Intel Sacks Chief Engineer For Not Meeting Deadlines

The uninterrupted problems with the further development of process technologies at Intel now have consequences. Among other things, one removes responsibility from the chief engineer. Murthy Renduchintala has to leave the company.

The background to this is the continuing difficulty of even meeting deadlines as manufacturing technology advances. For years the company was unable to bring the long-planned 10-nanometer design products to market. And now the subsequent introduction of the 7-nanometer processes is clearly postponed again.

This puts Intel increasingly in a position in which there is a fear of losing substantial market share to the competition. The group hadn’t managed to play a role in the development of the important mobile segment. Here you could at least rely on the fact that there are various cloud services behind many applications in the area. And the data centers have so far been firmly in Intel’s hands – but it is no longer so certain that this will remain the case. Because the competition can also provide impulses here.

Intel poached Renduchintala from Qualcomm in February 2016 and gave responsibility for critical corporate areas. At least technically, he was responsible for everything from the development of manufacturing technologies to the chip architecture itself. Today you have to realize that he largely failed in this task.

Conversion into smaller structures

In the course of this, the Intel management also sees that the Technology Systems Architecture and Client Group is a far too large overall department. This is now split into five separate areas. In the future, technology development, manufacturing, design, the basic architectures, and the supply chain will each have their own responsibilities, which are directly under the CEO Bob Swan.

This should also help to ensure that pragmatic decisions are no longer influenced by sensitivities and excessive demands on one’s own possibilities. Above all, this applies to the novelty that Intel’s chip designers no longer have all their developments produced in their own factories. A part is now also to be handed over to contract manufacturers. Rumor has it that negotiations are already underway with TSMC on the production of graphics units.