Intel CEO looks beyond chip flaw — but will clients?
Krzanich hoping to wow CES crowd with new tech
LAS VEGAS – Intel CEO Brian Krzanich wants to talk about the future — the really cool if somewhat creepy future of drone swarms and chips that track your every movement. But the past just won’t let go.
The CEO has planned an elaborate, artificial- intelligence- driven extravaganza during his Monday- night keynote address at CES, the world’s largest tech trade show. The company best known for chips that power PCs wants to show off its updated vision of how its smarter, tiny hardware components will look, with a drone light show and musicians creating sound virtually — they’ll play no instruments, but location tech will crunch the data created by their physical movements to power guitars and drums.
However, a cloud formed by a remnant of the company’s past threatens to dim the effects. The tech giant acknowledged lastweek that its processors in computers and other devices going back more than a decade have potentially exploitable flaws that could let hackers access the most private areas of a user’s computer or device. Apple said all of its Macs, iPhones and iPads were affected and issued updates, while Microsoft pushed out a patch for computers operating Windows 10.
The bruising disclosure sent Intel shares into a two- day sell- off— while rivals AMD and Nvidia rallied — and forced the company into defensive mode, scrambling to assure customers the fixes wouldn’t slow performance. Krzanich’s role also was under fire, as news circulated of his sale of Intel shares after the company found out about the flaw.
Intel says by the end of the week it expects to have issued updates for more than 90% of processors introduced in the past five years. Krzanich’s sale, the company says, was unrelated and previously planned.
Still, concern about the possible long- term ramifications of the issue likely will linger in the convention center when Krzanich takes the stage at CES, formerly the Consumer Electronics Show.
Krzanich said in an interview Friday he isn’t sure whether he will address the situation from the keynote, which was weeks in the making. More likely, he will focus on wowing the crowd the night before 180,000 conventioneers take over the city.
His and Intel’s message: Prepare for data to change your life evenmore than you might expect. “Data is going to be dynamic ... and combined with the performance of computing that allows for artificial intelligence to be applied, is going to bring all kinds of insights and additives to enhance everyday life,” Krzanich said.
After largely missing the industry’s seismic shift from PCs to smartphones a decade ago, it’s intent on laying claim to tech’s move into big data. The dominant PC microprocessor maker, the Santa Clara, Calif.based company has become a powerhouse in providing memory and functionality for cloud computing data centers — about 30% of its $ 59.4 billion in revenue last year came from that segment.
And it has bolstered its presence in artificial intelligence, virtual reality and self- driving vehicles with several key acquisitions over the past two years. Most recently, Intel in March paid $ 15 billion for Mobileye, the Israelibased self- driving car chip and softwaremaker it had partnered with.
“We believe Intel is in the midst of a major transformation,” said Amit Daryanani, an equity research analyst with investment bank RBC Capital Markets.
Some on Wall Street see the chip flaw as a major opening for competitors, notably AMD, as large corporations find it smart to diversify.
But for Intel optimists, it’s a blip as the company shifts from PCs to datacentric areas, which now make up 45% of sales. Daryanani considers this a “buying opportunity” for investors. Similarly, Susquehanna International Group equity analyst Christopher Roland expects Krzanich to only make “a side comment at most” at CES about the situation.
Instead, Intel will focus on the disparate technology advances— virtual reality, self- driving cars, autonomous drones— that have one thing in common: the vast amounts of data needed to make them happen require specialized components made by Intel.
“All of these technologies that we are putting together, ... our memory technology, our CPU, our graphics architecture, our GPUs, all that is being applied to where the data is,” Krzanich said. “You can almost predict where Intel will be in the future. It will be where data resides.”