Pat Gelsinger: Intel's Technology Shepherd - Page 4

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Head of the ship

Within Intel and with his church, Gelsinger is involved in a number of charities and works with universities, churches, and missionaries, in both Oregon and around the world. He also serves as Foundation Chair for William Jessup University, a private Christian university in Rocklin, California.

So where does someone who changed the course of chip development at Intel, started its major developer show, and was its first CTO go from here? Up.

"I've had as my personal mission statement for many years that I'd like a shot at running the company," he said. "Of course, that job is well taken now. My goal is to get good enough in terms of my personal capabilities to be considered for that. If not, that's OK, but still, it's a driving force to make myself better."

Brookwood believes Sean Maloney, executive vice president and chief sales and marketing office of the company, is next in line for the top spot after Otellini rides off into the sunset, whenever that is. Intel CEOs have to retire at 65 and Otellini is 57, so assuming everything goes well, he will be around a while.

If Maloney does get the nod, Brookwood suspects the next in line will be one of three people: Gelsinger, David "Dadi" Perlmutter, executive vice president and general manager of the mobility group, or Anand Chandrasekher, senior vice president and general manager of the ultramobility group. All three will be keynote speakers at IDF, starting on Aug. 19, with Gelsinger getting the main address on the first day.

"As I look around Intel at various folks who could move into those slots, clearly Gelsinger could do it," Brookwood said. "Intel has the luxury of several people who could do it. They groom folks for this, and clearly Pat's moved around enough in the organization to be able to handle it."

But he adds the resume is not spotless. Gelsinger signed the deal with Rambus in the late 1990s that proved a boondoggle for Intel, costing it chipset sales and possibly CPU sales as buyers went instead with AMD and the lower-cost DDR memory. Even then-CEO Craig Barrett told The Financial Times in 2001 the deal was "a mistake."

"Intel's whole position and the way it approached Rambus was not a good model for how to do it," Brookwood said. "Boy, did they give Rambus a lot of deals in that contract. Now whether he negotiated or not, I don't know, but I always thought that was one of the most lopsided deals I've ever seen."

Reynolds said that at the time, Rambus looked like the only reasonable solution. "Memory controllers were getting too big and too slow. Now no one knew Rambus would go sour like it did, either," he said. Rambus started to up the royalty rates and make it expensive to make Rambus memory, and thus PC prices went up, hurting everyone.

Brookwood thinks Gelsinger needs more non-technological experience. "The one thing I don't know about Pat is just how conversant he is across all the major, functional areas of the company," Brookwood said. "If you look at Intel's typical senior executive grooming practice, people move into the field organization, factory organization as well as development. I don't think Pat has all of those boxes punched on his game card here."

On the plus side, Brookwood said Gelsinger is one of the best public speakers at Intel. "Barrett was never very good in that role. Otellini does it OK, but sweats buckets. Pat is very calm and can hit really high notes. Some of his IDF keynotes were just inspiring in some ways," he said.

Reynolds said Gelsinger has time. "Give it ten years and let's look again. He needs more seasoning. Running sales and marketing probably wouldn't be a bad thing to do. If he succeeds at that, then you have a CEO with a near perfect balance of skills. It gives you the respect of all the organizations and the ability to understand all the pieces," he said.

At 47, Gelsinger still has plenty of time to go. Retirement is not on his mind. "I don't know that I quite ever see myself retiring because I'm motivated, driven and excited about different aspects of technology. I expect I might graduate to a university at some point," he said.

Maybe he'll even get that Ph.D.