Barrett bets on medical computing

Daniel Sorid

NEW YORK: In his final year as head of Intel Corp. Craig Barrett wants to leave the world's largest chip maker with a string of record quarters and firmly establish its chips as a popular choice for cell telephones.

Barrett, in a wide-ranging interview, also described the extreme steps that Intel takes to ward off antitrust allegations, including sending its top executives through mock courtroom interrogations.

He also said health sciences could become an "explosion" for electronics, with microchips of the future as small as the size of viruses deployed to find and treat illnesses.

Barrett said he had no intention of leaving the high-tech industry after his expected retirement in May 2005 and may seek an opportunity to work on corporate boards. A Craig Barrett autobiography is unlikely.

"I wrote a textbook a long time ago. I decided one textbook is enough," he said.

As for his own legacy, Barrett was coy.

"I think that I am safe in saying that I will have been the tallest CEO," he said. "I'm also the best fly fisherman."

RECORD REVENUE

Barrett said he wants to continue a string of record quarterly revenue for Intel. Coming off the chip industry's worst-ever downturn, Intel rebounded in the fourth quarter to all-time high revenue of $8.74 billion.

"It would be nice to go out with a string of record quarters," he said, adding that was not an official forecast.

Still, Barrett said there is no must-do list before his scheduled retirement in May 2005.

"What must I accomplish or I get fired? I'm going to get fired anyway," he said, laughing. "I'm not sure there's a must list. There's a Craig Barrett kind of personal list."

Under company rules, Barrett, 64 must retire by the annual shareholder meeting in May 2005.

Barrett also said Intel's communications chips business would be profitable at some point next year.

Last year, that business had an operating loss of more than $850 million amid weakness in flash memory and a failure of its cellular telephone devices to gain traction with phone makers.

"It would be nice to see us grow substantially in the communications sector," he said.

TAKING THE STAND

Facing antitrust investigations in Japan and Europe, Intel has gone to extremes to ward off further trouble with the law.

Barrett described mock courts that Intel sets up, replete with memos and antitrust lawyers, to grill top executives.

"Everybody sits around and watches him get grilled for two or three hours and understand, 'Holy cow, this is important and this is what can happen if you ever cross the line,'" he said.

"We don't allow plea bargaining either," he quipped.

Success almost inevitably brings on complaints from rivals.

"If your competitors get defeated in the marketplace, sometimes the only recourse they have is to go to the courtroom and we've seen that in several instances," he said.

BARRETT'S BET ON THE FUTURE

Intel made its name supplying chips for personal computers, but Barrett said medicine could become the next explosion for chip demand.

Beyond more traditional uses for chips in medicine like building networks for hospitals and doctors offices, Barrett said chips inside the body could diagnose and treat disease.

"Nobody has effectively figured out or they're just starting, how to use those transistor structures, those electronic structures, at the very minute levels of determining the onset of disease and then the treatment of disease.

"I think you could see an explosion of our kind of electronics into that space," he said. "And if I were betting on the future that's probably the area I'd bet on."

Applying computers to medicine could also personalize the application of medicine.

"When you get enough computer power, you could go and give a drop of blood and almost instantly, your whole body is indexed," he said.

© Reuters