On: The Rise and Fall of Silicon Graphics

[tambourine_man]

I remember reading how Andy Grove, IIRC, spent two years trying to exit the DRAM business. He would flat out order people to stop working on it and they wouldn’t listen, believe or understand. The amount of inertia for large bodies is remarkable.

[Pet_Ant → tambourine_man]

And yet there are stories of people ignoring the company direction, continuing work, and saving the company.

See: The Blue LED https://youtu.be/AF8d72mA41M?feature=shared

So it’s not clear that the company knows better. Feels like educated guesses but a lof of luck involved.

[tambourine_man → Pet_Ant]

Very true

[AtlasBarfed → tambourine_man]

Why was exiting the DRAM business such an obvious positive?

Intel is basically at its root PC hardware. Yes, it doesn't dominate the entire industry, but memory is pretty key to a PC and the OS that runs on it.

In fundamentally it's another fab product. Like chipsets.

[tambourine_man → AtlasBarfed]

They were being crushed by the Japanese in price and went from the dominant player to barely registering the sales chart in one decade

https://anthonysmoak.com/2016/03/27/andy-grove-and-intels-mo...