Intel appoints Lip-Bu Tan as its CEO
reuters.com
reuters.com
> Over time, Tan grew frustrated by the company’s large workforce, its approach to contract manufacturing and Intel’s risk-averse and bureaucratic culture, according to the sources, who were not authorized to speak publicly.
https://www.reuters.com/technology/intel-board-member-quit-a...
Intel's valuation might hinge on it, but evaluating the CEOs success or not... that doesn't strike me as a great idea.
Intel trying to regain a foothold in fabs is costly and time consuming. Hopefully, they are finally able to turn it around.
Turning a ship the size of Intel is a super power in it's own right. Especially one with such a large entrenched bureaucracy as Intel has.
Politics aside for a moment - we're seeing the death bellows of many large, entrenched bureaucracies right now with DOGE - the main difference is the fight is in full public view instead of behind closed doors. We can only imagine and speculate at the resistance Pat and others met while trying to change Intel's course.
The infamous Oscar Wilde quote is very applicable: "The bureaucracy is expanding to meet the needs of the expanding bureaucracy." - Ever large bureaucracy eventually exists largely to preserve itself. This is why it is so incredibly difficult to reduce the size of a bureaucracy. Every member is convinced the organization will fail tomorrow if they are let go today, and every member fights/resists any and all changes that threaten their bureaucracy and the status quo.
Best of luck to Tan - I truly hope they succeed where many have failed at Intel. AMD needs a healthy Intel to drive motivation and competition. The world will be watching.
DOGE is just Musk bribing Trump into letting him settle scores and shut down agencies that are investigating him or that he doesn't like. Finding and eliminating "inefficiency" is just another one of Musk's myriad lies. I'm shocked at how many people still consider him to have any credibility at all.
Large monopolies with limited market pressure to innovate?
Governments have natural “monopoly” over their territory (if there is competition for governing inside a territory, you have a civil war going on).
Or, there is no monopoly, since you can “shop around” by moving to other countries. It depends on how you want to line up the analogy. (There’s room to line up the analogy in multiple ways because it is an analogy, and not a description of what countries actually are).
Governments don’t innovate much on governance. They might enable innovation in other sectors. But the process of governance itself should generally be pretty slow-and-steady because the stakes are higher than an individual business. The goal of a government is not to create new and interesting governance-products and then sell those products, but to rule over an area in a way that doesn’t annoy the populace too much.
Not all things that share some attributes are similar in general.
It is more like saying strawberries and ethyl methylphenylglycidate are both red tasting.
Logical inconsistencies aside for a moment, the comment would've carried a little more weight if cited any sources for their claims.
What is political about that statement? You may disagree with him, I certainly don’t think all of what happened with DOGE is justified, but that was a neutral statement.
It presumes that DOGE will be successful in a political fight, which is possible but not certain. The statement is no more neutral (and less accurate IMO) than saying “we’re seeing the culmination of a decades-long war on competence”.
That's one interpretation, sure. I hope you'll concede that another equally valid one is that we're hearing the deliberate shattering of the only institution in the country capable of standing up to the oligarchs.
So far the verifiable cuts made by DOGE are less than a tenth of a percent of the federal budget. However, a lot of has been cut so far has been very favourable to the ultra rich. The most obvious ones being cutting the IRS enforcement budget and gutting the CFPB.
It's possible to argue that all of that is good policy, but the facts make it very to claim that all of the destruction being wrought is going to make a meaningful dent in the government's spending.
Anyway at this point it's impossible to predict what will happen. There is no doubt a ton of inefficiency at these bureaucracies. You are making the point that cutting the budget will mean they will become less effective. But that doesn't follow if the departments are totally inefficient. Look at twitter. Musk fired like 80% of the software engineers. I'm not a heavy twitter user but I haven't noticed any difference in terms of reliability.
Your argument is essentially change is risk. Which is true. But what is also true is that never changing will yield a much worse system in the long run.
A tenth of one percent. So not 10%, but 0.1%.
The recurring punchline is: Lack of administrative capacity.
The trials and tribulations of California's ill fated high speed rail is such a case study. Decades of outsourcings and privatization eliminated CA's ability to manage the effort.
IIRC, less even than the govt's subsidies to Musk's enterprises.
I do not live in the US, and I don't follow all that's happening too closely, but from what I hear it seems that most of DOGE actions are about eliminating people and cutting budgets, which may be a valid way to save money. This has nothing to do with bureaucracy.
If, to complete a process, you needed approval by three people and you still need the same approvals, the bureaucracy is untouched -- it will just take longer without people and money.
I disagree, of course it will meaningfully decrease the efficacy. The purpose of DOGE is to dismantle organizations which provide accountability for the private sector and the executive, including organizations which literally focus on optimizing processes.
Of course, the same amount of stuff needs to get done. The workload doesn’t actually decrease because these jobs are complex in nature. There’s a lot of citizens to provide services to, or a lot of organizations to regulate. Those factors stay constant. The hope is that they’re unable to do their jobs in time, and we get more “asbestos in baby powder” type incidents as a result. Or shitty water (literally) or listeria, or watergates, or pick whatever bad thing you want when regulation goes down.
I truly don’t understand how people make such bold statements as “letting people go changes nothing!” Really? What’s the mechanism for that? Process just… become more efficient? Do we even know how efficient the processes currently are? Because something tells me you have no idea. You’re assuming they’re inefficient because that’s easy to believe and requires no analysis.
If you working from a bad faith PoV like this it really makes no sense to talk about it.
The mechanism is pretty obvious to me. The pareto principle is well studied.
Like a government agency has no self cleaning mechanism like a cooperation has. As far as I understand it. DOGE is trying to be that.
What? No.
1. Unlike the private sector, the public sector is built on hard budgets, not speculation. They don’t balloon up like your typical money-burning tech company.
2. They can, and do, fire people for performance. No idea where the myth that they can’t do that came from.
3. They run probationary periods just like the private sector to make firing easier and, in fact, their probationary periods are much longer!
4. There are inspectors and agencies directly responsible for optimization.
2. Firing individual people is obviously not what this is about. It's about department wide processes.
3. Oke, see my prior point.
4. Well yeah now there is, it's called the department of government efficiency.
2. Firing people isn't what this is about? Or you blind or just dishonest? The only action DOGE has taken has been firing people. That's literally the only thing they've done! Not only is firing people "all this is about", it's all it could possibly be about!
4. No, there was MANY before. MANY of which were actually cut by the DOGE! And, somehow, DOGE has convinced bumbling idiots such as yourself that they're "saving" something. You aren't getting anything, and it should've been obvious a long time ago.
I don't even know why I'm arguing with you, it's obvious you're a cultist for Trump and Musk and will literally parrot anything they say, no matter what. You've said multiple things now that are just... blatantly untrue. Just, no evidence at all behind them. And this is all public information. You can see how the departments run, how the inspector generals work, how the Government Accountability Office works, etc. Why am I wasting my breath, or keystrokes, on someone who is either a diehard cultist or a literal computer program?
2. Firing people in large groups is definitely part of it. Not firing individuals. That is what you originally said.
4. Considering the real impact DOGE has already made in the few weeks it has existed I think we can at least conclude they weren't doing their job then.
Ah now I understand. You simply don't like musk and trump and anything they do must be obviously bad. I really don't like them either but at least I can still see that the government is not a lean functioning machine. I hope DOGE can fix that. And I don't particularly care if trump, musk or even Obama had done it.
Again, they’ve fired people at the office of government accountability, which are the inspectors who literally ensure tax dollars aren’t wasted.
That’s not me “hating musk”. That’s the reality of what’s happening. Following that, we must admit DOGE has no plans to save anyone any money.
Their goal is LESS accountability, not more. Government spending will only go UP.
If you read Project 2025 you would know the explicit goal of this is to cripple bureaucracy so that that power can be concentrated in the president. Not “save money”. Come on now.
Or broken. The latter has a higher a probability.
This is pretty naive, one dimensional thinking. Making things efficient requires deep systems understanding and lack of which is on display here (Chesterton's fence). And one can achieve it reasonably for physical/technical things, however dismantling social processes that have evolved over the years for variety of reasons indicates neither the capability nor the desire to improve them.
A lot of potential here!
The disagreement with the board was supposedly related more to elements of the board trying to parts up and sell off bits of Intel. Harder to report that directly. Good for him, food sign if true.
Today was a very very good day to be hanging out on TechPoutine podcast. Very fun to have this as breaking news at the end of stream. https://www.youtube.com/live/aSoYz9Qp1xI
If true this would be very interesting. The most recent rumors were TSMC was trying to grab a part of Intel and have Nvidia/Broadcom/AMD take over the rest. Bringing in a CEO that literally left the board because he was against carving up Intel would be quite the signal from the board.
He is no Pat. He is no Andy. He is a business guy with some hard science behind (not electronics per se). It doesn't feel right.
Who would you have as CEO?
There is no way to justify that a market leader would fall this bad this fast and couldn't recover and loose billions in process, except something was terribly wrong.
That's just how fabs are. Yeah, something went terribly wrong. That much is obvious.
Regardless of who was picked as CEO getting back to the cutting edge was always going to be horrendously expensive and take on the order of a decade. There was never a magical unicorn CEO that could avoid that.
The only obvious (at least to me) alternative is to sell off the foundry business. But someone is going to be running a cutting edge process at scale in the US. The federal government will presumably see to that.
Cadence is a successful hardware company - they have an IP catalog available for licensing and sell design services.
Most hardware startups have to come up with new ideas, engineer good implementations of them, market them, and react to all kinds of competition. I'm talking companies like Habana or Cavium more than Cadence.
When I say hardware CEO, I meant one that ran a company like that where we know they'll be innovative and capable. Intel will need that since they're going to have to change so dramatically with so many product innovations. Whereas, running Cadence doesn't require (from what I know of them) that sort of innovation and it might have even hurt their entrenched position.
That said, I'm still positive about the new CEO. I hope his mindset and experience helps him do a lot of good. The letter he put out was great.
I think you need to look up Cadence and look into how the fabless industry works. Picking him means Intel is possibly about to spin off or spin out the Chip division and only focus on Fabless.
The important thing is that Lip-Bu is from the industry, and has contacts on the tools side of things as well as the customers for those tools which happen to be potential future customers for any Intel fab services. This is a step in the right direction for INTC which has a board where industry experience is severely lacking.
That aside, he doesn't have fab experience. I guess that's very hard to come by, especially outside Taiwan and Korea.
Intel is a publicly listed company.
By design, though, the people who invest with Vanguard do that precisely to offload decisions to experts and focus on other things.
Passive investors have neither the time nor expertise to monitor and vote on corporate decisions, so we're stuck with the current system regardless.
I think Intel is a bureaucracy that's gradually eating itself. Maybe it's harsh, but such companies might not be worth saving. They should be left to fizzle out and another should take their place.
The beauty of capitalism is that giants can fall down to earth, and smaller startups can take their place. Rinse and repeat.
I know that's true, but I'm wondering - why? Why wouldn't they just withhold their vote and let the remaining (active) investors make decisions?
I don't know where you get that idea from. They own so many shares they have direct control over who gets appointed to the board, and unlike a small investor when these guys walk away with their money it hurts. I often see the news reports of them flexing their muscles in the board room.
It's true they probably don't have much to say about bets like 18A or corporate culture. But they will almost certainly be involved on the decision on if or when Intel will be split up - if only because these investors decide which, if any of the new entities they are prepared to fund.
https://newsroom.intel.com/corporate/lip-bu-tan-remaking-our...
Sounds like he wants design and foundry to stay together.
Good sign.
https://irrationalanalysis.substack.com/p/make-intel-great-a...
>It’s over.
> If corporations are people, then Intel has decided to commit suicide and sell its vital organs.
Yet now the same guy seems more positive ("The best outcome has happened.... Lip-Bu Tan lacks the critical flaw that Gelsinger had… excessive kindness").
> A tsunami of decapitation (headcount reduction) is coming. However unpleasant the last several years has been… what is coming will be much worse.
> This will be a disorderly decapitation frenzy. Nobody is safe.
Did that happen? If not, did he say why he was mistaken? If not, then is this guy not overconfident and incapable of revising his own priors?
The author thinks that it's about to happen, so it's too early to expect any revision. In that earlier post they said that Lip-Bu Tan resigned from the board because he wanted to reduce headcount more than Gelsinger, and that in their opinion hiring him and carrying out that reduction would be the best outcome for Intel.
Given that Lip-Bu Tan got hired, I think it's reasonable to expect some reductions soon. Before this the author listed a couple of possible outcomes, and as I understand it, Lip-Bu Tan and his reductions are described as one of the less chaotic and "unpleasant" options for Intel, because his cuts would be more specific than cuts that would be the result of splits/mergers/bankruptcy.
Intel engineers: thank you for these amazing machines, for all these years. They shaped many lives. We salute you.
He's led Cadence for many years. You know, making tools to design silicone.
As a former Cadence employee, I really don't have any complains about his leadership, looking back at my time there.
He's been on Intel's board for a long time too.
I have no idea where you'd get that impression, so please elaborate.
The failure of Intel is in the board and terrible middle-managers. If Intel becomes fabless like AMD it will be left with the worse parts. They will make money in the sale but there will be nothing left.
Intel had a lot of cool tech recently like Optane and QAT. The failure to get market adoption lies squarely in management. Can you believe they put in-chip yearly licenses to enable QAT, that's INSANE (what if they 10x the license price next year?). And of course, almost zero reach out to open source. Only a PoC and calling it a day.
IMHO, Intel should concentrate in their core strengths. Fire most of the managers, get rid of the toxic board. Open all they can and invest heavily in documentation and software, guided by the community. But this is not going to happen. The board is firmly in place.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lip-Bu_Tan
https://www.linkedin.com/in/lip-bu-tan-284a7846/details/expe...
Oh, so he's only been leading one of the handful of companies making the full software suite for all stages of silicon design and simulation for 15 years, no biggie.
You're aware what kind of company Cadence is, are you?
Whether he'd be a good chairman given his experience in the industry is a discussion that we can have once people understand which experience he actually has.
Understanding everything it takes to design a chip, after spending 15 years leading the company that makes software tools for chip design, perhaps.
Cadence Design Systems, that is. I worked there for a couple of years on computational lithography/optical proximity correction software that we licensed to TSMC and Micron. If you don't know about Cadence, well, you don't know about silicon.
Some of the biggest EDA tools come from companies that use them for a reason (NX by Siemens, CATIA by Dassault, ...).
Those are the same reasons that make Lip-Bu Tan a great choice for the position.
What do you mean? NX and CATIA are mechanical CAD systems, not EDA tools.
Pat Gelsinger – ex-Intel, rehired as CEO, ousted.
Lip-Bu Tan – ex board member, ousted due to disagreements on how to turn the company around.
If Intel removed him over disagreements on turnaround, what will be different this time?
https://www.reuters.com/technology/intel-board-member-quit-a...
> Over time, Tan grew frustrated by the company’s large workforce, its approach to contract manufacturing and Intel’s risk-averse and bureaucratic culture, according to the sources, who were not authorized to speak publicly. (...)
> To cut costs, Intel announced in August layoffs of more than 15% of its workforce (...). The layoff plan was one source of tension between Tan and the board, according to sources. Tan wanted specific cuts, including middle managers who do not contribute to Intel's engineering efforts.
> Gelsinger, who took over in 2021 as part of a turnaround plan, added at least 20,000 employees to Intel's payroll by 2022. To Tan and some former Intel executives, the workforce appeared bloated. Teams on some projects were as much as five times larger than others doing comparable work at rivals such as AMD, according to two sources. One former executive said Intel should have cut double the number it announced in August years ago.
There has been news about Broadcom and NVidia testing their designs on Intel process nodes. Which is arguably worse in at least two respects, they are behind TSMC in density and also proprietary software tooling at Intel. After the 13000/14000 CPU chip death issues possibly also in regard to reliability. But they still want to do it.
Although this page in the history books is not yet written, companies hedging their bets this way is a really bad sign.
Awful but true.
> There has been news about Broadcom and NVidia testing their designs on Intel process nodes.
Links? It makes sense to invest in second and third sources, even if it does mean handing money to a competitor. Especially given the instability of the global community right now.
Even when Intel was having record revenues year after year its stock price barely moved.