3 ms·

Andy Grove left in 1998, even though he was on the board of directors until 2004 (with diminished role). After he left the CEO role Intel just lost his way.

0xffany 1y ago
As far as I understand, Grove was at the helm when Intel started the Itanium project. Granted, he didn't see it to "completion", but poor choices were made even in his time. He even stated the following in "Only the Paranoid Survive": One, don’t differentiate without a difference. Don’t introduce improvements whose only purpose is to give you an advantage over your competitor without giving your customer a substantial advantage. The personal computer industry is characterized by well-chronicled failures when manufacturers, ostensibly motivated by a desire to make “a better PC,” departed from the mainstream standard. But goodness in a PC was inseparable from compatibility, so “a better PC” that was different turned out to be a technological oxymoron. One might think Itanium goes against that.
- actionfromafar 1y ago
  Just because Itanium last as a bet, doesn't mean it was wrong to try it. They gambled that compilers would keep up - they didn't. Today it might work! Compiler technology is very much improved. (Dotnet/Java payloads? Dynamic recompiling...) It's a software problem and as such inherently easy to underestimate the complexity of it. Itanium also had its roots in a time when Big Iron was more relevant than it is today.
- lenkite 1y ago
  Itanium was an excellent idea that needed some continued persistence. It is was a bit too early for its time.
  - o11c 1y ago
    It really wasn't. Itanium was a gamble that hard-coding static parallelism into the ISA would beat dynamic OoO. And just like architectural delay slots, it inevitably failed - using a few more transistors isn't that expensive since the alternative is "waste your time doing nothing at all". "Compilers just need to keep up" was Intel's marketing apologia, not reality.
    - lenkite 1y ago
      Compilers simply could not keep up - that was reality, not just marketing. Ideally, Intel should have coded the compilers too and removed the rough edges. But they were a bit too slow and AMD ate Itanium's target market. You have to admit though that the EPIC (Explicitly Parallel Instruction Computing) model was quite innovative. The philosophy influenced the LLVM project and some of the principles are used in GPU's and AI accelerator chips, even if hardware-based dynamic scheduling won the game.
      - robk 1y ago
        I think they did though. I remember several buddies from UIUC when I was in Folsom working solely on compilers
justaddwater 1y ago
There is a fantastic oral history with Robert P. Colwell – Chief Architect for Intel's IA32- where he goes into this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38459128 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38459128 " 0:26:21 BC: But that was lost after Andy left. That was lost, that part of the culture went away. 0:26:27 PE: Who succeeded him? 0:26:28 BC: Craig Barrett. 0:26:29 PE: Right. Were you still there when that happened, when did Grove leave? 0:26:34 BC: Grove stopped being the president in January 1998. 0:26:40 PE: Yes. 0:26:41 BC: And that's when Craig Barrett took over. 0:26:43 PE: And what changed at point? 0:26:46 BC: Well Craig's not Andy, I mean he had a different way of thinking and doing things, Craig, I don't want it to sound cynical but I always sound cynical when I talk about him because I had such a bumpy relationship with him. I don't think he felt like he needed anything I could tell him, and it wasn't just me, I wasn't taking this personally. I never once got the same feeling I got with Andy that my inputs were being seriously and politely considered, and then a decision would be made that included my inputs. 0:27:21 PE: Yes. 0:27:22 BC: That never happened. Instead, for example five Intel fellows including me went to visit Craig Barrett in June of 98 with the same Itanium story, that Itanium was not going to be able to deliver what was being promised. The positioning of Itanium relative to the x86 line is wrong, because x86 is going to better than you think and Itanium is going to be worse and they're going to meet in the middle. We're being forced to put a gap in the product lines between Itanium and x86 to try to boost the prospects for Itanium. There's a gap there now that AMD is going to drive a truck through, they're going to, what do you think they're going to hit, they're going to go right after that hole" which in fact they did. It didn't take any deep insight to see all of these things, but Craig essentially got really mad at us, kicked us out of his office and said (and this is a direct quote) "I don't pay you to bring me bad news, I pay you to go make my plans work out". 0:28:22 PE: Gee. 0:28:25 BC: So. 0:28:25 PE: Yeah he's polar opposite. 0:28:26 BC: So and he, and at that point he stood up and walked out and to back of his head. I said, "Well that's just great Craig. You ignored the message and shot the messengers. I'll never be back no matter how strong of a message I've got that you need to hear, I'll never bring it to you now.” 0:28:38 PE: Yeah. 0:28:40 BC: It's not rewardable behavior. It was sad, a culture change in the company that was not a good one and there was no way I could fix it. If it had been Andy doing something that I thought was dumb, I'd go and see him and say "Andy what you're doing is dumb", and maybe I'd convince, maybe I wouldn't. But as soon as you close that door, it is a dictatorship. You can't vote the guy out of office anymore, you can't reach him. There's no communication channel."

0xffany 1y ago

As far as I understand, Grove was at the helm when Intel started the Itanium project. Granted, he didn't see it to "completion", but poor choices were made even in his time. He even stated the following in "Only the Paranoid Survive": One, don’t differentiate without a difference. Don’t introduce improvements whose only purpose is to give you an advantage over your competitor without giving your customer a substantial advantage. The personal computer industry is characterized by well-chronicled failures when manufacturers, ostensibly motivated by a desire to make “a better PC,” departed from the mainstream standard. But goodness in a PC was inseparable from compatibility, so “a better PC” that was different turned out to be a technological oxymoron. One might think Itanium goes against that.

actionfromafar 1y ago
Just because Itanium last as a bet, doesn't mean it was wrong to try it. They gambled that compilers would keep up - they didn't. Today it might work! Compiler technology is very much improved. (Dotnet/Java payloads? Dynamic recompiling...) It's a software problem and as such inherently easy to underestimate the complexity of it. Itanium also had its roots in a time when Big Iron was more relevant than it is today.
lenkite 1y ago
Itanium was an excellent idea that needed some continued persistence. It is was a bit too early for its time.
- o11c 1y ago
  It really wasn't. Itanium was a gamble that hard-coding static parallelism into the ISA would beat dynamic OoO. And just like architectural delay slots, it inevitably failed - using a few more transistors isn't that expensive since the alternative is "waste your time doing nothing at all". "Compilers just need to keep up" was Intel's marketing apologia, not reality.
  - lenkite 1y ago
    Compilers simply could not keep up - that was reality, not just marketing. Ideally, Intel should have coded the compilers too and removed the rough edges. But they were a bit too slow and AMD ate Itanium's target market. You have to admit though that the EPIC (Explicitly Parallel Instruction Computing) model was quite innovative. The philosophy influenced the LLVM project and some of the principles are used in GPU's and AI accelerator chips, even if hardware-based dynamic scheduling won the game.
    - robk 1y ago
      I think they did though. I remember several buddies from UIUC when I was in Folsom working solely on compilers

justaddwater 1y ago

There is a fantastic oral history with Robert P. Colwell – Chief Architect for Intel's IA32- where he goes into this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38459128 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38459128 " 0:26:21 BC: But that was lost after Andy left. That was lost, that part of the culture went away. 0:26:27 PE: Who succeeded him? 0:26:28 BC: Craig Barrett. 0:26:29 PE: Right. Were you still there when that happened, when did Grove leave? 0:26:34 BC: Grove stopped being the president in January 1998. 0:26:40 PE: Yes. 0:26:41 BC: And that's when Craig Barrett took over. 0:26:43 PE: And what changed at point? 0:26:46 BC: Well Craig's not Andy, I mean he had a different way of thinking and doing things, Craig, I don't want it to sound cynical but I always sound cynical when I talk about him because I had such a bumpy relationship with him. I don't think he felt like he needed anything I could tell him, and it wasn't just me, I wasn't taking this personally. I never once got the same feeling I got with Andy that my inputs were being seriously and politely considered, and then a decision would be made that included my inputs. 0:27:21 PE: Yes. 0:27:22 BC: That never happened. Instead, for example five Intel fellows including me went to visit Craig Barrett in June of 98 with the same Itanium story, that Itanium was not going to be able to deliver what was being promised. The positioning of Itanium relative to the x86 line is wrong, because x86 is going to better than you think and Itanium is going to be worse and they're going to meet in the middle. We're being forced to put a gap in the product lines between Itanium and x86 to try to boost the prospects for Itanium. There's a gap there now that AMD is going to drive a truck through, they're going to, what do you think they're going to hit, they're going to go right after that hole" which in fact they did. It didn't take any deep insight to see all of these things, but Craig essentially got really mad at us, kicked us out of his office and said (and this is a direct quote) "I don't pay you to bring me bad news, I pay you to go make my plans work out". 0:28:22 PE: Gee. 0:28:25 BC: So. 0:28:25 PE: Yeah he's polar opposite. 0:28:26 BC: So and he, and at that point he stood up and walked out and to back of his head. I said, "Well that's just great Craig. You ignored the message and shot the messengers. I'll never be back no matter how strong of a message I've got that you need to hear, I'll never bring it to you now.” 0:28:38 PE: Yeah. 0:28:40 BC: It's not rewardable behavior. It was sad, a culture change in the company that was not a good one and there was no way I could fix it. If it had been Andy doing something that I thought was dumb, I'd go and see him and say "Andy what you're doing is dumb", and maybe I'd convince, maybe I wouldn't. But as soon as you close that door, it is a dictatorship. You can't vote the guy out of office anymore, you can't reach him. There's no communication channel."