Gelsinger was generally regarded as one of the brightest stars in the company. Joining the company in 1979 after graduating high school, he put himself through night-school in order to earn the degrees he needed to succeed in the company. He received his Associate's degree from Lincoln Technical Institute in 1979, a Bachelor's degree from Santa Clara University in 1983, and a Master's degree in electrical engineering from Stanford University in 1985.

For the last thirty years, Pat Gelsinger has worked on or led the development of the company's most important products.  He worked on the 286 and 386 design teams, and was Design Manager and Chief Architect of the enormously successful 486 microprocessor at the age of 25. His string of successes also included the Pentium Pro and Pentium III CPUs.

His promotion in 1996 to Vice President of the Desktop Products Group at age 32 made him the youngest Vice President in the history of the company. That also made him some enemies, as some saw the young upstart as an obstacle to their own efforts to lead Intel.

Meanwhile, Gelsinger created the concept of the Intel Developer Forum, where he is often featured as a keynote speaker or presenter.

Pat Gelsinger became the first Chief Technology Officer for Intel in 2001, where he led the organization that researched, developed and designed next-generation hardware and software technologies for all of the Intel Architecture platforms.

Gelsinger was seen as somebody that would eventually take on the mantle of CEO. However, his role has been quietly toned down over the last year.  His departure leaves a gaping hole within Intel that will be hard to fill, but a massive reorganization within the company means opportunities for others.

Gelsinger is still scheduled to give a keynote speech at IDF next week. The topic is "Intel architecture Innovates and Integrates".