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An Interview with Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger

154 points by oumua_don17 5y ago

mooreds 5y ago
This is OT, but can I just say how amazing it is that the head of a large public tech company is being interviewed by a smart guy with a paid newsletter? What a world. Edit: corrected typo.
- user_named 5y ago
- btheshoe 5y ago
  A paid newsletter that's read by a large portion of the tech world
  - mooreds 5y ago
    > read by a large portion of the tech world Hmmm. I might take issue with that statement. While the author of Stratechery doesn't seem to have any public numbers, from https://stratechery.com/about/ https://stratechery.com/about/ "Stratechery has subscribers from over 85 different countries, including executives in both technology and industries impacted by technology, venture capitalists and investors, and thousands of other people interested in understanding how and why the Internet is changing everything." Hmmm. "Thousands"? So let's round up and call it 10k. From the BLS, approximately 178k Computer Programmers in 2020 in the US: https://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes151251.htm https://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes151251.htm Just programmers, just in the US. So 10k is ~5% of programmers in the USA. That's not a 'large' number in my understanding, and that ignores everyone outside of the USA and everyone who is in tech in the USA but not a programmer. It's hard to find global numbers from a reliable source, but googling around indicates that there are millions of people in the tech sector worldwide.
fnbr 5y ago
Stratechery (& Dithering) is the only paid newsletter I subscribe to. It’s so worth it. I think that everyone working in tech should subscribe to maintain an objective view of the overall tech landscape. Otherwise, you get sucked into the gravitational well of your employer’s propaganda. This is especially true at big tech, as Ben covers them often.
- enos_feedler 5y ago
  I am not sure how many people really get sucked into employer’s propaganda. However, it is a great newsletter with good interviews and an energetic and passionate voice on tech.
  - fnbr 5y ago
    I think it’s easy to get sucked into it accidentally if the only source of tech news you read is your employer’s internal newsletters.
- pphysch 5y ago
  A bit off topic but every other (public) article from Stratechery reads like a hagiography of Intel. Now he landed an interview with the man himself. Hmm. Pat's time is extraordinarily valuable. Either the author lets his personal bias affect his analysis too much, or there is some PR money at work here. There's still a lot of interesting analysis but my opinion of the newsletter has soured over time.
  - binarynate 5y ago
    It sounds like you should read more of Ben's articles. He doesn't write about Intel every other article and he has long been critical of them for losing ground to TSMC.
    - hackernewds 5y ago
      It's telling there's not even mention, even if a jackfruit question, of IME
vvanders 5y ago
> Some of these conversations, Ben, I just find them delightful. We have these five whale customers that we’ve talked about, these are active conversations. Active, daily things and in that, the teams are now saying, well, what about the ultra low voltage threshold for the thin pitch library that we’re going to use in this particular cell? “TSMC is giving us these characteristics, you don’t characterize that corner.” Okay, guess what? Go characterize the corner! “Your PDK isn’t as robust as the Samsung or TSMC PDK is to describe the process technology for my team to simulate.” I get where he's going with this but if you're ever on the other side interacting with a vendor you should be very careful about what, if at all you disclose that their competitors are doing. Vendors notice what they learn from your teams and if they know it is leaky they will not disclose things that make the technical side easier. At a past gig we used the be the central point of contact for our vendors because we kept a strict firewall on the technical side between different product lines and SoCs. The first instinct of most engineers when you're trying to evaluate something or get the best performance is to say "X does Y, why don't you do Y" or "X does Y, how can we get similar results" and you've just disclosed something and that vendor will notice. On the flip side if you build up that trust and are known to not disclose you can be read in on things that normally wouldn't be shared. This can be incredibly valuable when you're trying to close on a key technical issue under schedule/time constraints.
- adityar 5y ago
  I find "X does Y, why don't you?" As a means to keep vendors from becoming complacent. As customers, we don't know what the tools limits are. Sometimes, vendors will not invest in improving their tools/results without a credible threat. The results from competing vendors is the closest you can get to impartial results that create pressure to perform.
  - criticaltinker 5y ago
    I think that is a reasonable counter argument to the solid advice GP shared. In my experience, vendors are usually well aware of their competition. It’s a thin and subtle line between motivating them and recklessly sharing details regarding trade secrets, IP, competitive advantages etc. Only mentioning this because I wish someone had clued me in earlier in my career. I only learned after my friend in opsec called me out for my loose lips.
marcodiego 5y ago
Not a single word about IME.
- xchaotic 5y ago
  What’s that?
  - JonChesterfield 5y ago
    Intel management engine. Remote code execution backdoor / feature.
- grapescheesee 5y ago
  Oh that old thing, minor out of band communication never hurt anyone.
awill 5y ago
Skimmed. I was hoping to read a deeper question about Intel's power consumption. I keep seeing benchmarks showing Intel's massive gains with the 12th gen that avoid talking about power. It's not that hard to match or exceed a competitors benchmark if you double the power budget. I've read that for the original iPhone Steve Jobs was in talks with Intel to produce a low power x86 chip. Intel said no. The silicon landscape would be very different if that had happened.
- bloodyplonker22 5y ago
  I calculated once that the cost of buying an intel chip is around double that of a similar performing AMD chip if you factor in the cost of electricity over a few years. Unfortunately for intel, their latest generation is still on very old 10nm technology while AMD is currently on 7nm and is going to 5nm soon. Because of their giant screw-ups with a sales and marketing CEO, Intel has fallen far behind with their own fabs, and power consumption has not improved at all. All they can do for now is sell their latest generation chips with a terrible profit margin in order to compete against AMD.
  - pinewurst 5y ago
    But Intel has renamed their 10nm to “Intel 7”! ;)
    - awill 5y ago
      That's the most hilarious thing of all.
danielmarkbruce 5y ago
>> Every day I sell another x86 socket, that is the highest margin, most strategic thing that Intel can do This basically summarizes why Intel is in so much trouble. They can execute well for the next 10 years and they are still hosed - they used to be practically the only supplier (AMD wasn't doing well) of the by far most used architecture in servers (and clients), and sold to 100s of thousands of customers, none of who could push them around. Now there are several architectures and several suppliers and the buyers are bigger and more concentrated than ever. They are just lucky the server market has been growing while the big cloud providers built out. It's not going to be a pretty 10 years to 2032... selling those x86's in 2032 won't be so.. high margin.
- xchaotic 5y ago
  It’s a classic innovator’s dilemma- they can continue milking the x86 or reinvent the company but not both at the same time.
  - gumby 5y ago
    > but not both at the same time. For 20 years they could have afforded to. Now it may be too late. If they try I don’t think the market would punish them for it. And in fact they are famous for killing their cash cow (memory) and focusing on the new thing (microprocessors) in the 80s under Grove. They have fallen far. Other big companies, like Google, have this problem and haven’t made efforts to address it.
- n7pdx 5y ago
  Intel is not going to beat anyone else in architecture or design in any compute system besides x86. They don't have the experience, the talent, or the culture to do so. Heck, Intel can't even beat AMD in x86 power/perf. So Pat is just stating the obvious, Intel has no option but to go maximal x86.
  - danielmarkbruce 5y ago
    Yep, I'm not even saying he's making a mistake. Every option looks problematic and his choice might well be the least bad option.

154 points by oumua_don17 5y ago

This is OT, but can I just say how amazing it is that the head of a large public tech company is being interviewed by a smart guy with a paid newsletter? What a world. Edit: corrected typo.

user_named 5y ago
btheshoe 5y ago
A paid newsletter that's read by a large portion of the tech world
- mooreds 5y ago
  > read by a large portion of the tech world Hmmm. I might take issue with that statement. While the author of Stratechery doesn't seem to have any public numbers, from https://stratechery.com/about/ https://stratechery.com/about/ "Stratechery has subscribers from over 85 different countries, including executives in both technology and industries impacted by technology, venture capitalists and investors, and thousands of other people interested in understanding how and why the Internet is changing everything." Hmmm. "Thousands"? So let's round up and call it 10k. From the BLS, approximately 178k Computer Programmers in 2020 in the US: https://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes151251.htm https://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes151251.htm Just programmers, just in the US. So 10k is ~5% of programmers in the USA. That's not a 'large' number in my understanding, and that ignores everyone outside of the USA and everyone who is in tech in the USA but not a programmer. It's hard to find global numbers from a reliable source, but googling around indicates that there are millions of people in the tech sector worldwide.

fnbr 5y ago

Stratechery (& Dithering) is the only paid newsletter I subscribe to. It’s so worth it. I think that everyone working in tech should subscribe to maintain an objective view of the overall tech landscape. Otherwise, you get sucked into the gravitational well of your employer’s propaganda. This is especially true at big tech, as Ben covers them often.

enos_feedler 5y ago
I am not sure how many people really get sucked into employer’s propaganda. However, it is a great newsletter with good interviews and an energetic and passionate voice on tech.
- fnbr 5y ago
  I think it’s easy to get sucked into it accidentally if the only source of tech news you read is your employer’s internal newsletters.
pphysch 5y ago
A bit off topic but every other (public) article from Stratechery reads like a hagiography of Intel. Now he landed an interview with the man himself. Hmm. Pat's time is extraordinarily valuable. Either the author lets his personal bias affect his analysis too much, or there is some PR money at work here. There's still a lot of interesting analysis but my opinion of the newsletter has soured over time.
- binarynate 5y ago
  It sounds like you should read more of Ben's articles. He doesn't write about Intel every other article and he has long been critical of them for losing ground to TSMC.
  - hackernewds 5y ago
    It's telling there's not even mention, even if a jackfruit question, of IME

vvanders 5y ago

> Some of these conversations, Ben, I just find them delightful. We have these five whale customers that we’ve talked about, these are active conversations. Active, daily things and in that, the teams are now saying, well, what about the ultra low voltage threshold for the thin pitch library that we’re going to use in this particular cell? “TSMC is giving us these characteristics, you don’t characterize that corner.” Okay, guess what? Go characterize the corner! “Your PDK isn’t as robust as the Samsung or TSMC PDK is to describe the process technology for my team to simulate.” I get where he's going with this but if you're ever on the other side interacting with a vendor you should be very careful about what, if at all you disclose that their competitors are doing. Vendors notice what they learn from your teams and if they know it is leaky they will not disclose things that make the technical side easier. At a past gig we used the be the central point of contact for our vendors because we kept a strict firewall on the technical side between different product lines and SoCs. The first instinct of most engineers when you're trying to evaluate something or get the best performance is to say "X does Y, why don't you do Y" or "X does Y, how can we get similar results" and you've just disclosed something and that vendor will notice. On the flip side if you build up that trust and are known to not disclose you can be read in on things that normally wouldn't be shared. This can be incredibly valuable when you're trying to close on a key technical issue under schedule/time constraints.

adityar 5y ago
I find "X does Y, why don't you?" As a means to keep vendors from becoming complacent. As customers, we don't know what the tools limits are. Sometimes, vendors will not invest in improving their tools/results without a credible threat. The results from competing vendors is the closest you can get to impartial results that create pressure to perform.
- criticaltinker 5y ago
  I think that is a reasonable counter argument to the solid advice GP shared. In my experience, vendors are usually well aware of their competition. It’s a thin and subtle line between motivating them and recklessly sharing details regarding trade secrets, IP, competitive advantages etc. Only mentioning this because I wish someone had clued me in earlier in my career. I only learned after my friend in opsec called me out for my loose lips.

marcodiego 5y ago

Not a single word about IME.

xchaotic 5y ago
What’s that?
- JonChesterfield 5y ago
  Intel management engine. Remote code execution backdoor / feature.
grapescheesee 5y ago
Oh that old thing, minor out of band communication never hurt anyone.

awill 5y ago

Skimmed. I was hoping to read a deeper question about Intel's power consumption. I keep seeing benchmarks showing Intel's massive gains with the 12th gen that avoid talking about power. It's not that hard to match or exceed a competitors benchmark if you double the power budget. I've read that for the original iPhone Steve Jobs was in talks with Intel to produce a low power x86 chip. Intel said no. The silicon landscape would be very different if that had happened.

bloodyplonker22 5y ago
I calculated once that the cost of buying an intel chip is around double that of a similar performing AMD chip if you factor in the cost of electricity over a few years. Unfortunately for intel, their latest generation is still on very old 10nm technology while AMD is currently on 7nm and is going to 5nm soon. Because of their giant screw-ups with a sales and marketing CEO, Intel has fallen far behind with their own fabs, and power consumption has not improved at all. All they can do for now is sell their latest generation chips with a terrible profit margin in order to compete against AMD.
- pinewurst 5y ago
  But Intel has renamed their 10nm to “Intel 7”! ;)
  - awill 5y ago
    That's the most hilarious thing of all.

danielmarkbruce 5y ago

>> Every day I sell another x86 socket, that is the highest margin, most strategic thing that Intel can do This basically summarizes why Intel is in so much trouble. They can execute well for the next 10 years and they are still hosed - they used to be practically the only supplier (AMD wasn't doing well) of the by far most used architecture in servers (and clients), and sold to 100s of thousands of customers, none of who could push them around. Now there are several architectures and several suppliers and the buyers are bigger and more concentrated than ever. They are just lucky the server market has been growing while the big cloud providers built out. It's not going to be a pretty 10 years to 2032... selling those x86's in 2032 won't be so.. high margin.

xchaotic 5y ago
It’s a classic innovator’s dilemma- they can continue milking the x86 or reinvent the company but not both at the same time.
- gumby 5y ago
  > but not both at the same time. For 20 years they could have afforded to. Now it may be too late. If they try I don’t think the market would punish them for it. And in fact they are famous for killing their cash cow (memory) and focusing on the new thing (microprocessors) in the 80s under Grove. They have fallen far. Other big companies, like Google, have this problem and haven’t made efforts to address it.
n7pdx 5y ago
Intel is not going to beat anyone else in architecture or design in any compute system besides x86. They don't have the experience, the talent, or the culture to do so. Heck, Intel can't even beat AMD in x86 power/perf. So Pat is just stating the obvious, Intel has no option but to go maximal x86.
- danielmarkbruce 5y ago
  Yep, I'm not even saying he's making a mistake. Every option looks problematic and his choice might well be the least bad option.