My armchair outsider take is that Gelsinger could not have pulled his plan off without also cutting a lot of the bloat from the middle layers of the company, which seemed like a task he was unwilling to undertake. Any merit to this take?

I tend to agree. Pat seemed to be trying to take a middle ground approach: split the company in two, but not really giving up hope that Intel would regain x86 leadership and that somehow things were still going to be OK on that front. The reality is that even if Intel retakes x86 leadership, x86 isn't what it once was and is unlikely to command the premium it once did except in niche legacy applications. If you give up hope for a return to the glory days, there's some radical restructuring left to do which includes cutting most of the middle, and some vertical layers, out of Intel.

A well-written article tainted by the ugly AI slop banner plastered up front. Instantly makes it seem lower effort. It would look just fine without a photo at all!

I think it looks cool

Eh. Honestly if you hadn't mentioned it I probably wouldn't have even paid attention to it. I'm almost sure it's a near carbon copy of a real 3D render.

I think Gelsinger had a chance, but it was slim and it closed fairly rapidly after he took over.

Intels board is so short sighted. Intel still has volume and could retake process leadership, no one else can say the same. Intel can right itself but no one can rise up to quickly take their place, the capex is too high and no one has risk appetite anymore.

> Like say, a major Microsoft investment in Intel.

> help Microsoft diversify away from NVIDIA (and eventually perhaps Qualcomm)

Would that be for datacenters? Or end user machines? Or handsets, ala Nokia?