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Intel may have second thoughts about the new fab in Magdeburg Germany

Speaking of Intel CEO’s who lasted too long, is there an acceptance that Otellini and Brian torpedoed the company? Also what are your expectations for Intels report on Thursday? I anticipate a big miss and a bloodbath generally but I’ve been very biased against Intel for quite some time to be transparent. Curious if you’ve heard anything.
 
Mooredaddy said:
Speaking of Intel CEO’s who lasted too long, is there an acceptance that Otellini and Brian torpedoed the company? Also what are your expectations for Intels report on Thursday? I anticipate a big miss and a bloodbath generally but I’ve been very biased against Intel for quite some time to be transparent. Curious if you’ve heard anything.
Click to expand...

BK is my least favorite Intel CEO. Otellini missed mobile so that was bad but I credit BK with the loss of process technology leadership.
 
blueone said:
Yes we can. I don't think an engineering and manufacturing company like Intel should have a BoD chaired by a finance person at all.
Click to expand...
That’s exactly what I like about TSMC’s board and c-suite. It’s PHD’s all around with relevant electrical engineering experience. Intel is stuffed full of finance people. The contrast is quite indicative of where both are right now…
 
Mooredaddy said:
That’s exactly what I like about TSMC’s board and c-suite. It’s PHD’s all around with relevant electrical engineering experience. Intel is stuffed full of finance people. The contrast is quite indicative of where both are right now…
Click to expand...
Intel's BoD includes several PhDs/MS people in relevant fields, though there is some diversity in systems and software, cloud computing, medicine, and venture capital. It is the chair position that is most critical, because the chair sets the agenda, and has a huge influence over decision-making. I never thought Bryant was appropriate for that role. There is also a massive cultural issue in Intel and other US companies where people with sales and marketing backgrounds have a tendency to rise far beyond their decision-making and leadership capabilities.

There are no laws of management physics about what background a leader needs to succeed, but coming out of the world of designing and building things tilts the scale to better outcomes, IMHO. That obviously didn't work with Brian Krzanich, and the best CEO of a technology company I ever experienced had a finance background, so rules involve more probability than certainty. I'm guessing that most TSMC executives rise through the ranks and are cultivated in various roles. Academic backgrounds look interesting on paper because they're meant to look relevant, the real interesting stuff is what they have been doing for the past 20 years and what those assignments were.
 
Mooredaddy said:
That’s exactly what I like about TSMC’s board and c-suite. It’s PHD’s all around with relevant electrical engineering experience. Intel is stuffed full of finance people. The contrast is quite indicative of where both are right now…
Click to expand...

I have been watching Intel's board of directors and senior leadership team for several years. In terms of qualifications, industrial experience, and education background, the current Intel's is much better than before. Intel's senior leadership team for several years was full of people with only bachelor degrees or non engineering master degrees.

But if we look into the current TSMC board of directors, I have to say it's on a higher level than Intel's.
 
hist78 said:
I have been watching Intel's board of directors and senior leadership team for several years. In terms of qualifications, industrial experience, and education background, the current Intel's is much better than before. Intel's senior leadership team for several years was full of people with only bachelor degrees or non engineering master degrees.

But if we look into the current TSMC board of directors, I have to say it's on a higher level than Intel's.
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I wish there was a strong positive correlation between advanced degrees and valuable contributions at senior leadership and BoD levels.

As for Intel, I don't think the quality of their top-line staff has improved much. The two major chip product groups are led by people without engineering backgrounds. The company CTO has no chip design or manufacturing experience. The Chief Architect is a GPU expert, in mostly a CPU company. The current IFS president is leaving, but he had no foundry experience anyway. No replacement has been announced yet. The top exec in their Network and Edge group has never led a large corporate organization. (FWIW, I do think McKeown's technology and research agendas are awesome.) Talk about initiation by fire. The CEO of Mobileye lists his role as a university professor first in his bio. The brightest spot seems to be Ann Kelleher, who leads technology development.

www.intel.com

Intel Newsroom: Executive Leadership

Executive Leadership Biographies from the Intel Newsroom.
www.intel.com www.intel.com
 
This type of partnership makes complete sense, customer driven:

FRANKFURT, Jan 21 (Reuters) - U.S. power chip maker Wolfspeed Inc (WOLF.N) is planning to build a factory in Germany for more than 2 billion euros ($2.17 billion), Handelsblatt reported on Saturday. The German auto supplier ZF will hold a minority stake, the the business newspaper said, citing unidentified sources familiar with the project. Production should begin in four years at the site in the small southwest German state of Saarland, the report added.

www.reuters.com

Wolfspeed plans multi-billion dollar chip factory in Germany, Handelsblatt reports

U.S. power chip maker Wolfspeed Inc is planning to build a factory in Germany for more than 2 billion euros ($2.17 billion), Handelsblatt reported on Saturday.
www.reuters.com www.reuters.com

TSMC pre pay agreements are even better.
 
hist78 said:
And the former Chairman Omar Ishrak stays in the board.

Intel seems to see its biggest challenge right now is finance and new Chairman Frank Yeary's experience fits that.
Click to expand...
I disagree. Intels biggest challenge is successfully becoming a chip foundry. Gelsinger does not have foundry experience, even as a foundry customer. Yeary has been a board member since 2009, and he no technical experience. At least Ishrak was an EE by training; he had no chip experience either. Since Intel's general manager of manufacturing, Esfarjani, is an industrial engineer by background, I'm wondering where the core fabrication expertise is in the Intel leadership team. Considering the before-mentioned lack of technical expertise in key members of Gelsinger's direct staff, technical decision-making in Intel looks mysterious.
 
blueone said:
I disagree. Intels biggest challenge is successfully becoming a chip foundry. Gelsinger does not have foundry experience, even as a foundry customer. Yeary has been a board member since 2009, and he no technical experience. At least Ishrak was an EE by training; he had no chip experience either. Since Intel's general manager of manufacturing, Esfarjani, is an industrial engineer by background, I'm wondering where the core fabrication expertise is in the Intel leadership team. Considering the before-mentioned lack of technical expertise in key members of Gelsinger's direct staff, technical decision-making in Intel looks mysterious.
Click to expand...

"technical decision-making in Intel looks mysterious."

It has been like that for the past ten years or so especially if we look into the results.
 
blueone said:
I disagree. Intels biggest challenge is successfully becoming a chip foundry. Gelsinger does not have foundry experience, even as a foundry customer. Yeary has been a board member since 2009, and he no technical experience. At least Ishrak was an EE by training; he had no chip experience either. Since Intel's general manager of manufacturing, Esfarjani, is an industrial engineer by background, I'm wondering where the core fabrication expertise is in the Intel leadership team. Considering the before-mentioned lack of technical expertise in key members of Gelsinger's direct staff, technical decision-making in Intel looks mysterious.
Click to expand...

"Glass half full" on Pat --

At VMWare he did gain experience launching their IaaS service ("here's our sandbox, go play"), and while he's not a fabrication expert at Intel he certainly has a lot of history with the [engineering, fabrication] processes at Intel when things were going well.

I know Intel's culture is unique - but do a lot of technical decisions really get made at the "direct reports to the CEO" level?. I spent a lot of time at Lockheed Martin, and major technical decisions - even for F-22, F-35 were definitely made more than a step below the CEO. (Though while Lockheed is similar to Intel in the complexity of the engineering required to succeed, it differs greatly in the # of unique products/services.)

That said, The Intel board certainly seems like an area of opportunity.. I also hope Intel is able to grow ARC into a positive revenue stream in the long term - they seem to have made some technical choices with the product that.. people they hired from AMD .. should have known better on.
 
Xebec said:
I know Intel's culture is unique - but do a lot of technical decisions really get made at the "direct reports to the CEO" level?. I spent a lot of time at Lockheed Martin, and major technical decisions - even for F-22, F-35 were definitely made more than a step below the CEO. (Though while Lockheed is similar to Intel in the complexity of the engineering required to succeed, it differs greatly in the # of unique products/services.)
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Virtually no technicals details reach the CEO unless he or she asks for details, though Pat probably does for CPU product proposals, since he was a CPU architect. The level I was discussing is something like the SVP of CPU engineering gets together with her technical peers and staff and puts together a proposal for a next generation CPU development plan. (The SVP of CPU engineering is currently a woman.) And, I'll make this up, but say she asks for a budget of about $200 million, and big headcount targets, and other resources. And, there's a joint plan with manufacturing for process, packaging, and whatever requirements, which costs even more. Her EVPs for the Client and Datacenter groups aren't nearly as technical, but they drive the product requirements and a lot of the resources are in their groups. You want to spend in nine figures or more you're going to the CEO, and he's probably taking you to the BoD. For a CPU design Gelsinger probably is as viable a judge of a CPU development effort as any CEO in the industry.

For manufacturing, who's the equivalent of Pat? Kelleher? She leads Technology Development, not manufacturing. I would think Intel would need leaders that look more like people on TSMC's leadership team. You can look for yourself, but I'm not seeing enough commonality.

Let's look at Apple's top line staff, as another example. If there's a more competent and technical top-line staff in the computing industry, I haven't seen it. Tim Cook himself is an Apple supply line expert. Apple's BoD has no technical experts, and they probably don't need them because Apple has a first-rate leadership team and builds consumer products. Intel builds products in markets only experts can understand. And, IMHO, if Intel's top-line staff were consistently better they wouldn't be having the challenges they are now. Intel has a lot of brilliant engineers.
Xebec said:
That said, The Intel board certainly seems like an area of opportunity.. I also hope Intel is able to grow ARC into a positive revenue stream in the long term - they seem to have made some technical choices with the product that.. people they hired from AMD .. should have known better on.
Click to expand...
I'm always skeptical of non-technical people making decisions on technical issues. If Intel's top line staff impressed me more, perhaps I'd be less skeptical.
 
blueone said:
I disagree. Intels biggest challenge is successfully becoming a chip foundry. Gelsinger does not have foundry experience, even as a foundry customer. Yeary has been a board member since 2009, and he no technical experience. At least Ishrak was an EE by training; he had no chip experience either. Since Intel's general manager of manufacturing, Esfarjani, is an industrial engineer by background, I'm wondering where the core fabrication expertise is in the Intel leadership team. Considering the before-mentioned lack of technical expertise in key members of Gelsinger's direct staff, technical decision-making in Intel looks mysterious.
Click to expand...

I was talking about Intel's thinking, not mine.

Personally I think Intel's biggest challenge right now is to have meaningful products (fab internally or externally) that the market needs. The Intel foundry service is a long and expensive game but IFS revenue won't come fast enough and large enough to make up Intel's shrinking revenue.
 
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