Otellini, Intel and R&D: Good money after good

Seems for now Intel is on the upswing again. As appearing in this WSJ.com  piece, Intel CEO Paul Otellini seems to have the Intel DNA. For the old guard, just the Intel building creates awe. When he took over, when things were bad Otellini put more into R&D. And good things happened. Nice material for the upcoming biopic on Otellini. At the heart of his process is the question ‘why?’

He learned this process from Mr. Grove: “Ask why, and ask it again five more times, until all of the artifice is stripped away and you end up with the intellectually honest answer.”

Still, I have been able to sit in on a few forums now on the topic of mutlicore programming. I don’t recall so much searching and stumbling, except maybe just before the web happened. Oh, yeah, the Transputer sessions seemed similarly muddled.

Multicore seems to be rife with cluelessness, and that could spell trouble for Intel, Moore’s Law or now Moore’s Law. Meanwhile, Ashlee Vance has appeared at NYT, and has a good take on Nvidia, which is the stalwart of the FPU, and also conjures for me the Anton Massively Parallel ASIC.