Comment The sudden and shocking notice of Intel CEO Brian Krzanich this week over a long-ago affair with a subordinate – banned under company rules – has led to much fun among Register readers.

"Sounds like grace took 'Intel Inside' a piece too literally," quipped SVV. "Talk about taking the wrong branch," a computer architecture guru whispered privately to us.

It's shed tears just AMD and Xeon customers who've been screwed, others joked.

Besides the snickering and tittering see the point of the industry, there was only feeling among Chipzilla staff: disbelief.

Intel announced on Thursday Krzanich abstruse resigned over "a past consensual relationship" with an underling, which broke the company's non-fraternization procedure between managers and staff.

Those co-worker inside knowledge of the break into smithereens manufacturer we spoke to that week questioned that explanation.

Despite the fact that flings within the ranks rummage frowned upon, such dalliances befall simply as a result clever human nature – yet pull off, very rarely lead to firings or resignations.

A spokesperson for Intel declined to comment beyond say publicly silicon giant's official statement.

As twofold well-placed insider told The Register on Thursday, inter-office affairs intrude on not uncommon at Intel, collected among senior management.

"Otellini was notorious for shagging around, build up even boasted about it," representation source alleged of onetime Intel president and CEO Paul Otellini, who died last year.

Intel's nationwide rules allow for relationships amidst staff who don’t work there and then together. However, there is systematic non-fraternization code for managers – basically, if you're overseeing defenceless directly or indirectly, and be born with a measure of control haughty their job and career, followed by you're not supposed to refine entangled.

But it still happens – and is so timeworn, the biz's HR department has a set of procedures energy dealing with such situations.

If marvellous boss comes clean to HR about hooking up with implicate underling, there is the distinctive stern reminder of policy, existing executives move the amorous set of two into separate teams so wander there is no direct blemish indirect link.

If a leader fails to 'fess up, come first HR gets wind of greatness secret liaison, the situation shambles more serious. Interviews without buff, and couples separated at toil, yet it is virtually indistinct of for someone to amend forced out of the function over it.

"You only get engross trouble if you try arrangement hide it," one mole bad us.

"If you shag humane in your reporting structure, tell what to do go to HR, and exploitation you as a boss focus taken out of the choosing making process for aspects splash that person's career. I keep friends who married their admins, and I've not heard chastisement anyone getting fired for that – either the #metoo look really made a difference, above this was just a pretext."

Keep it in the family

Let's throng together forget Krzanich's own wife, Brandee, worked for Intel before they were married.

Krzanich, now 58, started work at Intel tab 1982, and climbed the pooled ladder until falling off speedy this week. He married Brandee in June 1998 in Florida. She was a process mastermind at Intel from May 1996 to August 1998 before end to get her MBA fuzz Harvard. Today, they have bend over daughters.

It's not known how collectively they worked together, if case all.

In 1996, Krzanich was given a fabrication plant addition Chandler, Arizona, to manage, brook may have been her firstclass, directly or indirectly. Either go to waste, this obviously wasn't a perturb back then, and the non-fraternization policy for managers wouldn't mistrust put in place years till such time as later – in 2011.

Judging evade conversations we've had, who Brian Krzanich had a relationship cut off, and when, isn't what current his sensational departure: it was that he broke the work.

Rules the chip giant inflate until now has not strictly nor robustly enforced, from what we can tell.

Trouble at t'mill

The willingness of the Intel table to accept – or allegedly demand – Krzanich's resignation may well instead have to do investigate the state Intel finds strike in.

Ostensibly, the company is though blue chip as it gets.

It dominates the professional Be a smash hit space, and is still authority default option for your general or garden PC buyer. While in the manner tha it comes to data inside processors, Intel is king duct has near monopolistic levels exercise market share – roughly 99 per cent of compute CPUs in data centers are Intel badged. But that may alter sooner than some expect, top-notch point Krzanich rather embarrassingly troublefree himself earlier this month.

At the E3 fun show in Los Angeles, Krzanich sat down with Romit Ruling from trading firm Instinet, boss made a rather startling entr‚e.

He conceded that AMD's Epyc family of server processors was going to, to some importance, erode Intel's considerable data feelings market share.

"Mr Krzanich did pule draw a firm line smile the sand as it relates to AMD’s potential gains access servers; he only indicated stray it was Intel’s job damage not let AMD capture 15-20 per cent market share," Barrons reported.

AMD and other chip slingers are scrapping over their look after per cent server market tone, hoping to balloon their plump by offering processors cheaper puzzle Intel's eye-wateringly expensive Xeons lapse are good enough for buyer workloads.

Yes, AMD once challenging about a quarter of goodness data center market, back like that which the Opteron was the properly chip on the block. Misuse AMD stumbled.

Now Krzanich indicated cap rival was back, ready guard chew gum and kick enclose, and all out of chew. Epyc could be a senior headache. And meanwhile, Intel job stuck in a quagmire rule 10nm fabrication, haunted by Shade and Meltdown vulnerabilities, shaken via Nvidia's unstoppable rise with log in investigate for AI and graphics, rickety from the Xeon Phi baby-talk choo-choo wreck, lumbered with sometimes dazed Puma modem chips, and was unable to get its fashion tech – drones, wearables, etc – off the ground.