Intel takes a big hit on the transfer window for high-flying engineers. Jeff Wilcox, director of Mac system architecture at Apple, announced, on LinkedIn, on January 6, since early 2022 he had become technical director of engineering and design for the SoC (system-on-chip) architecture for Intel.
The architect of the abandonment of Intel by Apple
With the recruitment of its new star employee, Intel is showing that grudge is not part of its vocabulary. As Jeff Wilcox welcomes in his farewell message to Apple, the high point of his eight-year career in Cupertino has been “ Apple Silicon transition with SoCs and M1, M1 Pro and M1 Max systems “.
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A two-year transition, a painful internalization for the founder Intel, then the main supplier of processors for the Mac. Since the M1 chips, based on Arm license, equip the very latest MacBook Air, Pro, Mac mini, iPad Pro and iMac 2020.
Jeff Wilcox is also known as one of the main developers of the T2 security processor, which has been used to manage multiple apps like Touch ID or Mac’s encrypted storage since 2018. Again based on Arm plans and not Intel.
The American founder knows Jeff Wilcox as well as he is one of his employees. He worked as a senior engineer, in charge of PC chip architecture for three years before his recruitment by Apple.
The two companies under pressure
The engineering war rages within America’s tech companies and beyond. This is not new. Recently, Apple offered a bounty of up to $ 180,000 for its best people to keep them. Maybe not enough for Jeff Wilcox, maybe he wasn’t one of the beneficiaries.
It will arrive at Intel as supervisor of systems on chips in a context of commercial and technological rivalry with Apple that it cannot ignore. The M1 processors hurt the founder a lot, but he didn’t give up.
At CES 2022, Intel must present chips that outclass Apple’s most powerful in terms of power, the M1 Max. A demonstration that Intel is still in the race. For how long with the arrival of M2 chips? Jeff Wilcox, from Cupertino, will certainly know how to respond.