Intel: a modest suggestion

I suggest Intel makes its strategy that of becoming the biggest manufacture of microprocessors. Sounds familiar, doesn't it? Robin Saxby said as much in March. Unfortunately, in order to do that, it needs to put its ego on the shelf and start manufacturing SoCs that use ARM microprocessors. Now it's started to do that, I'm sure Apple and many other companies will be quite willing to help by adopting Intel's leading edge process for their designs. The combination of x86 processors and ARM processors should easily do the trick. Of course there are some organisational details to work out. First, Intel is a big company; you probably need to break it up into three parts: first would be Intel Manufacturing; next would be Intel Microprocessor; and third would be Intel SoC Platform. I'm not suggesting a conglomerate, I'm suggesting something in between a conglomerate and an IDM. You need to keep the choice of microprocessors independent to the three companies. That means the SoC Platform company can choose x86 or ARM or any other processor that fits their design needs. It also means the Microprocessor company is free to work with other companies to design whatever processor they wish. However, neither of the two can manufacture wherever they want to. But, of course, the Manufacturing company can make any processor its sales force can get their hands on. Now you've picked Brian Krzanich as an overall ceo – which fits in with the manufacturing strategy – and Renee James as president, you need to go out and find three group presidents. These need to be three no nonsense engineers. You probably have a few at Intel -- you're looking for three people like Andy Groves or Robert Noyce. So that's it; pretty simple. However, just like the decision to get out of the dram business, you need to get rid of the ego thing. The industry really needs you. You and IBM are central to the entire electronic world. Without your process development, your manufacturing expertise and the millions of other technology leadership roles you've filled, we would never be where we are today. And without you we aren't going to have the future we deserve. Gary Smith is founder and chief analyst for Gary Smith EDA. Previously, he was the managing vice president and chief analyst of the Electronic Design Automation Service, Design & Engineering Cluster at Gartner Dataquest.