Microsoft has lured away veteran semiconductor designer Mike Filippo from Apple as it looks to expand its own server-chips efforts, Bloomberg News reports, citing “people with knowledge of the matter.”
Mark Gurman, Dina Bass, and Ian King report for Bloomberg News:
Filippo will work on processors within Microsoft’s Azure group, run by Rani Borkar, said the people, who asked not to be identified because the move hasn’t been announced. A Microsoft spokesman confirmed the hire of Filippo, who also has worked at Arm Ltd. and Intel Corp.
The move suggests that Microsoft is accelerating a push to create homegrown chips for its servers, which power Azure cloud-computing services. The focus on custom chips follows similar efforts by Alphabet Inc.’s Google and Amazon.com Inc., Microsoft’s biggest cloud rivals.
The shift threatens to undercut Microsoft’s longtime processor partners, Intel and Advanced Micro Devices Inc., which currently supply chips for Azure servers. Intel fell as much as 2% on the news Wednesday, while AMD dropped 1.1%.
For Apple, Filippo’s exit marks another loss of a high-profile engineer. He joined Apple in 2019 as a chip architect after serving as a top designer of semiconductors at Arm for a decade. He was at Intel for about five years before that.
MacDailyNews Take: Full headline: Microsoft hires key Apple engineer to design server chips because Intel sucks.
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If you can’t beat them, poach them – that seems the new mantra for Microsoft and Intel.
How is buying PA Semiconductor not poaching then?
Mr. Obtuse, buying PA Semiconductor??
“Microsoft hires key Apple engineer to design server chips” is the story. Two high profile chip executives leave in over a week is the main story, not good for Apple.
Please try to keep up…
Paying to poach 2 employees vs. paying to poach a whole company?
I repeat, how is it not poaching Mr. Sharp?
I don’t think either is inappropriate, but I’ll wait for your version.
Didn’t Apple chime the same mantra by poach them also?
This 2nd chip engineer leaving would be the point MDN would add “Beleagured” to their post title if it were any company other than Apple. 😛
Smart people departing is starting to be too common and, therefore, concerning. Unhappy, relatively poorly paid, weak technical horizon, leadership not conducive for healthy/invigorating workplace? Just an outsider’s ponderings.
Smart people exercising their right to work where their opportunity leads them, not where their current job lets them.
Thanks f stating the obvious in a manner that intended to appear “smart.”
When you say “too common” it reeks of inhibiting freedoms.
So what do you mean when you say “Smart people departing is starting to be too common”.
Companies must compete for workers. Worker unfriendly companies should have even stiffer competition.
If your point was that too many companies treat their people insufficiently, then this is the remedy.
If you’re talking about ‘brain drain’ where well educated people leave a region, city or State, I’d agree that it is a concern for those that remain due to lower paying jobs becoming the norm, lowering the tax base and creating other financial problems.
If you’re talking workplace churn, as is the case here, it is only really the concern of the company losing the talent to another employer that offers something better to the individual in question. The company losing the employee either chooses not to or is unable to provide a better offer. It’s great for the employee.
Let me guess, M$ wants to develop a SoC? 🤔
Anyone can. But drawing one is very different than making one.
The tech needed to actually make one is more profound.