Pat Gelsinger was has just been named the new CEO of Intel earlier this week, and apparently had a bold start after a recent employee meeting in which Gelsinger told employees that Intel needs to deliver better PC products than anything done by that “lifestyle company in Cupertino”. There.
After difficult management mired by several delays in the development of Intel’s chip and several major falls in stock prices in 2020, many analysts have been asking Intel will replace CEO Bob Swan.
As a former Intel employee and one of the original architects of Intel’s 80486 processor, Gelsinger – who is leaving his previous position as CEO of VMware – is seen as a product-focused expert that many hope to be able to take Intel back to the days when that their chips enjoyed significant performance advantages over competitors like AMD and ARM.
According Oregonian, who reported on the recent employee meeting, Gelsinger will need to guide future Intel processors as the company tries to decide whether to outsource chip production to third-party foundries owned by TSMC or possibly Samsung. With companies like AMD, Apple and others having recently switched to 7nm and 5nm nodes for their latest chips, Intel’s continued struggle to transition to its own 7nm process has resulted in several successes for Intel in terms of performance and general market share.
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Most importantly, with Apple becoming quite proficient with chip design and recently began to transition its entire line of PCs due to its internally engineered ARM-based chips, Intel may lose a significant share of sales, as Apple is estimated to represent up to 5% of Intel’s annual revenue. In addition, with Apple looking to swallow more of the desktop and laptop market and AMD having overtaken Intel’s CPU by a performance-to-dollar ratio, Intel will need to make some strong moves to fix the problem.
“We have to deliver better products to the PC ecosystem than anything possible for a lifestyle company in Cupertino,” said Gelsinger. “When done well, [our research and manufacturing] established Intel as a leader in all aspects. “
However, for a company that faced significant setbacks in its chip production and design, even for a highly respected veteran like Gelsinger, bringing Intel back to its former glory will be a major challenge.
Gelsinger’s official tenure as Intel’s new CEO will begin on February 15.