Heads roll at Intel after 7nm delay

Enlarge /. Dr. Venkata (Murthy) Renduchintala speaks of Intel at the Technology and Manufacturing Day 2017.

The past few years have been difficult times for Intel, and after it became known last week that Intel's 7nm parts had been (again) delayed, the company announced a leadership restructuring this week. The biggest news is that Intel's chief engineering officer, Murthy Renduchintala, is leaving the company.

Renduchintala joined Intel in 2016 when the company lured him away from Qualcomm with a signing bonus of $ 8.1 million and a total compensation package of up to $ 25 million. He has been Intel's chief engineering officer for just over three years, and was named "the company's second strongest manager" after then-CEO Brian Krzanich.

Renduchintala headed the far-reaching group "Technology, System Architecture and Customer Group (TSCG)". In Intel jargon, "technology" with a capital letter T specifically encompasses the chip manufacturing department, which has so much to struggle with. The group was monitored by Renduchintala in 2018 and since 2018 7nm has been described as "on the right track".

After Renduchintala is gone, TSCG will be divided into five parts and given to other Intel executives. Intel hopes that the change will "accelerate product leadership and improve focus and accountability when executing process technologies." The technology development group will now live under 24-year-old Intel veteran Ann Kelleher. The Intel press release states that Kelleher's goals are to "accelerate the ramp of Intel's 10nm process" and "to develop Intel technology with a focus on 7nm and 5nm processes." conduct". Kelleher started as a process engineer at Intel Ireland in 1996 and worked his way up to the head of Fab management.

The past few years have been terrible for Intel. In 2013, the company's original roadmap was to spend on the 14nm node in 2014-2015 and then switch to 10nm in 2016-2017. However, an endless series of problems and setbacks at 10 nm resulted in the company spending five years on the 14 nm node. A shaky transition to 10nm didn't start until 2019, and the company still doesn't have 10nm desktop or server parts. With Intel spinning its wheels, AMD has returned to a second golden age with its Zen architecture and headline-grabbing Threadripper core numbers. AMD is even beginning to draw the attention of laptop OEMs.

Intel also completely missed the smartphone revolution as it was not possible to find an answer to the rise of the ARM SoC with extremely low power consumption. After the smartphone uprising, ARM chips quickly moved around Intel's territory by spreading on tablets and laptops. Intel's latest black eye is completely dumped by Apple, which, after building its own ARM design house for iPhone and iPad, has announced plans to scale its ARM chips to Mac laptops and desktops.

Murthy Renduchintala will leave Intel on August 3, 2020.