We are following the situation with Intel’s new CEO, Pat Gelsinger, very closely. Even as an Intel employee for 30 years, rising to the position of CTO, and then leaving 12 years out of the company, his arrival was met with praise across the spectrum due to his background and previous successes. He’s not even set to take up his new role until February 15ºhowever, their return is already causing a stir in Intel’s current R&D teams.
News from the past 24 hours, based on public statements, states that former senior Intel member Glenn Hinton, who lists being the top architect of Intel’s Nehalem CPU core on his list of accomplishments, is coming out of retirement to join back to the company. (Nehalem’s other chief architect, Ronak Singhal, is still with Intel working on next-generation processors.)
Hinton is a former Intel employee with 35 years of experience, leading the development of the Pentium 4 microarchitecture, one of the three senior architects of the Intel P6 processor design (which led to the Pentium Pro, P2, P3) and finally one of the drivers for Intel’s core architecture that is still at the forefront of Intel’s portfolio today. It is also the main microarchitecture of Intel’s i960 CA, the world’s first superscalar microprocessor. Hinton owns more than 90 patents for 8 CPU designs from his ventures. Hinton spent more than 10 years at Intel after Nehalem, but Nehalem is listed in many places as his main public achievement at Intel.
In his posts on social media, Hinton says he will work on ‘an exciting high-performance CPU project’. In the associated comments he also states that ‘if it weren’t for a fun project I wouldn’t have come back – as you know, retirement is very good’. Glenn also reveals that he has been considering the move since November, and Gelsinger’s rehiring helped finalize that decision. His colleagues also think that Glenn is probably not the only former Intel architect who may be returning to the company. We met some architects and experts who left Intel in recent years to join Intel’s competitors, such as AMD and Apple.
There are some important things to note here that are worth considering.
The first is that coming out of retirement for a major CPU project is not trivial, especially for an Intel Senior Fellow. Given Intel’s successes, it can be assumed that the financial situation is not the main driver here, but the opportunity to work on something new and exciting. In addition, these types of projects take years of development, at least three, and therefore Glenn is signing for a long term, despite having already left to retire.
The second point is to reiterate the bottom line – whatever project Glenn is working on, it will be a long-term project. Assuming Glenn is talking about a new project within Intel’s R&D ecosystem, it will take 3-5 years to see the fruits of the job, which also means creating a design aimed at what could be a variety of node technology. process. Glenn’s experience as a leading architect probably applies to any stage of an Intel R&D design window, but it is perhaps best served from the early stages. As Glenn seems to put it, this could be a black-op design. It also does not specify whether it is x86, leaving the door open for speculation.
The third point is to recognize that Intel has several internal processor design teams and, despite the delays in the manufacturing process, they have not been idle. We’ve seen update after update of Skylake’s leading Intel portfolio, and while the first iterations of 10 nm Cove cores hit the market, Intel’s internal design teams would be working on the next generation, and the next generation after that – the only one barrier to implantation would have been manufacturing. I remember a discussion with Intel engineers at the time of Kaby Lake, when I asked about Intel’s progress in the IPC – I requested a + 10% increase from generation to generation over the next two years at the time, and I was told that these projects were ready and baked – they were already working on the others beyond that. These designs were probably Ice / Tiger Lake, so Intel’s main design teams are moving forward despite manufacturing problems, and I wonder if there is now a 3-4 year (or more) delay in some of these designs . If Glenn is hinting at a project beyond that, then we can expect even more.
Fourthly and lastly, one of the critical elements listed by several analysts in the announcement of Gelsinger’s arrival was that he would not have much effect until 3+ years later, because of how the product cycles work. I rejected this premise immediately, stating that Pat can go in and change elements of Intel’s culture immediately, and he could sit in the room with the relevant engineers and discuss product design on a level that Bob Swan cannot. Pat has the opportunity to organize the leadership structure and instill new confidence in these structures, some of which may have caused the retirement of important architects in the past, rather than developing interesting projects.
As we can see, Pat is already taking effect even before his name is at the HQ door.
Today is also Intel’s year-end financial disclosure at 5 pm Eastern Time. We expect current Intel CEO Bob Swan to talk about what appears to be another record year of revenue and probably the state of play for Intel’s own 7 nm process node technologies. That last point is in doubt, given the announcement of the new CEO and whether Gelsinger is on the call. It is not known whether Gelsinger will participate.