Embattled chip maker swings the axe at a time when major manufacturers are abandoning the company’s processors in droves.

Robert “Bob” Swan has “stepped down” as Intel CEO in the middle of CES, and at time of crisis for the once-dominant processor brand. His time will officially come to an end on February 15th, 2021.

He has named well respected super-nerd, Pat Gelsinger, as his replacement. Gelsinger is currently the head of VMWare with a long history of working at Intel, and is in fact one of the original designers of the classic 80486 CPU.

In choosing a science guy rather than another corporate shlock to lead the company, Intel is clearly getting serious about trying to save their fast dying reputation (and shrinking market share) in the now hyper-competitive microprocessor space.

With the likes of AMDs ever more impressive Ryzen CPU family leading the way in desktop and, perhaps more importantly, laptop performance, as well as the incredibly promising ARM based Apple Silicon making waves, drastic change can’t come soon enough for the once all conquering California based company.

Executive Chairman Omar Ishrak said Gelsinger had a “distinguished track record of innovation, talent development and a deep knowledge of Intel.” And he hoped Gelsinger would see Intel through a “critical period of transformation” from a “CPU to a multi-architecture XPU company.” Which in human speak, means making all types of chips, not just desktop CPUs.

Compounding failures to improve have finally come to a head

To be fair to Bob Swan the company’s problems long predate his tenure, with consistent failed attempts to get beyond a 14nm fabrication process which would hamper progress in processor performance, particularly in laptops, while giving rival AMD time to start afresh, catch-up and now surpass Intel with their far more efficient and scalable Ryzen architecture.

Apple, arguably Intel’s highest profile customer, lost patience when the Skylake series of chips (2015-19) failed to live up to promised quality assurances and performance gains. As a result, Apple went their own way, developing their own RISC based silicon (once the domain of low-powered mobile devices like the iPhone) that is undoubtedly the future of high-performance computers, if the amazing capabilities of their new M1 chip is anything to go by.

In fact, so bad is the situation with poor yields of Intel’s latest attempt, a 10nm node, they have started outsourcing manufacture to TSMC, the maker of Apple’s 5nm A14 chips. An utterly bizarre turn of events, but such is the technological lead rivals such as TSMC have over Intel, the company has little choice if it’s to make any short term progress.

Given all these ongoing issues, Swan was probably not the right leader to turn things around, as Intel’s biggest problem is not its marketing or business model, but engineering. For that reason alone Gelsinger, an accomplished chip-designer, looks like as good a choice as any.

Whether it will be enough to stop Intel’s fall from prominence before it becomes irreversible, only time will tell.