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"Pat Gelsinger has shared the story of how his initials remained on the Intel 386 silicon die, despite them being spotted by the top brass during a pre-production design review session. Creating such inscriptions "was not done," during this era at Intel, remembers Gelsinger. Nevertheless, the legendary true-blue Intel man says he uttered “some complete nonsense about substrate tap configuration experiments” to swerve a comment on the 'PG' silicon markings by the gruff (then-CEO) Andy Grove. The end result is that Pat Gelsinger's initials are etched directly into the silicon of every 386 processor ever made."
The PG initials on the chips are of less concern in the broader scale of the i386 business. But I wonder whether Andy Grove’s tolerance of Pat Gelsinger’s BS explanation helped a young but accomplished engineer grow into a better leader later on at Intel. Yet this perspective raises another question: did Andy Grove’s approach also contribute to the impression and to a long, widespread practice that BS is acceptable at Intel, as long as leaders and team members choose to ignore it?
