Three senior execs to retire from Intel Foundry, including respected semiconductor veteran Gary Patton

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By published

As part of a general shakeup of Technology Development Group.

Intel's headquarters in Santa Clara, Calif.
(Image credit: Intel)

Intel on Friday informed its staff that three high-ranking executives from its manufacturing arm, Intel Foundry, are set to retire, Reuters reports. The exit of three corporate vice presidents will have a significant impact on the internal structure of Intel Foundry.

Two of the three senior executives, Kaizad Mistry and Ryan Russell, are corporate vice presidents in the Technology Development Group. The third is Gary Patton, who served as the CVP and GM of the Design Technology Platform organization in the Technology Development Group. Patton is a well-known and respected semiconductor industry veteran, having served at IBM and GlobalFoundries.

Anton Shilov
Anton Shilov
Contributing Writer

Anton Shilov is a contributing writer at Tom’s Hardware. Over the past couple of decades, he has covered everything from CPUs and GPUs to supercomputers and from modern process technologies and latest fab tools to high-tech industry trends.

42 Comments Comment from the forums
  • acadia11
    Bout ….. time!based as someone astutely pointed out Lip is the Hector Ruiz of Intel he’ll probably just promote someone … instead of looking outside ir poaching someone from TSMC or Samsung … and continue the inbred farce they call a real attempt to shake up Intel other than cutting cost….
    Reply
  • atomicWAR
    As Intel bleeds more and more veteran talent... I find it increasingly unlikely they can dig themselves out of the pit they jumped head first into in the pre-zen era. I hope they turn around things soon for the sake of competition but unfortunately I find that more improbable by the day.
    Reply
  • rluker5
    Were these old executives good at their jobs? We know Intel foundries have not been doing the best for a while. It could be that these 3 were somewhat responsible for that.

    Or they could have been great and will be dearly missed, or somewhere in the middle.

    Without more information, judging whether this is good or bad news is premature.
    Reply
  • acadia11
    How the … could they be great Intel foundry or lack there of has been a disaster since it became cost prohibitive to develop leading edge tech and only be a supplier to yourself in the mid to early 2010s? They’ve been late with process node shrinks since before EUv and were late to EUV scene causing them to have to seek out TSMC for support in 2017 which increased the cost of their chips as well. This shake up needed to happen years ago … and I can’t see anyone from their current era being any good for the company. Think about it if you were on the board this 15 year spiral happened on your watch, gotta go. If you were an executive and had good ideas and weren’t to blame you are to blame because you don’t have the weight necessary to get isht done even if your ideas were the right ones you couldn’t push anybody to do them, which means you aren’t an effective leader. Which means got to go. The baby and the bath water needs to go … if anyone needed someone walking out with a kitchen sink … it’s Intel.
    Reply
  • bit_user
    rluker5 said:
    Were these old executives good at their jobs? We know Intel foundries have not been doing the best for a while. It could be that these 3 were somewhat responsible for that.
    It sounds like Garry Patton was key to the IFS strategy and came along too recently to be blamed for execution failures on their process roadmap. Don't know about the others.

    It's indeed possible that some house cleaning was necessary, in at least some of these cases. Getting rid of one of the guys key to the IFS strategy does indeed seem like a cause for concern, but I guess we won't know if it's going to affect IFS' business plan unless it does.

    Some of these departures might've been on the initiative of the execs, who simply don't have faith in the company's direction. They're not all necessarily being fired or restructured out of jobs.
    Reply
  • ezst036
    If your experience is taking the ship down a few notches, then "well respected" because of "your experience" is not valuable.

    I can't speak personally about Gary Patton or any others, just making this observation. This or some in particular might be a bad move.

    However not all experience is good experience. Not all expertise is good expertise. Things change, times change, people change.
    Reply
  • bit_user
    acadia11 said:
    If you were an executive and had good ideas and weren’t to blame you are to blame because you don’t have the weight necessary to get isht done even if your ideas were the right ones you couldn’t push anybody to do them, which means you aren’t an effective leader. Which means got to go.
    So, you're saying that even people down in the engine room should be held responsible for the sinking of the Titanic? This amount of victim-blaming is laughable, if it weren't so sad.

    I guess you've never worked in a big company, because there are limitations on the power and influence of an exec, no matter whether or not they're an effective leader. Their primary responsibility is to keep their own house in order and execute to their objectives. If an exec tries to overstep their bounds too often or by too much, they get shown the exit by their peers and superiors. I just saw this happen at my company, at the end of last year, when my boss' boss got fired for stirring up too much trouble elsewhere in the org.

    There's a saying that comes to mind: "a fish rots from the head down". The corporate culture get established and reaffirmed at the top. Now, if the corporate culture highly prioritizes managers and employees taking a defensive posture and not speaking up about problems or taking initiative, at some point that begins to select for which employees stick around and get promoted. When people who embody that mentality become the workforce, or at least the management, it does get a little harder to say they're not at fault. Therefore, because a culture problem is at least partly a people problem, changing such a culture will necessarily involve breaking some eggs.

    So, I'm not trying to let the execs, managers, or even rank-and-file employees off the hook. I'm just saying they're probably not the root of the problem and we just don't have enough information to know which of them really need to go. The one thing I'm certain about is that a lot of people are getting let go who were not bad apples, and it's just lying to make ourselves feel better to say otherwise.
    Reply
  • DS426
    The departures come as Intel implements a major cost-cutting plan, aiming to reduce its global workforce by 15%. The company expects to close the year with approximately 75,000 employees worldwide, which means that the company will have fired 30,000 people in 2025.
    Isn't the goal a 22% workforce reduction now?
    https://www.reuters.com/business/intel-is-cutting-more-jobs-ceo-tan-tries-fix-manufacturing-missteps-2025-07-24/
    Using "fired" very loosely there; some of it is attrition and not rehiring, some encouraging retirement and maybe some forced early retirements, voluntary employer changes (might as well get ahead of the axing, right?), etc. The amount of actual layoffs is probably somewhere around 75% of the total workforce reduction numbers, but I suppose we won't really know for sure until the dust settles in 2026.
    Reply
  • pug_s
    atomicWAR said:
    As Intel bleeds more and more veteran talent... I find it increasingly unlikely they can dig themselves out of the pit they jumped head first into in the pre-zen era. I hope they turn around things soon for the sake of competition but unfortunately I find that more improbable by the day.
    I might disagree with you. They need another Lisa Su and some new blood because Intel just can't innovate.
    Reply
  • acadia11
    bit_user said:
    So, you're saying that even people down in the engine room should be held responsible for the sinking of the Titanic? This amount of victim-blaming is laughable, if it weren't so sad.

    I guess you've never worked in a big company, because there are limitations on the power and influence of an exec, no matter whether or not they're an effective leader. Their primary responsibility is to keep their own house in order and execute to their objectives. If an exec tries to overstep their bounds too often or by too much, they get shown the exit by their peers and superiors. I just saw this happen at my company, at the end of last year, when my boss' boss got fired for stirring up too much trouble elsewhere in the org.

    There's a saying that comes to mind: "a fish rots from the head down". The corporate culture get established and reaffirmed at the top. Now, if the corporate culture highly prioritizes managers and employees taking a defensive posture and not speaking up about problems or taking initiative, at some point that begins to select for which employees stick around and get promoted. When people who embody that mentality become the workforce, or at least the management, it does get a little harder to say they're not at fault. Therefore, because a culture problem is at least partly a people problem, changing such a culture will necessarily involve breaking some eggs.

    So, I'm not trying to let the execs, managers, or even rank-and-file employees off the hook. I'm just saying they're probably not the root of the problem and we just don't have enough information to know which of them really need to go. The one thing I'm certain about is that a lot of people are getting let go who were not bad apples, and it's just lying to make ourselves feel better to say otherwise.
    I vehemently disagree and whole heartedly.so. Executives have one …. Job get I..t done. The whole point of a leader is to lead. Do you think people just listen because of position? Human beings have their own agendas, are highly predictable, yet, unpredictable, effective leaders are master manipulators period at navigating the human psyche to get what they want out of people . You can have all the best ideas and if you can neither convey them or implement them, you are not an effective leader. So absolutely I would blame such an ineffectual leader for the lack of strength, manipulation skills, savvy and/or ability to push their weight around and get ..it done. Period. The best executives certainly do not have a limitation mind set. No successful person has a limitation mindset.
    Reply