on fellow technologists and leaders to join me and commit once again to the power of an open ecosystem.

Tomorrow depends on it.

 
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Interesting response to:

 
I have a feeling that when Intel talks about "open" or when TSMC talks about "open", they are actually talking about two different things. Can someone who has experience on both Intel and TSMC share some insights?
 
Maybe Pat reads this forum
He allegedly doesn't sleep.

Ecosystems are a pattern. Asml is part of zeiss, asml, imec, and philips. Apple with tsmc and foxcomm, nvidia with tsmc, tsmc with ..... .
 
I highly recommend if you have some 5 minutes to spare, please visit Pat's open letter that's posted on LinkedIn. Pat is showered with overwhelmingly positive praises from engineers, partners, industry insiders, and Intel employees. Such as:

"Pat Gelsinger is a real leader, with a real vision, who wants the best for everyone."

"So proud of our great CEO Pat!!! A true hero! Never have such strong confidence that Pat will led the company win back the industrial leadership!!!"

"Pat, it feels like Intel is Intel again"

"Great software vision from Pat"

"Pat, these are very empowering words, especially to those of us who are, as you put it, “standing on the shoulders of those who came before us”. The age of information has absolutely shaped and molded my generation’s outlook and aspirations, with the right mix of open collaboration alongside healthy rivalries. I’m glad to see you putting Intel at the forefront of tech companies calling out for more open, honest collaboration in tech. Thank you for putting Intel back on track."

"Well said Sir!"

"Thank you Pat Gelsinger for these wonderful commitments to open! Intel and Red Hat have shared values here, and I'm looking forward to the great work we can do together in communities to make broad, positive impacts. Open unlocks the world's potential!"

"I've been at Intel 28 years and counting and with Pat on board now.... well I guess I'm looking forward to another 28! Wait, that probably wouldn't work. OK, at least a whole bunch more :)"

"Thank you very much for your inspiring message, Mr. Gelsinger!"

"Such a powerful and important statement. Thanks, Pat!"



Until two persons showed up. And they probably don't understand how to hold a positive attitude during a social gathering:

Paul Kahler, PD Engineer Manager - Firmware at Hanon Systems
"Yeah but.... The new Intel compiler has closed source built on top of LLVM. We know you guys like to "optimize" for Intel chips while making sure competitors don't benefit, and that's certainly your option. But now you're going to play that game by building on open source, while talking up openness. To be fair, Intel has contributed a lot to FOSS but this compiler move is not in harmony with all of that other effort."

Avi Messica, CEO at Stealth Mode startup
"We approached Intel Foundry a few months ago, after signing the first NDA we didn't get any further response. No matter how much we tried to contact the foundry people there was no response. Like they vanished into thin air."


 
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I have a feeling that when Intel talks about "open" or when TSMC talks about "open", they are actually talking about two different things. Can someone who has experience on both Intel and TSMC share some insights?
For Intel "open" simply means "open your wallet, custy".
 
I have a feeling that when Intel talks about "open" or when TSMC talks about "open", they are actually talking about two different things. Can someone who has experience on both Intel and TSMC share some insights?

With regards to Intel, I took Pat’s comments to imply that Intel will continue to actively participate in “industry standards” activities, contributing their technology to the larger community.

Specifically, Pat mentioned “USB, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth – and many more – and all the APIs that enabled them.”

To that list, I would add other examples of Intel’s contributions to hardware and software standards:
- a leadership role in the PCI-SIG standards group
- an active role in the Chips Alliance group “standard" activities for inter-chiplet communication
- Intel contributed their AIB specification to Chips Alliance
- an active role in the Compute Express Link (CXL) standards activity for cache-coherent memory management across a disparate set of processing elements -- CPU, GPU, dedicated accelerators (Sapphire Rapids integrates CXL 1.1 support.)

And, as Pat mentioned, the “oneAPI” initiative that was introduced at the Intel Unleashed presentation is an open source initiative for software stack development: “oneAPI”: an open, standards-based, cross-architecture programming model, supporting: parallel programming, AI analytics, cross-platform performance libraries, and FPGA.

TSMC is not talking about influencing standards. TSMC's version of open is, in my interpretation, that they are open to working with customers, partners, suppliers, etc... on design enablement, for the greater good of the semiconductor industry. TSMC's OIP is an example. The OIP conference happened yesterday, we will be publishing coverage shortly. Lot's of interesting stuff from TSMC and partners.
 
Side Note:

When you really dive into who Pat Geisinger is, you'll realize that he's a bit of a religious nut job and he very likely actually believes that Intel will succeed because God in his corner. This is probably why he's willing to take such extreme risks... he believes he has a destiny and this is it.
 
The guy walks and talks like a psychopath/narcissist. That's all there is to it. But given Intel's situation, such a person is actually the only viable choise for the job.
 
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