Sadly nothing about why Pat was forced out of Intel. Panther Lake is quite a good CPU and 14A looks like it'll be a competitive process. IMO, it vindicates the decisions that Pat made a few years ago and wasn't able to see through to completion.
"Designing microprocessors is like playing Russian roulette. You put a gun to your head, pull the trigger, and find out four years later if you blew your brains out." (Robert Palmer, former DEC CEO)
Sadly nothing about why Pat was forced out of Intel.
My speculation:* Intel in 2019 had $72 billion in revenue and 110k employees. When he was fired in 2024, Intel had $54 billion in revenue and 124k employees. He also didn't cut dividend until 2024. He nearly put Intel into the grave in 3 years.
* Under Pat, Intel's roadmap was a mess. When you look at AMD's roadmap, it made a ton of sense, predictable, and there are rarely any delays or cancellations. When you looked at an Intel roadmap, expect 30% of them cancelled, 50% delayed by 1-2 quarters, and 30% switched to a different node tech.
* IFS strategy under Pat amounted to nothing. Fab cancellations or on hold. Cancelling 20A altogether. Not being able to woo any notable customers. Not hiring the right people for external customers. There were reports that he didn't know how to run an external fab, which is why the board decided to hire Lip Bu Tan who came from Cadence.
* He missed on AI boom, crypto boom, said AMD was in rear view mirror, politicized TSMC in order to win government grants while still still using TSMC nodes themself.
Pat killed Intel’s share price. Should have paid more attention to the balance sheet. I thought he would eventually turn the company around but Intel was priced for bankruptcy.
Stock price has tripled since last August. Hopefully, Intel is really back. They do need a couple of Fab customers.
me personally, I wouldn't bet against companies like Intel that have full government banking.
soon or later they were gonna turn things around with military precision specially with DOD, Intelligence folks giving advice.
Gelsinger is unlikely to be a good source on this question.