When many people are thinking about the time of retirement at the age of 60, Pat Gelsinger is facing the most important challenge of his professional life. Intel’s new boss – he took over last year – is on a mission to revitalize the company he started working for at the age of 18 and return it to a leading position in microchip manufacturing.
The American company was synonymous with high technology and innovation in the 1990s, when its electronic components powered the most advanced computers. “But Intel failed to get its chips into smartphones, which became the device of choice for most people. Apple and Google, instead, became the billionaire emblems of Silicon Valley,” journalist Don Wrote wrote in February. Clark, in The New York Times.
“His mission is also about America’s place in the world. Mr. Gelsinger wants the United States to once again play a leading role in semiconductor production, reducing the country’s dependence on manufacturers from Asia and easing the global chip shortage,” Clark said. “If successful, the impact could extend beyond computers to almost every device with an on/off switch.”
Gelsinger has set itself the goal of raising US chip production in the world to 30% from the current 12%, and for this it has begun to invest with new manufacturing plants in Phoenix or Ohio. Likewise, he has become an ally of President Joe Biden in his subsidy plan for companies that install microchip factories in the US.
A few days ago, the CEO of Intel met in Davos with the Spanish president Pedro Sánchez, within the framework of the presentation of the Perte Chip -one of the strategic projects of the Recovery Plan- and, according to reports, they talked about the investments of Intel together with the Government at the National Supercomputing Center located in Barcelona for the start-up of a microchip design laboratory.
A lifetime at Intel
Pat Gelsinger was born in the country to a Pennsylvania family that raised cows and pigs and grew soybeans and sorghum. The takeoff for him came when he at age 18 he obtained an associate degree (the equivalent of a professional training cycle) and moved to California to work at Intel as a quality control technician. That was in 1979, and in 1983 he had already graduated with a degree in Electrical Engineering from Santa Clara University, followed by a master’s degree in Electrical and Computer Engineering from Stanford.
In 1992, he began to occupy his first positions of responsibility in the company after years dedicated to the design of microprocessors. He became Intel Products Group vice president, chief technology officer, and in 2005, vice president and general manager of the Digital Enterprise Group, the digital transformation division, with a significant role in data centers.
However, in 2009, he left. Why is well known to Don Clark, the Times reporter who has interviewed Gelsinger several times. When Andrew Grove stepped down as Intel’s chairman in 2004, a company executive named Paul Otellini was named CEO.
According to Gelsinger, he felt a “dissonant voice” in the direction of the company and Otellini pressured him to leave. So, in 2009, he accepted an offer to become president and COO of EMC, a maker of data storage equipment. In 2012, he became CEO of VMware, a software firm controlled by EMC.
“During those years, Intel got it wrong. For decades, the company had led the industry in delivering regular factory advances that pack more processing power into chips. But delays in perfecting new production processes allowed Intel to rivals such as Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company and Samsung Electronics seize the leadership in manufacturing technology between 2015 and 2019,” Clark explained.
In addition, the journalist pointed out, Intel lost the opportunity to put its chips in the first iPhone because Otellini dismissed it, arguing that the price Apple was willing to pay for the chips was too low to make a profit.
A deeply religious man, Pat Gelsinger arrived at the job he had dreamed of at a difficult time, with a microchip supply crisis sparked by the pandemic. And in his mission to put Intel at the forefront of the industry, Gelsinger met with Lee Jae-yong, vice president of Samsung Electronics, a few days ago to explore avenues for cooperation in semiconductor production. A meeting sponsored by Joe Biden, who has asked to strengthen the alliance between the US and South Korea to guarantee the technological security of his country and depend less on Chinese manufacturing.
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