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Intel has made their first decision by heavily funding their Fab program. Great choice, Intel’s new process development and Fab division is the heart of the company. They also have made their CEO decision. Now, as we use to say in the olden days, they have to feed the Fab. That brings us to my suggestion or suggestions really.

A Suggested Strategy

I suggest Intel makes their strategy that of becoming the biggest manufacture of microprocessors. Sounds familiar, doesn’t it? Robin Saxby said as much in March. Unfortunately, in order to do that, they need to put their ego on the shelf and start manufacturing SoCs that use ARM microprocessors. As detailed by Clive Maxfield, they’ve already done that. Now that they have done that I’m sure Apple, and many other companies, will be quite willing to help them by adopting their leading-edge process for their designs. The combination of x86 processors and ARM processors should easily do the trick.

The Details

Of course there are some organizational details to work out. First Intel is a big company;
you probably need to break it up into three parts:

• First would be Intel Manufacturing
• Next would be Intel Microprocessor
• Third would be Intel SoC Platform

No I’m not suggesting a conglomerate, I’m suggesting something in-between a conglomerate and an IDM. You need to keep the choice of microprocessors independent to the three companies. That means the SoC Platform Company can choose x86 or ARM or any other processor that fits their design needs. It also means the Microprocessor Company is free to work with other Companies to design whatever processor they wish. However neither of the two can go off and manufacture wherever they want to. But of course the Manufacturing Company can manufacture any processor that their sales force can get their hands on.

The CEO Issue

Now that you’ve picked Brian Krzanich as an overall CEO, which fits in with the manufacturing strategy, and Renee James as President, you need to go out and find three Group Presidents. These need to be three no-nonsense engineers. You probably have a few at Intel. ;-> You’re looking for three Andy Groves or Robert Noyce’s.

Conclusion

So that’s it; pretty simple. However, just like the decision to get out of the DRAM business, you need to get rid of the ego thing.

The industry really needs you. You and IBM are central to the entire electronic world. Without your Process development, your manufacturing expertise and the millions of other technology leadership roles you’ve filled we would never be where we are today. And without you we aren’t going to have the future we deserve.