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Former Intel CEO Paul Otellini Dies At 66 (engadget.com)

Posted by BeauHD on from the rest-in-peace dept.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Engadget: Paul Otellini, Intel's previous CEO, died in his sleep on Monday, the company announced this morning. He was 66. Otellini served as Intel's fifth chief executive from 2005 through 2013, and leaves behind a legacy of the company's dominance in x86 processors. Notably, he also worked with Apple as it moved away from PowerPC chips and adopted Intel's wares. After retiring in 2013, Otellini revealed one major regret during his tenure: not working hard enough to get Intel's chips in the iPhone. Consequently, Intel mostly missed on the smartphone revolution.

Otellini joined Intel in 1974 and served various roles throughout his career, including chief operating officer from 2003 to 2005. He would go on to spend almost 40 years at the company. He was an intriguing choice as CEO, since he was the company's first non-engineer to hold that role.

30 of 48 comments (clear)

  1. "Dominance" by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    leaves behind a legacy of the company's dominance in x86 processors

    Wasn't this the same CEO at the helm when Intel was paying off OEMs to not offer AMD chips in their systems?

    Anti-competitive practices sure helped contribute to that "dominance".

    1. Re:"Dominance" by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      leaves behind a legacy of the company's dominance in x86 processors

      Wasn't this the same CEO at the helm when Intel was paying off OEMs to not offer AMD chips in their systems?

      Anti-competitive practices sure helped contribute to that "dominance".

      That's what the EU Commission failed to show, since the imagined secret contract never existed.

    2. Re:"Dominance" by TechyImmigrant · · Score: 1

      Don't confuse Europe with the EU Commission.

      --
      I should use this sig to advertise my book ISBN-13 : 978-1501515132.
    3. Re:"Dominance" by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      There was plenty of evidence, mostly in emails. It was enough for Intel to agree to a $1.25 billion settlement in 2009. In one of the emails, Otellini referred to then Dell CEO Kevin Rollins as "The best friend money can buy."

  2. Re:How did he die? by TroII · · Score: 3, Funny

    Unexpected jump to opcode 0F 04.

    --
    "If there was a gay Afro-Puertorican Linux distribution, I'd give it a try" ~lucm
  3. Re:How did he die? by thegarbz · · Score: 1

    Halting and catching fire in your sleep is such a horrible way to go.

  4. 66 seems to be the number by turkeydance · · Score: 1

    Petty, now Paul

    1. Re:66 seems to be the number by antdude · · Score: 1

      Order 66 was executed? Were these jedis? What about the people who were killed in Sin City? Any 66s? :(

      --
      Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
  5. Damn. by Penguinisto · · Score: 5, Interesting

    No shit... that blows.

    Dude was CEO when I worked there. He was a pretty decent guy (at least to the employees. To AMD, not so much.) I will say that I didn't like the idea of having R&D projects competing not only for resources, but manpower. If your project died (like Digital Home Group, which I was in), you had to go into the 'pool' until you could find another project to work for (and if you didn't by the third month, you were unemployed.) There were some groups that were guaranteed to live forever (Server Group, anyone?), but most had to fight like hell to remain relevant, remain visible to management, and survive. While I understand how it creates better products (in a way) and culls dead-end ones, it led to more than a bit of instability among the R&D half of the company...

    --
    Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
    1. Re:Damn. by zifn4b · · Score: 1

      I will say that I didn't like the idea of having R&D projects competing not only for resources, but manpower.

      Where is a place you can work at that isn't like this anymore? If such a place exists, I'm guessing that you ride unicorns there across a rainbow bridge.

      --
      We'll make great pets
    2. Re:Damn. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      I will say that I didn't like the idea of having R&D projects competing not only for resources, but manpower.

      Where is a place you can work at that isn't like this anymore? If such a place exists, I'm guessing that you ride unicorns there across a rainbow bridge.

      Then I'm enjoying my multi-colored ride. Same company, but in a role largely of my own creation, that no one else does and the company needs me to keep on doing it. They could reduce their dependence by giving me some staff to train up, but they choose not to.

    3. Re:Damn. by Penguinisto · · Score: 3, Informative

      It's not as common to have groups (or divisions, or whatever) openly (and with executive blessing) competing directly against each other, poaching workers from each other, etc. I mean yeah, many companies have something similar, but Intel took it to amazingly high levels of political/social back-stabbery. If your group's leadership wasn't a pack of wolves and/or your product wasn't a stock-busting smash hit, your group didn't last too awful long.

      --
      Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
    4. Re:Damn. by networkBoy · · Score: 4, Interesting

      ^^THIS

      I was with a chipset firmware team that was duplicated in the states and in Israel. Unfortunately the culture clash and competition clash led to some very abusive practices. I stood up against management about this, and was railroaded out the door with my chin up high, and like Milton's red stapler I took my lab chair with me! (Makes a kick-ass guitar stool; had direct mgr blessing and HR droid's approval).

      Later the same year my entire former team was sent into the redeployment pool and all operations moved to the JER site.
      After 17 years I met my end there, never to be employed by them again.
      Barret was a vastly better CEO than Otellini, but BK makes both of the other two look like saints.

      --
      whois gawk date unzip strip find touch finger mount join nice man top fsck grep eject more yes exit umount sleep dump
    5. Re:Damn. by Penguinisto · · Score: 1

      On the plus side, at least neither of us worked in Viiv. From what I heard, that was a Class-A clusterfuck from the word 'go' (and --rumor, mind-- the leadership in that group left lipstick all over the entire C-level's underwear, so it lived a whole hell of a lot longer than it should have.)

      --
      Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
    6. Re:Damn. by networkBoy · · Score: 1

      Oh god I forgot about that mess...
      I worked in flash, and when that divested I moved over to chipsets.

      By chance (Since you were in digital home, perhaps not) do you remember the IT Innovation center's ambulance? The Digital health showroom on wheels that I honestly don't think was ever shown to anyone?

      --
      whois gawk date unzip strip find touch finger mount join nice man top fsck grep eject more yes exit umount sleep dump
    7. Re:Damn. by zifn4b · · Score: 3, Insightful

      I was with a chipset firmware team that was duplicated in the states and in Israel. Unfortunately the culture clash and competition clash led to some very abusive practices. I stood up against management about this, and was railroaded out the door with my chin up high, and like Milton's red stapler I took my lab chair with me!

      I've seen this too many times. Companies seem to be reading out of the same textbooks. What they seem to be doing is using psychology and sociology to essentially create a milder form of negative social conformity similar to what many malevolent rulers have employed in history. It's hard to describe. Basically, you establish some cultural principles but you spin them to sound good when in reality they are very bad. Like for example "we don't like slackers" means "if you work less than 80 hours a week, you're a slacker". You don't want to be shamed as being a slacker do you? Or we like "positive, enthusiastic people" really means "just say yes to management about any decisions it makes and give them much praise for their infinite wisdom and that they were benevolent enough to allow you to bask in this." You don't want to not be positive and enthusiastic do you? Nobody likes people like that. If you challenge any of these principles you get semantically tagged as being "a problem" or "negative" or any number of errors of fundamental attribution that any rational and sane person could plainly see. Once this happens the sociopathic, passive aggressive games start and it never ends well.

      It really is a milder form of Philip Zimbardo's Lucifer effect. These executive managers are creating the most psychologically dysfunctional environments by doing this and they are not completely harmless. You might not be getting put on a firing line or tortured physically, but these types of tactics are by definition, psychological abuse. The same psychological abuse you would find in a dysfunctional family of sociopaths. You can read quite clear descriptions of this stuff in any psychology textbook.

      Ultimately, the only thing compelling about a dysfunctional and psychologically abusive work environment is the pay and people will only want the pay if there is "no better option" common during The Great Recession. That is used as leverage. Once the supply of workers goes down and need for labor goes up, those companies are forced to change or they can go down in a blaze of glory.

      --
      We'll make great pets
    8. Re:Damn. by Penguinisto · · Score: 1

      I think I'd heard of it offhand, I but never saw it (I was up in CO and then JF, in Oregon).

      (...besides, I was too busy laughing at the HWW ("How We Work") initiative, where they got rid of the cubes in a chunk of Jones Farm (JF-2, I believe) and went with an open floor plan that world+dog could see - inside or outside the building. Everyone assigned there apparently discovered that they would be more productive if they did their work in conference rooms and from home.)

      --
      Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
    9. Re:Damn. by eaglesrule · · Score: 1

      I'm reminded of Otellini's bronze plaque, the one you can still find on ebay if you search his name there. It commemorates Intel's 40 billion in revenue, and was handed out to all, even the drones in the production sweatshop. They'd seen perks cuts, heard all the excuses why they couldn't have bonuses and raises, and had been stretched thin from headcount reduction. It was meant to be a morale booster, but from what I had to hear from my friends at the time, it had the exact opposite effect.

      I had to wonder about the level of disconnect that would be necessary between the c-suite carpet dwellers reaping the benefits, and the grunts toiling in the hostile work environment you described, for the idea of handing these things out to be considered a good idea.

      I keep it on my desk as a reminder to be grateful that I don't have to work in that environment. It has a nice weight to it, making it a fitting symbol.

  6. Re:He will be missed. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

    The best CEO since I have been with the company. He deserved so much more time to enjoy his retirement...

    Less of a fan since I was there and saw first hand how he screwed up the wireless business with a string of inept decisions and poor management appointments. The view from the CPU side may have been different.

  7. Regret not getting on iPhone??? by AnthonywC · · Score: 1

    He should've regretted not getting on Android, which has 88% of the global market.

    1. Re:Regret not getting on iPhone??? by DontBeAMoran · · Score: 1

      Hard to sell $50 processors for $100 smartphones... Think profits, not marketshare.

      --
      #DeleteFacebook
    2. Re:Regret not getting on iPhone??? by networkBoy · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Until he liquidated it to Marvell, Intel had StrongARM; and internally had the RISC i960 that both could have done amazingly in this space, both were (stupidly IMnsHO) liquidated to make room for Atom/TinyIA/Quark, all of which have some level of the x86 baggage (from most to least) and thus the power consumption overhead.

      i960 *could* have been re-tooled into an ultra low power core and simply add on the peripherals to make it into a SoC, or StrongARM could have been remodeled into a QC competitor.

      --
      whois gawk date unzip strip find touch finger mount join nice man top fsck grep eject more yes exit umount sleep dump
    3. Re:Regret not getting on iPhone??? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Intel had an ARM chip division for Phone CPUs called XScale from 2002 to 2006 when they sold it to Marvell to focus on the more profitable x86 series.

      His "greatest regret" comment is pure BS. He made the wrong decision to get out of phone CPUs

    4. Re:Regret not getting on iPhone??? by networkBoy · · Score: 1

      I think a lot of it was process tech.*
      By using the same compute ecosystem the process tweaks developed for one also are applicable to the other.

      ARM has such a different layout that you would need wholesale different DRCs for it, which means a parallel path for process improvement in the FABs. Same issue with RISC and i960.

      *I was not a process engineer at Intel, so this is speculative.

      --
      whois gawk date unzip strip find touch finger mount join nice man top fsck grep eject more yes exit umount sleep dump
  8. Re:He will be missed. by zaft · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Agreed. I always liked him, though not pushing into mobile was a grievous mistake. Still, he was the CEO for most of my time at Intel (he left about a year before I did) and it looked like things were going to get nastier under BK (and indeed they have).

  9. Re:How did he die? by DontBeAMoran · · Score: 1

    How did he die?

    I see what you did, there.

    --
    #DeleteFacebook
  10. My understanding: Poor management by Otellini. by Futurepower(R) · · Score: 1

    Here is a Slashdot comment of mine from 7 years ago. See the 2nd bold heading:

    Should Intel CEO Paul Otellini be replaced? (2010-09-14)

  11. Re:He will be missed. by cheesybagel · · Score: 2

    Intel typically has a lot of issues entering new chip markets. Just look at all the issues they have with getting a high performance GPU designed. They been at it almost as long as NVIDIA. Remember the i740?

  12. slightly OT: Intel utterly not getting mobile by Plumpaquatsch · · Score: 1
    http://www.nytimes.com/1992/07/19/business/the-executive-computer-mother-of-all-markets-or-a-pipe-dream-driven-by-greed.htmlThe Executive Computer; 'Mother of All Markets' or a 'Pipe Dream Driven by Greed'?

    By Peter H. Lewis Published: July 19, 1992

    BURLINGAME, Calif.— Sometime around the middle of this decade no one is sure exactly when -- executives on the go will begin carrying pocket-sized digital communicating devices.

    ...

    At one end of the spectrum is John Sculley, the chief executive of Apple Computer Inc., who says these personal communicators could be "the mother of all markets."

    At the other end is Andrew Grove, the chairman of the Intel Corporation, the huge chip maker based in Santa Clara, Calif. He says the idea of a wireless personal communicator in every pocket is "a pipe dream driven by greed."

    --
    Of course news about a fake are Fake News.
  13. Re:Wow! Same age as Tom Petty! by len.turnbow · · Score: 1

    I think this is a very pure example of coincidence.. Petty and the Heartbreakers delighted their fans for 40 years. On the other hand, Paul and his band of thugs from the third basement terrorized Intel employees with a goal of getting them to kill themselves. I just don't see any linkage here.