Wolfe's Den: Why Intel's Reorg Puts Maloney In CEO Successor SeatWolfe's Den: Why Intel's Reorg Puts Maloney In CEO Successor Seat

Nevertheless it would be foolish to count Perlmutter out, because if he doesn't grab the brass ring at Intel, he could easily follow the path of a number of his colleagues to another executive suite. Indeed, Intel has demonstrated that it has a deep bench of tech executives, of which other companies are only too happy to avail themselves.

Pat Gelsinger, who many are now touting as a potential successor to EMC chairman Joe Tucci, is only the latest to be snapped up. There are other recent cases in point. There's Abhi Talwalkar, the one-time co-head of Intel's Digital Enterprise Group (with Gelsinger, no less), who in 2005 succeeded Wilf Corrigan and president and CEO of LSI Logic. Dave House was an up-and-comer at Intel, before he left in 1996 to run Bay Networks. House subsequently became president of Nortel Networks and is currently chairman of Brocade Communications Systems. And executive vice president Mike Fister, who ran the Enterprise Platforms Group, was tapped in 2004 to run electronic-design automation (aka complex chip-design software) powerhouse Cadence Design Systems.

Such a deep bench dovetails with my sense that there's far more synergy amongst Intel's top management team than there is at comparably sized competitors. Certainly, Intel's leadership presents a less autocratic face than, say, Cisco, Oracle, or IBM.

Thus, the fact that talented individuals such as Maloney, Bryant, and Perlmutter have, in effect, been developed by Intel's executive farm system is no surprise.

Tall Order

Whomever is selected when Intel decides to make its next executive transition will have a tall order. It's interesting to note that both Otellini and his predecessor Craig Barrett had their share of grief. Barrett was buffeted by problems with Itanium, an architecture which was initially positioned as the wave of the future. Inside, it ended up as a low-volume play for high-end servers.

Barrett's reign also saw single-core technology max out, as power dissipations rose with increasing clock speeds. (At the end of the single-core era, chips were threatening to hit 150W.) That issue was left for Otellini to deal with. After taking over in 2005 he famously embarked on a technological "left-hand turn," which saw Intel lead the industry toward multi-core processing.

Otellini achievements also include riding out two downturns. Intel had its biggest layoffs ever in 2006. During the current recession, Intel has held its own. On the technology front, along with the Atom, he's led a push towards more flexible architectures. These include the Larabee graphics chip, the 80-core programmable Tera chip (a demonstration project), and the System-on-Chip (SoC) effort.

SoCs are the most flexible of all, enabling intellectual property (i.e., IP is processor designs which on paper) to be configured into many different, purpose-built processor. Thus, SoCs could be the ultimate diversification play. The other problem is that, heretofore, IP-based SoCs have been the province of companies which didn't have enough money to fabricate their own chips. That's a round-about way of saying that, the more specialized a design is, the less of a volume business it constitutes. And Intel is nothing if not a high-volume powerhouse.

How much further Otellini will be able to adjudicate the tough mix of standard processors, Atom, SoCs, and future initiatives remains to be seen. But one must give him credit for putting Intel on a path toward a more diverse mix of technologies. Yet Maloney, or whomever is anointed successor, will clearly have his work cut out for him.

Here's my video interview Maloney, from this past April:

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Alex Wolfe is editor-in-chief of information.com.