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Processors Toolkit

Intel head attacks complacency

Michael Kanellos and John G. Spooner CNET News.com

Published: 02 Jun 2004 12:35 BST

How about the energy field? A few years ago you were talking about alternative energy and people looked at you like you were crazy. Now Stanford says it is one of their top three research areas.
When I ask people what their initiative would be if they were president for a day, most come back with the same answer: something to do with the energy ecosystem.

Going to the moon was the great Sputnik challenge. Today I think the challenges we face are a little bit different, and I would think it would have something to do with the energy environment that we have. It's not surprising to me that a lot of other people are thinking in that same way.

How do you see the convergence game developing when the PC guys want to get into the consumer-electronics space?
You guys always want to picture this as a battle. You go to the CES show and the Sony guy stands up and says the TV is the centre of the universe. Then the Intel guy stands up and says the PC is at the centre of the universe. And then somebody else from a software company stands up and says no, the software is at the centre of the universe. I think that is all kind of hokey thinking.

All this stuff needs to work together. I mean it's common interfaces and common protocols. These things have to be complementary and work together. I do not see it as competition.

But does a company such as Dell get the benefit because it has a great distribution model for what it is, just a commodity now, as opposed to a Sony or a Samsung with huge retail operations and huge R&D efforts.
I do not expect to see any of the major consumer electronics players disappear. I think the Samsungs and the Sonys are going to still be around. I would dare say most of us in our homes have stereo systems. But not everything is from Kenwood or Technics or Sony or Samsung. I have got a hodgepodge in my house. You guys have probably the same thing in yours.

Tejas (a version of the Pentium 4 that was due out later this year) has been eliminated from the road map and observers believe notebook and desktop processors are going to converge again. So is the Pentium 4 having a shorter lifespan than expected?
You know, we are not magicians. It takes us several years to develop a microprocessor from scratch and as the environment and the ecosystem changes around you. So you adapt to it. You do not just stick to your guns saying, "the hell with the environment. We will do whatever we want to do, independent of what the market wants." Cancelling Tejas and the acceleration of the dual core seems to fit right into that general category of using our resources for the best possible returns. I think even Peter Drucker would be happy with that.

Has the corporate culture you had hoped to forge when you became chief executive worked out according to your plans, expectations? Were there surprises along the way?
The biggest challenge we have had from a culture standpoint has been in the last three years during a difficult business time. I have been here 30 years and have been through about 10 recessions at various lengths, and the last one was over twice as long as any of the previous ones. I think the structure that we had in place, our salary structure is pretty variable so it accommodates ups and downs in the business cycle and you do not have to surprise people with salary reductions or surprise them with big layoffs and things like those.

I think the culture worked well from that standpoint, but I think every company in the high-tech industry has suffered in the last three years just because there was a long downturn. A lot of employees had never been through a downturn before and people were used to the 90s, which was a good time for all. That was difficult, but we still have the same values that the company operates on. All the internal awards that we give, all the recognition that we give, the annual performance appraisal cycle that we go through -- it's all based on performance to Intel values.