SHARM EL-SHEIKH, Egypt: Intel Corp. is unlikely to shut plants or slash jobs following a top-to-bottom review announced last month to address shrinking market share and slowing computer sales, a senior executive at the world s biggest chipmaker said on Sunday. That has not been the expected outcome, Gordon Graylish, Intel s vice president and general manager for Europe, the Middle East and Africa, told Reuters. He said Intel Chief Executive Paul Otellini certainly shared that as well. Otellini said last month that no stone will remain unturned, raising expectations among analysts that the company, which employs nearly 100,000 people, could cut jobs and overhaul key parts of its business. In an interview in Sharm El-Sheikh, Graylish said the emphasis was on improving the overall efficiency of Intel s operations and that closing factories was a very expensive option. I think this industry moves fast enough that it doesn t take long to adjust and, as (Intel Chairman) Craig Barrett said, you don t save your way out of a recession, Graylish said. Our factories typically build more than one thing. I don t see that our markets are going to shrink. We don t have a target in terms of dollars or people. It s more about saying let s seriously look at what we do in every way. Intel wants to reverse its waning fortunes with an upcoming line of faster and more energy-efficient processors that it expects will close the gap with chips from rival Advanced Micro Devices Inc. But its shares slid more than 5 percent on Thursday after Dell Inc., the last major PC maker to use processors only from Intel, said it would begin using chips from AMD in some of its high-end servers. Graylish played down the effect of Dell s decision, saying: From a direct point of view, that s a fairly small sector of the business. Intel launched chips using new, narrower 65-nanometre circuitry technology at the start of the year. By the third quarter it expects to be shipping more products with 65-nanometre technology than with the previous 90-nanometre version, he said. We also announced at the start of the year multi-dual core (chips) ... By Q3, we will ship more multi-core parts than we will single-core parts, so we are not slow in making this transition. Intel is on track to adopt manufacturing methods for ever-smaller circuitry, which cuts costs and saves space, every two years, meaning it would be able to sell chips with circuitry at a 32-nanometer scale by 2010. Intel plans to have 45-nanometer chips widely available in 2008. Graylish was in Egypt for the World Economic Forum, where political and business figures and academics debated ways to boost education, enterprise and openness in the Arab world. Intel is developing a Village PC designed for use in developing countries. The system runs on car batteries, has a large filter to keep out dust, can handle high humidity and has biometric technology so it can be used securely by several people. In Botswana or Ghana, all of a sudden farmers can register their deeds or can check the price of commodities at the local city and then know whether or not it is better to sell to the middle man or go to the city to find a seller, Graylish said. He also stressed Intel s $1 billion education initiative to provide Internet connections, training and content to bring more of the developing world into the knowledge economy. A key plank of that involves promoting WiMax wireless Internet to bring the Internet to isolated places, and Graylish said people could expect announcements from Intel about the technology in the near future. We believe that on things like education you are not going to run wires to every village in Egypt or in Morocco, so the only industry (technology) that makes sense is WiMax, he said.
