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Intel’s Chief Engineering Officer Is Leaving the Chipmaker

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/intel-chief-engineering-officer-leaving-210841041.html

Intel Corp. ousted Chief Engineering Officer Murthy Renduchintala after the chipmaker failed to keep up with the latest manufacturing advances.

The executive will leave Aug. 3, and his organization will be split up and led by other leaders. Intel said it was making the changes “to accelerate product leadership and improve focus and accountability in process technology execution,” according to a statement.

When Renduchintala joined Intel more than four years ago, he was lauded as someone with the experience needed to upgrade Intel’s design efforts. He was later promoted to his current position, which added responsibility for manufacturing, a key part of improving the performance of chips.

Last week, the company said the latest technique for building the most advanced semiconductors was a year behind schedule. That followed a multiyear delay in the previous manufacturing process. The stock slumped 16% on Friday and fell 2% more on Monday.


Intel ‘Stunning Failure’ Heralds End of Era for U.S. Chip Sector

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-07-25/intel-stunning-failure-heralds-end-of-era-for-u-s-chip-sector

Intel Corp.’s decision to consider outsourcing manufacturing heralds the end of an era in which the company, and the U.S., dominated the semiconductor industry. The move could reverberate well beyond Silicon Valley, influencing global trade and geopolitics.

The Santa Clara, California-based company has been the largest chipmaker for most of the past 30 years by combining the best designs with cutting-edge factories, several of which are still based in the U.S.

Most other U.S. chip companies shut or sold domestic plants years ago, and had other firms make the components, mostly in Asia. Intel held out, arguing that doing both improved each side of its operation and created better semiconductors. That strategy is in tatters now, with the company’s factories struggling to keep up with the latest 7-nanometer production process.

After Chief Executive Officer Bob Swan said Intel is considering outsourcing, the company’s shares slumped 16% on Friday, the most since March, when the stock market plummeted in the early days of the Covid-19 pandemic.

“We view the roadmap missteps to be a stunning failure for a company once known for flawless execution, and could well represent the end of Intel’s computing dominance,” Chris Caso, an analyst at Raymond James, wrote in a research note on Friday.