Lip-Bu Tan’s base salary for the top post at the chip maker is $1 million a year, compared with the $1.25 million Pat Gelsinger received. The differences don’t end there.

Tan is allegedly looking to make staffing cuts and sweeping changes to the company's AI and chip manufacturing strategies.

Silicon Valley investors love to romanticize iconoclasts and visionaries who bend technology and markets to their iron will. Intel’s latest CEO, Lip-Bu Tan, will put this “great man theory” to the test when he takes charge of the $110 billion chipmaker on Tuesday.