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• TG Daily: Work in the U.S. overall was probably a different world in itself. What differences did you see between the work culture in Israel and the U.S.? Mooly Eden: Coming from a different culture, I believe that people are generally making a mistake by grading or judging another culture by using their own culture. I am often told that Israeli people are blunt. We are not blunt; we are just saying our opinion. Sometimes I tell my partners that they do not care about anything because they do not argue. And they tell me that I argue all the time. But all I do is care about it. When you come from a different culture, you get into a lot of problems. For example, how do you tell someone that you do not agree with him? If I do not agree in Israel, I simply tell you that you are wrong. Here it is almost offensive to say that. Instead, people in the U.S. say "I am not following you. Can you reiterate?" But, what it really means is that "you are wrong." If you come from another country, you get into situations where you can sound offensive. However, from my perspective, that is also what is nice about living in another country: You make new experiences. TG Daily: Would you say that America changed you? Or do you change the people around you? Mooly Eden: I am changing in the way how I am behaving in the U.S. I speak differently. At the end of the day, I want to achieve something and I do not want to insult people. But I am also trying to change everyone around me to what I think is right. And that is to influence them, to being direct, to saying what you think, to elevating problems. I love problems. I learned that people in the U.S. have a problem saying "we have a problem." Instead, they say "we have a challenge." I don't think it's a challenge - why don't they call it a "problem?" It's a challenge to solve the problem. TG Daily: Do you think that a different work culture, a more direct way to work with each other was helpful to come up with the idea for a completely different processor? Mooly Eden: There have been a lot of great ideas in the U.S. Think about the 286, the 486 and the Pentium. But I would agree to say that the culture in Israel helped to develop Banias, Yonah and Merom. We are very friendly, we work together in teams, but discipline is not our strength. The lack of discipline results in a behavior where everybody is challenging everybody. People are challenging you all you all the time. People are not influenced by your rank. They appreciate you for what you are. It's a different thing. If you steer that behavior it into the right way, you get a lot of innovation. TG Daily: What was the most profound lesson you learned in your career? Mooly Eden: We learn from mistakes. There was Timna, which made me much more open. Performance or design is not good enough, if you do not have a deep understanding of the market. I was responsible for it and the writing had been on the wall. The marketing appeal disappeared since the project was based on RDRAM, which did not penetrate the market fast enough. I should have killed the project two quarters earlier. But I was so much in love with the project and we did not stop it. I learned that you have to respect marketing. You need to understand the market very well to determine if the product will be successful. Also, the Pentium MMX project clearly indicated the importance of management and leadership of technical people. With the right management and leadership you can make it happen. Take the same project and a different management it could fall apart. It can make the difference between failure and huge victory. TG Daily: What goals do you have left at Intel? Mooly Eden: I would like to continue to do something interesting. I believe mobile is a huge opportunity. There is something that you can say when you work at Intel and it almost sounds arrogant: You leave your footprint on that evolution, you and your team. Look at Centrino, everyone in this world has a Centrino notebook and you look at it and can say "I was involved in it" and that makes me very proud. It will take 20 years until people will recognize it, because we are in the middle of a huge revolution. I hope I will be part of this moving forward. TG Daily: What advice would you give someone who would like to pursue a similar career as you did? Mooly Eden: I would say to just do it. Don't copy. Do what you believe in. Try to find a job you love, don't compromise with something you do not like. In your job, be patient because an opportunity does not reveal itself on a daily basis. Never be a yes man, say what you think, argue for your opinion. At the end of the day, it will be appreciated. TG Daily: Thank you for the interview. Related articles: Intel is back: Core 2 Duo launches TG Daily interviews Pat Gelsinger: A shot a running IntelIntel is back: Core 2 Duo launches Core 2 Duo in detail: Past, present and future

• TG Daily: What you effectively did, was putting the Gigahertz machine in reverse. From a world that seemingly was driven, at least inside Intel, only by Gigahertz, you told people to throw out the foundation of their marketing strategy. How much of a risk was it? Mooly Eden: It was a huge risk for the IDC. Banias market came just after Timna had been canceled [Timna was the codename for an integrated processor designed for the entry-level market and originally scheduled for the second half of 2000 - ed]. We had worked on Timna for two years and needed to make sure that we didn't get another project canceled. In such a case, the company may lose confidence in the development center. And worse than this, the people may lose confidence in themselves. But the biggest risk in this industry is not to take risks, because then you are doomed. If you want to play it safe, you are out of the game. TG Daily: I would imagine that your idea to cut clock speed in half wasn't very well received at your first presentation to C-level executives. I remember a briefing of Pat Gelsinger, in which he outlined a vision that CPUs may reach 20 GHz by 2009 and that such processors could be compared to small nuclear power plants. And there you are with a chip that goes into the other direction. What was the reaction of engineers and marketing to your first presentation of Banias? Mooly Eden: Pat Gelsinger was actually one of the first people at Intel who figured out that the Gigahertz outlook would not be good thing. He said that we have to return, because we were running into a power wall. You can blame many people for the increase in Gigahertz and power consumption, but definitely not Pat. At the very early stage, Pat was advocating exactly the same thing what we were doing. We did that almost in parallel. But, of course, and without saying names, there were other people who felt that a lower clock speed was too risky and they did not support the idea. In the very beginning, when we talked to people about our project, the first question we got was "what's the frequency?" We replied "1.6 GHz" and got a "not interesting." It was definitely not easy to push it through. I do not want people to be misled: Frequency was the right thing to do at the time. It gave you more performance and we had enough headroom. Die shot of the Pentium M processor. This picture shows the second-generation Pentium M (90 nm "Dothan" core.) TG Daily: Who do you think was most essential in getting a green light for Banias? Mooly Eden: There are several stages you need to look at. First, you have the development stage, where people aren't aware of the chip. The development is creating it and we are seeing where we are getting to. But after that, you need approval to move forward and you do not get anywhere without the CEO on your side. You can't continue, because it is a risk for Intel. For Banias, we got the support of all executives. Paul Otellini also embraced Banias. TG Daily: Do you think that Banias will be remembered as the CPU that changed Intel? Mooly Eden: I would say that Banias will be remembered as the product that brought Intel on the right track. Moving to low power was inevitable. I am proud that we have been in the position of developing it. But overall, I believe that Banias will be remembered as one of the products that changed Intel. If you look at the company, then the 4004 changed Intel, the 8086 did and the 386 did. I would be flattered, if Banias was remembered as one of the milestones that put Intel in a leadership position. TG Daily: Intel introduced its first power-saving technology - Speedstep - back in January 2000, in fact just one day before Transmeta unveiled its Crusoe processor. There are people who claim that Intel may never have come up with a power saving technology without Transmeta being the one who discovered the trend. Now Intel is making a turnaround largely because of the pressure it received from AMD. Is Intel a company that now and then needs a step on its toes to see trends? Mooly Eden: I was not in the U.S. at the time frame when Speedstep was introduced. But I would not be surprised, if this was started way, way before. You need to work with many parties, including Microsoft, to do something like that. Take, for example, the Yonah dual-core. We started with that project many years ago; way before anybody ever spoke about it. So, do we need somebody to step on our toes? Hopefully not. Is competition accelerating innovation? Yes. Competition is good. I am not afraid of competition. The only thing I need to make sure is that the competition is behind us.

• IDF 2000: Intel Pentium 4 (Willamette)

  Andy Grove, Albert Yu and Pat Gelsinger. Shortly before arrival on your flight to Palm Springs, California, one has the uneasy feeling that Intel has transported you into the desert. It's only when you've actually touched down that you realize what Palm Springs really is. The town, located on an oasis and originally Cahuilla Indian territory, is surrounded by 3,000 meter high mountains - some of which even have ski resorts. This was the last time that Palm Springs was the scene of the Intel developer Forum (IDF) which will move back to the Silicon Valley homelands (to be more precise: San Jose) in the future. The event began with the keynote of ex-CEO Andy Grove who has obviously still not fully recovered from his long bout of illness. After a long speech concerning the re-orientation of the company in the direction of the Internet and networking (financial analysts love this patter because it's still in fashion), good old Andy reverted to the 'original' core business: processors. And then things speeded up dramatically. Together with Dr. Albert Yu, he presented not only a 1 GHz Pentium III, but Yu also went to demonstrate a Willamette processor apparently running at 1.5 GHz on a separate machine. Let's take a look at the facts. The gigahertz Pentium III was compared with its 533 MHz predecessor using a benchmark. A secondary tool invoked a calculation-intensive process, namely the conversion of a video into MPEG-2 format. And then came the big 'aha!' effect: the gigahertz processor was about twice as fast as the 533 MHz processor. At least this presentation had one convincing argument in its favor: the comparison was made with the help of the well-established application Ligos LSX. In their chase for impressive headlines, Intel didn't take a backseat. In their first presentation of the Willamette processor (alias Pentium IV), Intel apparently preferred to flex its muscles rather than convince Tom's Hardware. The air-cooled Willamette chip, hidden from the eyes of the public in its sealed PC case was apparently clocked at 1.5 GHz. At least that's what the Intel Frequency ID utility displayed. Note that the utility is a proprietary product of Intel and not a frequency checker that we use and respect as such. Albert Yu, who admitted that the test object was 'first silicon', started a 3D graphics demo and whispers flew through the rows of reporters and analysts who were less familiar with the technical possibilities. At least Intel was successful in one respect: they out-maneuvered AMD again. The Willamette (Pentium IV) Named after a river in Oregon, Intel presents the Willamette, successor to the Pentium III. It fits in the new 423 socket. Source: Thanks to Daniel "Mr. Big Guy" Wolff of Chip Magazine who pushed CNN and ZDTV crews away and who shoot this picture before being lynched. 'Back to the sockets' is Intel's strategy to produce low-cost high-frequency processors such as the Willamette Pentium IV. Let's think back to Spring 1997. AMD's K6 and Intel's Pentium MMX processors used the same chipsets and sockets. With the appearance of the Pentium II Klamath, Intel deemed it necessary to move away from sockets and into Slot 1 technology. Since then, all the ensuing CPU's of both manufacturers have required their own chipsets and connectors. Intel's objective to escape from the common platform had been reached. Sunlin Chou, Vice President and General Manager of Intel's Technology and Manufacturing Group, sees the future of new desktop processors in sockets again. The Pentium III (Coppermine), Pentium IV (Willamette) and Timna are to be implemented as socketed FC-PGA versions. Two important differences exist. The base material of the packaging of the silicon chip is no longer ceramic, instead it is an organic substrate. This improves the dielectrical and thermal properties. In addition, flip-chip technology will be used rather than wire bonding.