According to The Oregonian website, usually well informed about Intel’s maneuvers (l company has a manufacturing plant in Hillsboro), current CEO Bob Swan would have informed employees that the choice of to produce some chips outside of its own plants will have to wait for the new CEO Pat Gelsinger to take office in mid-February. “We plan to make that decision very soon, but we’ll do it with Pat ,” Swan would say.

The news is not surprising, on the other hand, proceeding with fundamental decisions for the future roadmap just before a change at the top would go against any logic: Gelsinger must be involved in the process so that it can take on the resulting responsibility . Last year, Intel put pen to paper its intention to turn to third parties for the production of various products, primarily the GPUs dedicated to the gaming world. In this regard, in recent days there have been rumors of an agreement with TSMC, although some analysts believe that the agreement is much broader and also affects the Core CPUs.

The leadership change will be an opportunity for Intel to carry out an in-depth analysis of its potential, of what it can and cannot do . The conference call that will follow the publication of financial results next week will be important to get a first idea, as by announcing the arrival of Gelsinger, Intel anticipated that it had made “ remarkable progress in fine-tuning the 7-nanometer production process “. Is this a development that calls into question a roadmap that seemed partially compromised? We’ll see.

Don’t forget that Gelsinger has a technical background that Swan can’t boast (he has always worked as a CFO), and in his role as CTO he was one of the promoters of the Tick-Tock development and manufacturing methodology, so it has all the necessary skills to decide which path Intel should take to become the leader in manufacturing technologies, regain lost or cracked competitiveness in some sectors and pursue new market opportunities.

According to The Oregonian, Gelsinger was also present at the meeting with the employees , who also set a first and significant goal . “We have to provide better products to the PC world than anything a Cupertino company makes ,” he would say the new CEO making clear reference to Apple. A not casual dig, certainly linked to Apple’s choice to abandon Intel chips on Macs to switch to proprietary solutions.