Over the past several years, I keep hearing about how Intel is struggling in the market now. Since 2020 or so, it seems AMD has had a steady advantage with their processors over Intel. I remember seeing some benchmarks in 2020 showing AMD's flagship desktop processor was beating Intel's flagship desktop processor in many areas. Not to say Intel is making bad stuff, but it seems AMD has been fairly steadily popular with a lot of PC builders for several years.

I worked at Intel from 2011 to the end of 2019, and while I was there, I started to hear about Intel's chip manufacturing struggling and falling behind around 2018-2019 or so. TSMC's chip manufacturing process had surpassed Intel's, allowing AMD and other chip makers to make smaller transistors for their chips, and Intel struggled with that. Although Intel has tended to manufacture its own chips, I've heard Intel has now outsourced some of their chips to TSMC to make use of their process technology.

Also, while I was at Intel, I saw some changes in leadership at some fairly high levels. A couple of business group leaders left for other companies. The CEO also changed when I was there. Brian Krzanich was the CEO when I started, but eventually he was kicked out due to a supposed relationship with a subordinate - but I heard from others that people were unhappy with his leadership, as he was supposedly expected to help boost Intel's manufacturing, as Brian Krzanich was an engineer before becoming CEO. They had an interim CEO (Bob Swan) for a little while (who was in accounting) who eventually decided to become permanent CEO, but he didn't last long. They then brought in Pat Gelsinger, who was there for just a few years before resigning in 2024 (his plan to turn Intel around was apparently not working well enough).

At any rate, I've heard a lot of news about Intel recently that makes it sound like they're just not doing very well. For a while now, I've had a feeling they've had bad management, and sometimes it seems like Intel doesn't know where they want to go. Like many tech companies, they've had a lot of layoffs as they ramp up projects and then decide to cancel them, buy other companies & sell them, etc..

As Intel has been a behemoth in the computer industry for so long, it feels a bit surreal to me to see them seemingly fading away, particularly since I worked there for about 8 years..

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I worked at Intel from 2011 to the end of 2019, and while I was there, I started to hear about Intel's chip manufacturing struggling and falling behind around 2018-2019 or so. TSMC's chip manufacturing process had surpassed Intel's, allowing AMD and other chip makers to make smaller transistors for their chips, and Intel struggled with that. Although Intel has tended to manufacture its own chips, I've heard Intel has now outsourced some of their chips to TSMC to make use of their process technology.

Yeah, I don't tend to remember the time frame but Intel being unable to fab the designs its been trying to roll out has been a thing for a while. After a while you'd have to think its going to impact R&D while you wait for production time on someone elses plant to make test versions of your new designs. Their performance generally hasn't been up to par for a while either, but I haven't tracked anything recently...

ST

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