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Paul S. Otellini has died
- heyheyhey 9y agoI remember Paul said his biggest regret was not working with Apple on the iPhone. I wonder how different Intel would be today if that occurred.
- ShabbosGoy 9y agoProbably not much different, since Intel's baseband is on many versions of the iPhone.
- raverbashing 9y agoWell, they didn't have a competing product at the time. Atom on phones is kinda new, and I'm not sure it would fit Apple's requirements of battery life, etc
- thecompilr 9y agoWell, probably we would still see Apple develop their own CPUs. Intel just couldn't deliver on the low power promise.
- GeekyBear 9y agoIntel sure left a whole lot of money on the table for the TSMC's of the world to use for R&D and for capital expenditures like building more Fabs.
- RachelF 9y agoIntel had an ARM chip division for Phone CPUs called XScale from 2002 to 2006 when they sold it to Marvell to focus on the more profitable x86 series.[1] He may have believed the x86 Atom chips could replace the XScale. Xscale was widely used in Palm Treo's, Sony Clie's most Compaq Poquet PC's and the original Amazon Kindle. His "biggest regret" comment is pure rewriting of history. He made the wrong decision to get out of phone CPUs. This is probably one of the biggest blunders in Intel's history. [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XScale https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XScale
- selectodude 9y agoWhat's odd is they still have an ARM Architectural license. They could jump into the fray if they really wanted to. Probably would be pretty hard to justify, though.
- mixmastamyk 9y agoRead a few comments below lamenting about lost profits. Odd, because I’m thanking the lucky stars we don’t have more consolidation in the industry.
- keeptrying 9y agoHe seems to have led a winderful and impactful life but it's a little shocking when so many people in the news, who seemingly led healthy lives, pass away in their 60s . :( Why is this happening?
- athenot 9y agoIf the average life expectancy in the US is 78 years, that means there are plenty of people who might live to be 90, perhaps even beyond 100 and many who will die anywhere between childhood and that average number. Sadly, many interpret this to be that they will live to be that magic average number, and either get caught off-guard when time is up sooner (perhaps regretting having neglected family time / travel / personal stuff), or unprepared in the case they live 20 years beyond what their savings had projected to last.
- rootbear 9y agoMy mother, who turns 97 today, is utterly astonished that she's still alive.
- jameskegel 9y agoIs she fairly active? I've noticed over the years, the ones that just refuse to stop moving just keep going, for the most part.
- yeukhon 9y agoI second this. I know a lot of elders who are fairly active outdoor and indoor seem to do better, much like plants need sunlight and fresh air. My grandma used to live in China by herself and her parish was only a few doors down. When she finally came to live with us in the U.S., she still go to church every morning, but she has to walk two blocks. After a few months, her walking has improved, and crane is now optional on the good sunny days. She eats well too (compared to what she would eat in China..) She's 88 years old today. For many years, Chinese elders are recommended to go to senior citizen clubs, play chess games and Mahjong, do TaiChi or something alike, for better physical and mental health. The unfortunate side of the reality is many elders are disabled and have no one to get them where they need to be except getting help from senior assistance. I hope more families can spend more time with their elderly.
- _wmd 9y agoSecond paragraph dives straight into corporate quarterly bonus bullet point bullshit! What about the human! This is easily the worst in memoriam I think I've ever seen. Written by some HR droid? What an embarrassment, I think I just discovered why I'd never, ever work for Intel
- sp332 9y agoA little tasteless, but it might have been an attempt to prevent high-frequency trading bots from freaking out and selling.
- dman 9y agoI never thought about bots in this context, thanks for pointing this out.
- craftyguy 9y agoWell, it does attribute the company's financial success during this period to him.
- topgunsarg 9y agoGetting outraged over a paragraph detailing someone's professional accomplishments in their professional obituary...It's Intel's article on their former CEO's death, what's it supposed to do, detail his personal life?
- _wmd 9y agoAn obituary should detail a man and /his/ life rather than his relationship to a company, I understand how some people think this is justifiable, but I also just find it grotesque in every way. I know nothing more about him than I did prior to reading, or whether he achieved any kind of satisfaction in his personal life, which I think is kinda the point of these things. Quarterly OKRs for a millionaire? I really hope they weren't the entirety of his existence, otherwise we're all doomed
- sillysaurus3 9y ago
- madamelic 9y agoThis is going to sound really heartless: Imagine working for the same company your entire adult life, retiring and dying 4 years later. The thought of that, as a 26-year old, terrifies me.
- koolba 9y agoHeartless? Up until quite recently, that was the norm.
- eterm 9y agoIf that frightens you then you shouldn't sacrifice yourself working expecting some kind of future pay-off. Live around your work, so you are working to enjoy life now, not in the future. That doesn't mean "slack off" or "can working", it just means find hobbies you enjoy and dedicate yourself as much to them as your work.
- pm90 9y agoYou can die TODAY in a car crash, the 4th largest killer of Americans. Life is pretty fleeting; we plan for a long healthy life and in most cases it does pan out. But you can get super unlucky for whatever reason.
- dnautics 9y agomy dad worked for the federal government. The federal government harassed him in the workplace for being a whistleblower. He sued the federal government. The stress of the lawsuit deteriorated his health. He died one year after retiring.
- micah94 9y agoThis terrifies me.
- raugustinus 9y agoSorry for your loss. But at least he cleared his conscience. Sorry he had to go through the stress as well. It might take decades, but they will reap what they sow.
- dbcurtis 9y agoWow. Saddens me. I had the opportunity to meet Paul a couple of times when I worked at Intel. Paul always impressed me as a great executive and a great person. I have long believed that Paul is the best post-Grove CEO that Intel has had. Otellini was as good of a CEO as Grove, better in certain ways (consumer marketing instincts). His tenure was not as long as Grove's and is under-appreciated for that reason only.
- nkkollaw 9y ago66!? Wow... That's sad in 2017. Not old at all.
- rdiddly 9y agoSame age as Tom Petty; in fact they were born within 8 days of each other.
- propelol 9y ago66 is pretty good if you are a heroin junkie
- jamaicahest 9y agoIndeed. My father died a few years ago, at age 64. His death could have been avoided, had he simply gone to the doctor regularly to get a health check-up as he died due to atherosclerosis and we didn't know he had that. I don't know about other countries, but here in Denmark guys are notoriously bad at going to the doctor, unless we're really sick, according to various physicians. Point is, go to your doctor and get checked on a regular basis, even if you feel fine.
- asveikau 9y agoThis might be a tad off-topic for HN, but the dates seem like an odd coincidence: I am noticing that, per Wikipedia, Otellini was born 8 days before Tom Petty, and they died on the same day. Edit: it may be a silly observation I have made, but hn users are really silly to downvote this.
- self_awareness 9y agoWe simply don't know what exactly is your point. Lots of people have died the same day as Otellini.
- asveikau 9y agoAnd born a week and some change apart? In a first world country where 66 is certainly no spring chicken but considered just a tad too young to die? I disagree with your assessment. I think this place is just full of people who are too easily offended by non tech topics appearing, and think perhaps that if they were at their own deathbed they'd look back and be glad they moved to discourage some random dope that casually compared the day's news to another headline. Very smug and lacking in social perspective.
- robk 9y agoHe was a very nice person who I greatly liked but as an alumni I'm saddened at the architectural missteps that plagued the company such as the Pentium 4 architecture changes that otherwise cost billions of shareholder value. There was a vocal part of engineering who were disappointed a finance guy was in charge for the first time.
- Analemma_ 9y agoThis might be trying to put a post facto positive spin on a disaster, but I always heard from people involved with NetBurst that they learned a lot of lessons from that debacle that were applied to make Core as good as it was, and that without those it wouldn’t have been nearly as good. Again, take that all with a grain of salt, but maybe the P4 was a necessary step to get all the pretty-good chips that came afterward. Besides, if you’re looking for screw-ups that hammered Intel’s shareholder value, I don’t think the P4 is even in the top 3. Selling XScale and missing the boat on ARM was much worse.
- simonh 9y agoI still dot get that. I can see how they made that move based on the situation at the time, but if not with the iPhone then by 2010 at least with the iPad launch they must have seen how much things had changed. It also was far from too late to pivot back into ARM. Look what Apple managed to do in just a few years starting from scratch. It’s not as if Intel worked out an alternative strategy either, if so where is it now? They’ve still effectively got nothing worthwhile in the mobile space after a decade.
- wmf 9y agoSome people have speculated that selling low-margin phone SoCs would be worse for Intel than doing nothing.
- mixmastamyk 9y agoThe innovator’s dilemma in one sentence.
- noipv4 9y agohttps://youtu.be/1CgAKBf4bbU?t=59m3s https://youtu.be/1CgAKBf4bbU?t=59m3s
- toephu2 9y agoOnly 66? What was the cause of death?
- gwbas1c 9y agoI interned at Intel in 2002. We (all the interns) were invited to hear him speak. At the time, I didn't know who we was, but he was some exec and, well, it's always cool to listen to execs. I don't remember much of his speech, but when I remember most was bumping into him in the stairwell on my way to the speech. My eyes landed on his badge, and I said something like, "hey, I'm about to go listen to you talk." We had one of the most friendly conversations I had.