4d ago

Intel CEO says it's "too late" for them to catch up with AI competition — reportedly claims Intel has fallen out of the "top 10 semiconductor companies" as the firm lays off thousands across the world

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5d ago

Intel CEO says it's "too late" for them to catch up with AI competition — claims Intel has fallen out of the "top 10 semiconductor companies" as the firm lays off thousands across the world

www.tomshardware.com /tech-industry/intel-ceo-says-its-too-late-for-them-to-catch-up-with-ai-competition-claims-intel-has-fallen-out-of-the-top-10-semiconductor-companies-as-the-firm-lays-off-thousands-across-the-world

39 comments

Reminder that AI could replace literally every ceo in America and the only way anyone would notice is there wouldn’t be stories of them publicly saying idiotic things
- If the AI ~~learns from~~ copies previous CEO's, they will continue to state idiotic things publicly, because they "think" it's a strategy for the company to stay relevant.
  
  I grok what you’re saying
- As it stands, any company of reasonable size has its CEO comms ghostwritten by mid level marketing people or personal admins to the CEO. So statistically that means most of their written messaging is from a 27-year-old white chick with a either a comms, PR, or PoliSci degree who made $71K last year.
  So in effect you could have AI churn out the same generic corporate platitudes for the CEO email, and that marketing chick can go back to whatever her actual job duties are supposed to be?
  
  that marketing chick can go back to whatever her actual job duties are supposed to be?
  Or get laid off.
  
  Yeah good luck with that.
- There are enough training examples that we could get a reasonable facsimile.
  
  I would kind of like AI CEO's to occasionally say stupid things. Just as a reminder.
This is insanely embarrassing for Intel:
https://www.cnbc.com/2017/06/01/the-7-trillion-promise-of-self-driving-vehicles.html
AI was why Intel bought Mobileye in 2017 for $15 billion!
But instead of leveraging it to catch up, they've fallen further behind, not even able to keep up with AMD?!
AMD even when they ran at deficits and near bankruptcy for years around that time, continued to work on compute, and although they couldn't quite keep up with Nvidia when almost all AMD R&D was focused on Ryzen, they managed to stay in 2nd place, even allowing them to capitalize on the blockchain hype, and remain a runner up for AI.
While Intel kept churning out 5-10% faster cheap 4 core CPU's at ever higher prices each year, even when smartphones got 8 cores as standard!
And when Ryzen came out with 8 cores as standard, Intel was caught completely off guard, despite it had been public knowledge for a while! And Intel staying on 4 cores was obviously ridiculous.
Ryzen came out in 2017, same year Intel Bought Mobileye, and since then Intel seems to have gone from one disaster to the next in everything they touch!
Intel used to be leading in laptop-, desktop-, server-CPU, SSD and process technology, all those leads are lost, and they failed to catch up on AI?
WTF was the plan? Is there ANYTHING that's going well for Intel?
- What do you mean what was the plan?
  This is the new CEO, spinning into "stripping Intel off for parts" mode.
  The previous CEOs (Brian Krzanich, Bob Swan, and Pat Gelsinger) meanwhile made more money than you or I will ever make on maximizing short-term profits by refusing to invest into competitive levels of R&D.
  That has always been the plan. If you want to figure out why Intel paid 3 CEOs millions to shoot itself in the foot, then one has to start investigating the board of directors since 2013-ish. They're either inside traders, incompetent, or both.
  Intel, Boeing, and the Big Three are emblematic of the ultimate decline of American capitalism post-2008. They inherited empires and had virtually unlimited state welfare and still fucked it up because halfway decent corporate governance is apparently a bigger challenge for these big companies than building airplanes the size of buildings or mass-printing circuits with sub-micrometer resolution.
  
  What do you mean what was the plan?
  I mean what the hell were they thinking back from around 2014-2020?
  This is the new CEO, spinning into “stripping Intel off for parts” mode.
  Exactly, they seemingly still don't have anything close to a plan on anything that used to be their main strength. They've only doubled down at first, and now they are pulling back. Making a "better" CPU is not a plan or a strategy.
- Is there ANYTHING that's going well for Intel?
  Their Arc Battlemage discrete GPUs are a success, relatively speaking.
  
  The cards are good value, but I don't think so, the die is to big, so they are expensive to make, and despite the good value, they are not very successful in the market.
  It may be something that could succeed if they continue, but they are not there yet.
  The cards are good from a consumer perspective, but not from a business perspective.
- Great summary, I have used Intel most of my life but my current new project will have an AMD CPU. Intel feels out of touch BUT... I'm glad they are jumping to GPUs, although late it's nice to have more competition.
  
  I've been using AMD (and ATi) for 20+ years. An Arc GPU is the first* Intel product I've actually been interested in and seriously considered getting, in all that time. I still ended up picking an AMD 9070 XT because there isn't an Arc card in that market segment, but maybe next time.
  (* Other than a Chromebook I had to buy for college, which at the time didn't have any reasonable AMD options available.)
Maybe Intel should have taken more RISCs? I'll see myself out.
Thank goodness they paid insane amounts of money to a string of CEOs for checks notes* . . . exceptional leadership! Sorry about the job losses and all that, what what.
- Tbh I don't think it's Gelsinger's fault for the company going under. He's been an exceptionally good engineer with a good plan for the future. Sadly short term gain greed of the board got him axed.
Might as well give up.
What a pathetic ethos.
- It's often a sound strategy.
  Quit while you're behind, and refocus onto something you can do profitably. "Stop throwing good money after bad", and all that.
- And yet it's the first CEO Intel has had in years who is willing to acknowledge reality. Maybe they're finally past their denial stage.
- They are. This is sell off mode. Chapter 7/11 or a buy out are the only real options
They got nearly $8 billion in the CHIPS act less than a year ago, and they are still laying off? I'm guessing they lit that money on fire with stock buybacks, as is tradition.
- There's also the fact that nobody wants their terrible CPUs anymore.
  They definitely would have done stock buybacks a few years ago, though, which is why they got here in the first place.
intel? pfft. more like outtel, amirite?
- Or counter-Intel. Or Disinfo.
Be the gold standard for strong and optimized. Stop innovating and fix your shit. They have so many technologies, just make them stronger and energy efficient. Be good at being content.
don't catch up then. Maybe I'll respect your company if you don't try to force crappy AI on us
Their business management policy going forward will be to milk existing support contracts until they wane, and then piecemeal/gut the company. The brand will end up somewhere else like how Motorola was scattered to the seven winds. (Cablemodem line became Arris, which is now owned by CommScope, cell phone line now owned by Lenovo, enterprise/mobile compute now owned by Zebra, chargers/headsets now licensed by Binatone/Zoom, radios now owned by a spinoff called Motorola Solutions, etc.)
Intel already sold their modem line to Apple, which is probably why it took Apple so long to make their own modem, they were starting from a place of garbage. They also sold their NUC line to Asus, which, given the lack of quality in the NUC13 series, probably good as they obviously stopped caring.
I don't know if anyone could have predicted that the ARM architecture would become so dominant, but it certainly seems like Intel missed the boat on that one.
- ARM wasn't a sudden shift. 15 years ago it was clearly not going to be going away, simply due to energy efficiency needs. Intel responded with the Atom line, which was widely panned. Once it failed, Intel seemingly decided to skip that entire market.
So basically investor-speak for, "AI is a money hole and specializing our chips to run ELIZAs is stupid as hell."
- Lmfao you're giving them way too much credit
Glad I got out when I did

39 comments