[The Exiled]

Intel Hybrid CPU starts 'End of Life' process: Intel retires "Lakefield," "Comet Lake-U," and "Ice Lake-U" processors

Intel on Tuesday issued product-change notifications (PCNs) to announce the discontinuation of its first Hybrid processors, codenamed "Lakefield," besides 15-Watt U-segment variants of its "Ice Lake" and "Comet Lake" mobile processors. With the product discontinuation notice put out, it sets the ball rolling toward a year-long process where Intel solicits its final orders for these chips from OEMs and distributors, fulfills these orders last by 2022, and marks these parts "End of Life" (EOL). The goal of Lakefield for Intel wasn’t performance, but experience and form factor innovation, which benchmarks never indicate. Overall, to see its only public Hybrid CPU suddenly go on product discontinuance after only a year in the market isn’t a great commitment to the technology from OEM partners.

Intel continues to rehire veterans: At some point they’ll run out

Intel has rehired one of the key engineers behind its Sandy Bridge and SkyLake architecture CPUs. Shlomit Weiss has been appointed as SVP and co-general manager of the Design Engineering Group. Weiss has 26 years of experience working at Intel and only left five years ago to work for Mellanox/nVidia, for whom she led a 1,000+ team in Israel. Conveniently, she will be able to stay in Israel and work at the Intel engineering facilities there. The above re-appointment seems to be part of a wider strategy of CEO Pat Gelsinger to hire trusted and proven Intel veterans from the era before he felt it was time to leave (to begin work at VMware). Weiss is the latest in an ever-growing list of ‘re-hiring’ Intel veterans, which leads to the problem that at some point Intel will run out of ex-employees to rehire and instead nurture internal talent for those roles.

Izvor: AnandTech, TechPowerUp i HEXUS.net