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Intel, just like Boeing and to a lesser extent many other F500 companies appear to be fully financialized at this point. Their executives probably wake up each

Intel, just like Boeing and to a lesser extent many other F500 companies appear to be fully financialized at this point. Their executives probably wake up each day and think about how much stock to buy back and nothing else. Do they even remember what it is the company used to do for a living?

wefarrell 3y ago
Microsoft was able to reverse it, hopefully Intel can as well.
porknubbins 3y ago
Intel rested on their laurels for many years but their processors are neck and neck with AMD in some segments (probably because they had margin to burn, which they now have to stay competitive). And they are still adding fabs in the US. When I think of financialized companies I think like IBM. I wouldn’t count Intel out yet.
- worrycue 3y ago
  I don’t know if they have been resting on their laurels. Alder Lake which was a huge departure from their previous architectures came out at a very good time - just as their previous design was running out of steam. It takes years to get a new design from drawing board to production. IMHO Intel’s R&D was humming along just fine but the company as a whole had problems pushing stuff into full production. The new CEO managed to get the company into shape enough to actually ship things again.
- lotsofpulp 3y ago
  IBM is a good example, all that is left is rearranging ships on the deck while it goes down. https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/IBM/ibm/net-income https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/IBM/ibm/net-income
reissbaker 3y ago
Intel was this way, but IMO Pat Gelsinger has turned it around — as per this, their surprisingly competitive GPU perf, and hopefully Intel Foundry Services. IDK if it's enough to call it a Satya Nadella-like CEO transition, but I've been pretty impressed watching it happen.
- mtlmtlmtlmtl 3y ago
  I went with the A770 for my new desktop this year and couldn't be happier. They did one thing in their first gen that ATI/AMD and Nvidia have always completely failed to do: release 1st party open source Linux drivers that just work without any fuzz. I see no reason to ever even look at an Nvidia or AMD card again, for my own purposes, assuming Intel keep releasing GPUs. It's laughable how bad their drivers have always been. And Nvidia's pricing is a disgrace.
  - arein3 3y ago
    Aren't AMD drivers open source for linux?
    - mtlmtlmtlmtl 3y ago
      No. Not the fully featured ones. Also, the way they've dragged their feet on this for decades, and still do. Doesn't inspire confidence.
      - arein3 3y ago
        When I will buy the next laptop of videocard, I'll have a look at intel gpus and linux driver situation. On my laptop I have disabled the NVidia GPU on linux because of the drivers, and use the AMD integrated GPU. Hope Intel will prioritise open source GPU drivers in the future, if they will do that sincerely it will win goodwill from me and hopefully from the community as well.
        mtlmtlmtlmtl 3y ago
justinclift 3y ago
Yeah, that's why back in Jan 2021 Intel ousted their CEO Bob Swan, who was a finance guy running Intel into the ground. The replacement CEO, Pat Gelsinger, has an engineering background and looks to be fixing things properly: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pat_Gelsinger https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pat_Gelsinger The Intel board looks to have recognised and addressed the financialisation problem properly for once. Pretty rare for a board. Pity the boards of IBM, HP (etc) haven't been as capable.
- FullyFunctional 3y ago
  Well, that's missing a rather important part of the picture. The real culpit is Brian Krzanich, who, with beloved approval from the board I assume, completely destroyed the company. The cardinal sin was being way overly aggressive on the process technology which completely failed and left intel stuck on 14nm for way too many years. They use an "inappropriate work relation" as a reason to kick him out, but that obviously wasn't the real reason. Bob Swan clearly wasn't the guy that could fix all this. Pat finally got the job he always wanted (he left for VMware because he didn't get it originally), but Intel is ship that's hard to turn (floating iceberg might be a more fitting analogy). I'm rooting for Intel; I have friends there and competition is good for us consumers. Also, Intel is a friend of open source.
  - justinclift 3y ago
    Ahhh, thanks. I'd wondered whether the CEO prior to Bob Swan did much of the damage, as Intel were known to have fucked up the process side for years by that point. Sounds like a clear Yes then. That being said, Bob Swann was the Intels' CFO from 2016 prior to his becoming CEO. So he was still involved during the later part of Brian Krzanich's tenure.
    - paulmd 3y ago
      It's more than process problems though, and really more than BK too. Intel was the proverbial termite-riddled house by the 2010s on multiple levels. BK was COO from 2012 and CEO from 2013, and intel was already starting to spin its wheels by that point on stuff like modems and atom and wireless and lacked a proper strategic direction. It's hard to know how much internal jank was in the architectures back then but it probably wasn't insignificant, after all Core M ties back to Pentium III and P6/Pentium Pro at least. He certainly didn't help anything but the organization that produced BK (he started as an engineer) and put him in the boardroom wasn't going to pick Lisa Su or Jensen Huang as plan B. The organizational forces that gave us BK would have put another suit in the chair and applied the same pressures to them, the problem with historical counterfactuals is always that these forces really matter more than specific individuals being in the chair in most cases. People forget, he was literally a process engineer by trade too, it's not like he came in as a beancounter. That was all just natural pressures of the market. On the other hand, if you count out 5 years from when he became CEO... that's around the time the problems started with 14nm (Broadwell struggled to be born) and the point where uarch performance progression really stalled out etc. And of course 14nm was followed by 10nm and the interminable delays. But in hindsight a lot of the delays appear to have been "termite problems", yes the process was a mess but the IP teams couldn't get their shit together either, and that's why server products have been running 2+ years behind schedule, Alder Lake has its AVX-512 disabled, Meteor Lake is not happening on desktop, and 2.5GbE is going back for its... sixth stepping? Those teams are underperforming and it has nothing to do with 10nm delays. I realize 2015-2017 is when shit started really hitting the fan but like, unless BK walked in on day 1 as CEO and was like "alright boys we're making Broadwell shitty and giving Skylake-X the worst AVX-512 implementation known to man" it's not entirely his fault either, just the termite rot was still not structural yet. Both the fab teams and IP teams were having visible problems already not too long after he took the chair. He's not a great CEO by any means, and he actively made things worse over his tenure but... it's kinda hard to believe that he just actively made Intel shit in 4 years as CEO all by himself. They had to have had problems already, and some things like Pentium 4 and Meltdown (which goes all the way back to P6) point to that. But moore's law was the great equalizer back then... just right the ship and catch up on the next node and you'll be fine. Nodes are an active problem right now and it requires advanced packaging that is placing more emphasis on the architecture to cater around that. Things are just a lot harder now.

wefarrell 3y ago

Microsoft was able to reverse it, hopefully Intel can as well.

porknubbins 3y ago

Intel rested on their laurels for many years but their processors are neck and neck with AMD in some segments (probably because they had margin to burn, which they now have to stay competitive). And they are still adding fabs in the US. When I think of financialized companies I think like IBM. I wouldn’t count Intel out yet.

worrycue 3y ago
I don’t know if they have been resting on their laurels. Alder Lake which was a huge departure from their previous architectures came out at a very good time - just as their previous design was running out of steam. It takes years to get a new design from drawing board to production. IMHO Intel’s R&D was humming along just fine but the company as a whole had problems pushing stuff into full production. The new CEO managed to get the company into shape enough to actually ship things again.
lotsofpulp 3y ago
IBM is a good example, all that is left is rearranging ships on the deck while it goes down. https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/IBM/ibm/net-income https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/IBM/ibm/net-income

reissbaker 3y ago

Intel was this way, but IMO Pat Gelsinger has turned it around — as per this, their surprisingly competitive GPU perf, and hopefully Intel Foundry Services. IDK if it's enough to call it a Satya Nadella-like CEO transition, but I've been pretty impressed watching it happen.

mtlmtlmtlmtl 3y ago
I went with the A770 for my new desktop this year and couldn't be happier. They did one thing in their first gen that ATI/AMD and Nvidia have always completely failed to do: release 1st party open source Linux drivers that just work without any fuzz. I see no reason to ever even look at an Nvidia or AMD card again, for my own purposes, assuming Intel keep releasing GPUs. It's laughable how bad their drivers have always been. And Nvidia's pricing is a disgrace.
- arein3 3y ago
  Aren't AMD drivers open source for linux?
  - mtlmtlmtlmtl 3y ago
    No. Not the fully featured ones. Also, the way they've dragged their feet on this for decades, and still do. Doesn't inspire confidence.
    - arein3 3y ago
      When I will buy the next laptop of videocard, I'll have a look at intel gpus and linux driver situation. On my laptop I have disabled the NVidia GPU on linux because of the drivers, and use the AMD integrated GPU. Hope Intel will prioritise open source GPU drivers in the future, if they will do that sincerely it will win goodwill from me and hopefully from the community as well.
      - mtlmtlmtlmtl 3y ago

justinclift 3y ago

Yeah, that's why back in Jan 2021 Intel ousted their CEO Bob Swan, who was a finance guy running Intel into the ground. The replacement CEO, Pat Gelsinger, has an engineering background and looks to be fixing things properly: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pat_Gelsinger https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pat_Gelsinger The Intel board looks to have recognised and addressed the financialisation problem properly for once. Pretty rare for a board. Pity the boards of IBM, HP (etc) haven't been as capable.

FullyFunctional 3y ago
Well, that's missing a rather important part of the picture. The real culpit is Brian Krzanich, who, with beloved approval from the board I assume, completely destroyed the company. The cardinal sin was being way overly aggressive on the process technology which completely failed and left intel stuck on 14nm for way too many years. They use an "inappropriate work relation" as a reason to kick him out, but that obviously wasn't the real reason. Bob Swan clearly wasn't the guy that could fix all this. Pat finally got the job he always wanted (he left for VMware because he didn't get it originally), but Intel is ship that's hard to turn (floating iceberg might be a more fitting analogy). I'm rooting for Intel; I have friends there and competition is good for us consumers. Also, Intel is a friend of open source.
- justinclift 3y ago
  Ahhh, thanks. I'd wondered whether the CEO prior to Bob Swan did much of the damage, as Intel were known to have fucked up the process side for years by that point. Sounds like a clear Yes then. That being said, Bob Swann was the Intels' CFO from 2016 prior to his becoming CEO. So he was still involved during the later part of Brian Krzanich's tenure.
  - paulmd 3y ago
    It's more than process problems though, and really more than BK too. Intel was the proverbial termite-riddled house by the 2010s on multiple levels. BK was COO from 2012 and CEO from 2013, and intel was already starting to spin its wheels by that point on stuff like modems and atom and wireless and lacked a proper strategic direction. It's hard to know how much internal jank was in the architectures back then but it probably wasn't insignificant, after all Core M ties back to Pentium III and P6/Pentium Pro at least. He certainly didn't help anything but the organization that produced BK (he started as an engineer) and put him in the boardroom wasn't going to pick Lisa Su or Jensen Huang as plan B. The organizational forces that gave us BK would have put another suit in the chair and applied the same pressures to them, the problem with historical counterfactuals is always that these forces really matter more than specific individuals being in the chair in most cases. People forget, he was literally a process engineer by trade too, it's not like he came in as a beancounter. That was all just natural pressures of the market. On the other hand, if you count out 5 years from when he became CEO... that's around the time the problems started with 14nm (Broadwell struggled to be born) and the point where uarch performance progression really stalled out etc. And of course 14nm was followed by 10nm and the interminable delays. But in hindsight a lot of the delays appear to have been "termite problems", yes the process was a mess but the IP teams couldn't get their shit together either, and that's why server products have been running 2+ years behind schedule, Alder Lake has its AVX-512 disabled, Meteor Lake is not happening on desktop, and 2.5GbE is going back for its... sixth stepping? Those teams are underperforming and it has nothing to do with 10nm delays. I realize 2015-2017 is when shit started really hitting the fan but like, unless BK walked in on day 1 as CEO and was like "alright boys we're making Broadwell shitty and giving Skylake-X the worst AVX-512 implementation known to man" it's not entirely his fault either, just the termite rot was still not structural yet. Both the fab teams and IP teams were having visible problems already not too long after he took the chair. He's not a great CEO by any means, and he actively made things worse over his tenure but... it's kinda hard to believe that he just actively made Intel shit in 4 years as CEO all by himself. They had to have had problems already, and some things like Pentium 4 and Meltdown (which goes all the way back to P6) point to that. But moore's law was the great equalizer back then... just right the ship and catch up on the next node and you'll be fine. Nodes are an active problem right now and it requires advanced packaging that is placing more emphasis on the architecture to cater around that. Things are just a lot harder now.