Tbh I think a big part of the reason they’re targeting gelsinger is because he’s not from the financial boys club.
That said, I still don’t have a much of sympathy for him at all. He handled the lithography fiasco hilariously poorly, amongst many other things, and there’s no way his salary (or the salaries of the vast majority of CEOs in general) are justified
Most of the companies you’re mentioning do not have their own chip foundries. The only - and I do mean only - companies that have working lithography lines to support bleeding edge chips at massive scale are Samsung, TSMC, and Intel. Several other companies are investing in eventually gaining that capability, but right now, thats it. And these things take a LONG time to spin up and iron out the issues.
TL;DR: the problem is how few companies actually MAKE the chips, not how many companies DESIGN them.
…after knowing for damn sure it was a serious issue in two successive process generations.
There is no way this happened without a LOT of people knowing EXACTLY what was happening, and covering it up. The DoJ should really kick off an investigation into the situation, because it’s pretty obvious there was malfeasance at multiple levels. That, or their leadership and QC processes are both so categorically inept that one could argue the company should be straight up nationalized as a critical strategic asset.
I had an old T60p - yeah, Core 2 Duo baybeeeee. Iirc that was one of the last models that were made under IBM before Lenovo bought the Thinkpad brand. Since then, my primary personal laptop has ALWAYS been a thinkpad, simply because the keyboard IS that good. Seriously, I really do not think that any other laptop line offers a better keyboard, or is so consistently at the top of the pack.
Note: I’m talking specifically about Thinkpads, and particularly the X and T lines. Non-thinkpads are much more of a roll of the dice.
It really does beggar belief. They used to be THE one to beat. Now they’re hemorrhaging money and reputation, and figuring out how to deal with a multi-generational lithography deficiency - not to mention, the implications that that problem has on their lack of testing rigor, improper QC reporting processes, or both.
So, thank you, Finance and MBA assholes, for driving a titan of American industry into the ground, I guess. I wish you’d all get fired, but you won’t, I’m sure.
When they say “homegrown” they mean “home grown”