“One of Apple’s key semiconductor engineers has left the company, even as the iPhone giant tries to take more control over what goes inside its devices,” Shara Tibken reports for CNET. “Gerard Williams III, senior director in platform architecture, departed Apple last month after nine years, according to a person familiar with the matter.”
“While not well known outside of Apple, Williams led development of every Apple processor core from the A7 — the first 64-bit processor for mobile devices — to the A12X, the chip powering Apple’s latest iPad Pro devices,” Tibken reports. “In recent years, Williams’ responsibilities had grown beyond leading the design of the custom CPU cores for Apple’s chips to overseeing the layout of the various parts of the system-on-a-chip, or SoC, inside the company’s mobile devices.”
“Williams’ departure is a loss for Apple. His work likely will show up in future Apple processors, and he’s listed as an inventor on more than 60 Apple patents,” Tibken reports. “Williams isn’t the first notable Apple engineer to leave its chip business, which is led by Johny Srouji. Two years ago, Apple SoC architect Manu Gulati left for a similar role at Google. After Gulati left Apple, Williams took over his role overseeing SoC architecture.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Could mark the next phase dawning in Cupertino with Macs powered by custom Apple silicon.
SEE ALSO:
Apple moves modem chip engineering unit into in-house hardware technology group – February 7, 2019
Johny Srouji staying at Apple, not a candidate for Intel CEO – January 26, 2019
Apple needs its next SoC designer to wield a giant pen. is this the wrong track to be one minded about?
“Could mark the next phase dawning in Cupertino with Macs powered by custom Apple silicon.”
Or maybe Apple decided that an ARM Mac wasn’t worth it and abandoned the project so that’s why he left?
I think you better hope that post doesn’t get pinned to the wall to come back to haunt you. Apple has the best Arm chips as things stand and arm powered PCs will start to become common sight. Apple will be at the forefront of that it’s purely a matter of timing the chips are good enough and the will to develop in-house is there so I expect to be sooner rather than later.
RISC lost to CISC on the desktop for a reason. That hasn’t changed.
if arm was so great, where are all the SGI computers dominating the market? surely the entire VFX industry must still be running on them? oh wait, they are all on win/linux intel machines.. for a reason.
“I think you better hope that post doesn’t get pinned to the wall to come back to haunt you.”
I don’t care one way or another. There’s two sides to every story and I was essentially playing Devil’s Advocate.
Well said: the news did not contain any reason why, yet the article tried to assert a cause, which is poor journalism.
To show just how speculative & unsupported by facts MDN’s claim is … even if for some individuals that alternative is an ‘unpopular’ one … noting an obvious alternative as equally plausible is quite appropriate.
YA example of why we should value facts instead of confirmation bias.
With great frequency, employees do not quit their company, they quit their boss. The real story here is known to very few people.
This seems like a much greater loss to Apple than AirPower.
People usually doing lean. job they are happy with,, these departures mean that they are not happy with their jobs or that another company is poaching them for more money.. this is not good for Apple.. All this knowledge walks out the door to another company.. How do you replace this internal knowledge of the chip architecture? It will slow Apples future products.. and dint count on an Arm Mac… Apple benefits from being intel compatible .. Giving that up would leave millions of Mac owners with no upgrade path.. BAD! It would also require them to run intel in emulation.. also BAD! They will continue to make their Arm based products better and faster.. but Macs are a different ecosystem.. is makes ZERO sense to change platforms.. every developer will have to re white their apps to ARM.. or Apple will have to run them in emulation.. which sucks… Macs will stay intel.. everything else apple can run on their own arm systems .. give up on ARM Macs… it would kill the Mac business.. You can buy a Windows intel system a lot cheaper than a Mac.. so why would you buy an ARM Mac to run in emulation? SMH !!
People usually the job they are happy with,, these departures mean that they are not happy with their jobs or that another company is poaching them for more money.. this is not good for Apple.. All this knowledge walks out the door to another company.. How do you replace this internal knowledge of the chip architecture? It will slow Apples future products.. and dint count on an Arm Mac… Apple benefits from being intel compatible .. Giving that up would leave millions of Mac owners with no upgrade path.. BAD! It would also require them to run intel in emulation.. also BAD! They will continue to make their Arm based products better and faster.. but Macs are a different ecosystem.. is makes ZERO sense to change platforms.. every developer will have to re white their apps to ARM.. or Apple will have to run them in emulation.. which sucks… Macs will stay intel.. everything else apple can run on their own arm systems .. give up on ARM Macs… it would kill the Mac business.. You can buy a Windows intel system a lot cheaper than a Mac.. so why would you buy an ARM Mac to run in emulation? SMH !!
Hey LV Tom, you English real BAD! Me thinkum yu be lernin’ speak gooder so yu be GOOD!
And you are behaving not best, Mr. Pompouserest person.
I use a Mac 13″ with the Butterfly keyboard that skips letters and then spell correct changes the word to what it thinks I mean.. I dont always proof read everything before I post and make corrections.. the double post happened because the site gave me an error and then I reposted.. when in fact it actually did post.. But my Engrish not is so bad you cannot understand it… 😉
Not very happy with the keyboard or the spell check system..
Perhaps he didn’t have a big enough pen. is that a reason to leave? Maybe Tim’s was bigger?
Or, maybe, just maybe, after more than 20 years the guy is taking a break. Obviously, this guy and his team have done spectacularly over the last 7 or so years. That isn’t easy. It sure isn’t 40 hours a week. More like 60 or 70.
Couple that with he has most certainly made some serious coin and enormous stock options too. He is in his mid to late 40’s, maybe he wants to spend time with his kids.
Cut the guy, his boss, and apple some slack. Just thank him for some really good processors. 🙂
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