Mr. Intel Inside Moves Up Barrett Named President As Computer Chip Giant Realigns Its Top Management

You could call Craig Barrett Mr. Intel Inside.

While Chief Executive Officer Andy Grove has been highly visible outside Intel, Barrett has been at work within, making sure the world’s largest computer chip company runs smoothly.

And while Barrett, Intel’s chief operating officer, is well known in the industry as the architect of the company’s remarkable success at making microprocessors, his name isn’t exactly a household word.

“Craig Barrett has got to be one of the most powerful unknown people in the industry,” said Linley Gwenap, editor of Microprocessor Report newsletter.

But not for long. On Wednesday, Barrett succeeded Grove as the company’s president. Grove, meanwhile, assumed the title of chairman held by co-founder Gordon Moore. Moore, with the new title chairman emeritus, will continue to take part in key decisions.

Barrett’s promotion demonstrates Intel’s policy of making gradual management transitions. In addition to officially recognizing his current role, the move reinforces the widespread expectation that he will eventually succeed Grove as CEO.

The new position, however, won’t mean any major alterations in his job or in the company’s operations or direction, Barrett said.

“The only abrupt change that will occur … is my business card,” he said in an interview a few days before Wednesday’s annual meeting. “So you shouldn’t expect to see anything new, different and unique in the short term.”

But analysts expect Barrett to be an increasingly public presence as Grove focuses more on Intel’s strategy and his growing role as spokesman for the PC industry.

For Barrett, the more prestigious position is his latest accomplishment during a 23-year career at Intel. Analysts say it was Barrett who revolutionized Intel’s chip manufacturing starting in the mid-1980s, helping to turn the then-struggling company into a powerhouse making the silicon “brains” of 85 percent of all personal computers.

Barrett, now 57, was a professor of materials science at Stanford University before joining Intel in 1974 as a technology manager. Grove and Moore made him head of the company’s manufacturing in 1985 and chief operating officer in 1993.

Barrett had no easy task when he took charge of Intel’s manufacturing. At the time, Intel was switching from making memory chips to microprocessors, the “brains” of personal computers. But it was “probably one of the worst in the world” at that task, said industry analyst Dan Hutcheson, president of VLSI Research Inc.

But Barrett, he said, boosted both quality and output.

His most remarkable innovation was the “copy exactly” program, ensuring that a certain chip made in one plant would be just like the same chip made in another plant.

That improvement, at a time when processors made in different factories had distinct “signatures,” gave Intel an advantage over the competition - and enabled it to get a lock on the market, Hutcheson said.