Intel hires Qualcomm's compute leader to lead new mobile push File this one under "if you can't beat 'rm, hire 'em": Intel has hired Doctor Venkata “Murthy” Renduchintala. The new hire was until recently executive veep and president of Qualcomm's mobile and computing division, in other words Intel's nemesis as Chipzilla tried and failed to make a dent in mobile devices. For having pulled …
"Bundling everything up into a pot called "client" allowed Intel to hide losses in its mobile product range."
Why is that even allowed, by the audit committee, the auditors, the shareholders, etc? It's only a short term fix anyway as the high-volume end of the client market will continue to move away from Wintel.
Appointing a single senior person in charge of this sector acknowledges that something different is needed, but how does it actually change anything significant, unless it permits a change of strategy away from the irrelevant legacy deadweight (for the mobile/IoT market) of x86?
Even Tesco have abandoned their popular(?) x86-based fondleslab; there will be no Hudl 3. edit: probably popular because of the price. the price was probably even more subsidised than Intel's usual x86-mobile stuff (look up "contra revenue")
It is interesting how companies fail to arrive at their goal because of where they started from. Every design decision has baggage attached making anything that does not fit, importance of power consumption for example, difficult to deliver. A new boss helps but the inertia of all those involved is always a problem.
I worked for Murthy in Cambridge early in my career, an excellent boss and able to Lead and Manage. I remember our weekly review of the PERT charts with a mixture of dread and nostalgia.
Intel should have hired him to work over their X-Scale cores (and god did it need it with the worst instructions per clock of any ARM design), as he can't work miracles and somehow make Intel's chips competitive with ARM while carrying all the baggage of the x86 ISA along with them.
I worked in the same building as Murthy in Cambridge I guess back in the late 80s.
I don't know what he was like to work for, but working within earshot (about 50 metres) was pretty irritating because he was so LOUD.
In fact, I'm sure he was the model for loud Howard in the Dilbert strips.
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