My Intel Experience

I was hired by Intel in mid-2004 as part of their “Standard Building Blocks” program. The idea was, although there were then dozens of companies making desktop PCs, there were only a few making notebooks as engineering a notebook was much more difficult. The mission of the Standard Building Blocks group was to standardize notebook components so that anyone could build a laptop. I and another person were tasked with specifying the LCD/screen and lid design. When I joined Intel, as far as I could tell, there were less than a dozen people who even knew how an LCD worked. To the company, the display (only LCDs at the time) was just another device the processor wrote to and not a core part of the platform.

While I was at Intel, I packed up a few other responsibilities. I became an advisor to Intel Capital on their display technology investments. I served on the chip design teams for 2 generations of Intel mobile chipsets, advising them on the future capabilities and requirements for future generations of LCD. As part of this role, I initiated the switch from 4:3 to 16:9 as the standard screen format. Also, related to this role, I served on a Problem EXecution Team (PXT) that dealt with a defect that was discovered in the design of a chip that was already shipping.

The defect was that the graphics part of the chip was communicating with the LCD at a much lower voltage than was specified.  My role on the PXT was to both advise the team about LCD mechanics and communicate with the LCD makers about how Intel was handling the problem.  Unlike most teams at Intel where meetings started on time, ended on time, and had to be scheduled at least 24 hours in advance with a published agenda, PXT meetings happened whenever the team leader decided to call one and lasted until he was satisfied with progress.  Further, the meetings were so secretive, you were not even able to tell your boss what you were working on.  I communicated with the LCD makers through the Intel display technology experts in Korea, Taiwan, and Japan.

The PXT lasted for the better part of a year.  In that time, as mentioned, the aspect ratio of Laptop PCs was changed from 4:3 to 16:9 and the company started to gain an appreciation of just how display-centric computing was becoming.  My group was eventually disbanded at the demand of HP, which made a lot of money selling custom battery packs and replacement parts for their PCs much as they currently make huge amounts selling ink by the drop in cartridges special to each and every printer they design.  Standardization of notebook parts, much like the current move to refilling printers with ink rather than cartridges, would put an end to a wildly profitable product line.

I was laid off in 2007.  Further, Intel was beginning to grasp how the display was reshaping the computer platform. The company decided to put a favored executive in charge of all display-related issues, a person who knew nothing about LCDs.  He brought in his own team and not only was I gone, but all of the display experts that I worked with on the PXT were laid off as well.

Even back in those years, AMD processors were generally preferred to Intels for gaming PCs.  Consequently, AMD had a greater appreciation for screens and graphics.  This bled into the way AMD chips were designed, particularly their graphics chips.  Nvidia, of course, was a graphics company and their architecture was built on multiple cores running in parallel.  Intel, later was forced into multiple cores as you can not increase the clock speed on a chip indefinitely without the chip burning up.  However while Intel migrated to multiple cores, AMD and Nvidia graphics chips had dozens.

In recent times, with the rise of Bitcoin mining and now AI which embraces these multicore designs, AMD and especially Nvidia, have seen their stars rise while Intel struggles to catch up.  Before I left Intel, I sold my Intel stock at $26 per share. Fourteen years later, a share of Intel is worth $22.