What just happened? Like the infamous Steve Ballmer, Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger is a man unafraid to say what he feels---though in a less manic fashion than Microsoft's former CEO. The team blue boss recently posted a video looking back at the last 11 months he's spent at the head of the company, including the launch of Alder Lake, which he says has left AMD "in the rearview mirror."
Gelsinger's LinkedIn video lists 11 Intel highlights across last year while also looking to the future. Eleven is both the number of years he was away from the company (Gelsinger left in September 2009 to become EMC's CEO/president) and the number of months he's been back.
A lot of Gelsinger's top 11 consists of the general fluff one expects from CEOs. He describes his personal superpower as the "passion and optimism" he has that "technology truly can change and improve the life of every person on the planet," which is unlikely to get him into the X-Men.
The CEO also notes that Intel's plan for five nodes in four years ---Intel 7, Intel 4, Intel 3, Intel 20A, and Intel 18A---is on or ahead of schedule, before talking about Alder Lake. The 12th-gen chips have been some of Intel's best-received CPUs in years, earning excellent reviews from critics and consumers alike, and their release coincided with AMD losing ground in the Steam Survey for the first time in months. We'll get to see how they fare in the laptop market starting next month.
"Alder Lake. All of a sudden... Boom! We are back in the game. AMD in the rearview mirror in clients, and never again will they be in the windshield; we are just leading the market," Gelsinger gushed.
Gelsinger might be full of confidence in the face of AMD right now, but team red has plenty up its sleeve. CEO Lisa Su announced the Ryzen 7 5800X3D at CES, which the company calls the number one gaming CPU. Su also teased the Zen 4 architecture set to drop later this year. But whoever comes out on top in this battle, having more options is usually good news for consumers.