Rivals such as Nvidia have left Intel far behind. CEO Pat Gelsinger aims to reverse firm’s fortunes by vastly expanding its factories. From a report: Pat Gelsinger is keenly aware he must act fast to stop Intel from becoming yet another storied American technology company left in the dust by nimbler competitors. Over the past decade, rivals overtook Intel in making the most advanced chips, graphics-chip maker Nvidia leapfrogged Intel to become America’s most valuable semiconductor company, and perennial also-ran AMD has been stealing market share. Intel, by contrast, has faced repeated delays introducing new chips and frustration from would-be customers. “We didn’t get into this mud hole because everything was going great,” said Gelsinger, who took over as CEO in 2021. “We had some serious issues in terms of leadership, people, methodology, et cetera that we needed to attack.”

As he sees it, Intel’s problems stem largely from how it botched a transition in how chips are made. Intel came to prominence by both designing circuits and making them in its own factories. Now, chip companies tend to specialize either in circuit design or manufacturing, and Intel hasn’t been able to pick up much business making chips designed by other people. So far, the turnaround has been rough. Gelsinger, 62 years old and a devout Christian, said he takes inspiration from the biblical story of Nehemiah, who rebuilt the walls of Jerusalem under attack from his enemies. Last year, he told a Christian group in Singapore: “You’ll have your bad days, and you need to have a deep passion to rebuild.” Gelsinger’s plan is to invest as much as hundreds of billions of dollars into new factories that would make semiconductors for other companies alongside Intel’s own chips. Two years in, that contract-manufacturing operation, called a “foundry” business, is bogged down with problems.

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Source: Slashdot – Intel’s Revival Plan Runs Into Trouble. ‘We Had Some Serious Issues.’