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crazy dave

macrumors 65816
Sep 9, 2010
1,453
1,229
Individuals come and go from companies for all sorts of reasons ... many of which don't even involve pay or advancement - sometimes for some of the best, as @leman and @sirio76 said, it's just to work on something new. To actually worry this would have to be a flood of people leaving and nobody (*good) being hired to replace them.
 

robco74

macrumors 6502a
Nov 22, 2020
509
944
Apple certainly isn’t lacking resources. Must have been a beneficial move for them to let him go.
It may also be lifestyle changes. Apple, unfortunately, still demands many employees, or potential employees, to work in Cupertino. Quality of life in Silicon Valley, even with a good salary, was on the decline before the pandemic, and hasn't improved since. He may have the option to go to Austin, but Austin is already seeing ludicrous housing prices, traffic, etc. and will be worse than SV soon.

Intel OTOH, is near Portland, which is quite lovely and still relatively affordable.

Apple's insistence on requiring nearly everyone to be in-person most of the time is going to cost them quite a few people who can get jobs in other areas, or work remotely from anywhere.
 

Anthony Sullivan

Suspended
Jan 14, 2021
156
202
I’d say we’re about 2-ish years before panic time, assuming this single guy is key to ASi success.

Interesting how it says he’ll be working on Intel SoCs. I’m curious to know if they’re co-opting the term to describe their current processors or are working on genuine SoCs.

Interesting times ahead, but imho Intel will still have problems if the rumors about the internal “badge war” are still true. Maybe Pat Gelsinger has a hold on that though, who knows.
What is badge war? What’s this about?
 

transpo1

macrumors 65816
Jul 15, 2010
1,048
1,722
This can’t be good. Something is rotten.

I don’t know if anything’s rotten, but it’s definitely not great PR for Apple. Sometimes, even if you offer an employee the requested salary, they just want a change and lots of factors go into their decision (environment, WFH, excitement about new opportunity, etc.). That said, Apple probably figures they have their chips on the right track…
 

Analog Kid

macrumors G3
Mar 4, 2003
9,360
12,603
Nothing he does after now will have the same impact at Apple. Turning Intel around and making them competitive and interesting again probably sounds a lot more rewarding than working on M4.

I fully expect trying to change Intel will be an exercise in frustration but I’m sure Intel called and said “whatever those guys are paying, we’ll double it” so he’ll have plenty to cover the therapy and have some left over.
 

JohnHerzog

macrumors member
Nov 16, 2021
73
38
This can’t be good. Something is rotten.

I'm all for it. Intel is an American company and this will potentially increase Intel's competitiveness. Apple has been getting poached a lot lately. Intel probably bought him. This guy was probably just an 'overseer' of the project and not the actual brains behind the engineering. Apple will be fine. There's plenty of talent out there.
 

lederermc

macrumors 6502a
Sep 30, 2014
897
756
Seattle
This can’t be good. Something is rotten.

I disagree. Cross-fertilization is essential for a healthy environment... even in the tech world. Intel will be better off and others will replace this fellow. If the success of any organization is predicated on one single individual then that organization should fail.
 

senttoschool

macrumors 68030
Nov 2, 2017
2,626
5,482
Raja Koduri left AMD to lead Intel GPU development in 2017, now is 2022 and we still have to see an Intel GPU. In the mean while AMD graphic cards have become significantly better.
Tiger Lake uses the GPU Raja created at Intel. It's actually the second-best iGP after the M series and it's better than AMD's iGPUs.

Their discrete GPUs are shipping very soon too.

It takes a long time to create GPUs so 2017 to 2022 sounds about right for a new architecture from the ground up.
 

senttoschool

macrumors 68030
Nov 2, 2017
2,626
5,482
I'm really curious how much Intel ended up compensating him to join the company. Must be a huge payout with all kinds of perks.
Huge signing bonus, higher salary, higher title, will let him pick any interesting project to work on. That's my guess. Sometimes people just want to change and find a different challenge. People can get bored at work.
 

mr_roboto

macrumors 6502a
Sep 30, 2020
856
1,866
It may also be lifestyle changes. Apple, unfortunately, still demands many employees, or potential employees, to work in Cupertino. Quality of life in Silicon Valley, even with a good salary, was on the decline before the pandemic, and hasn't improved since. He may have the option to go to Austin, but Austin is already seeing ludicrous housing prices, traffic, etc. and will be worse than SV soon.

Intel OTOH, is near Portland, which is quite lovely and still relatively affordable.

Apple's insistence on requiring nearly everyone to be in-person most of the time is going to cost them quite a few people who can get jobs in other areas, or work remotely from anywhere.
Intel does have offices in Portland, but their corporate headquarters is located in Santa Clara, California (a hop skip and a jump from Cupertino), and that campus isn't just administrative stuff - there's lots of engineers working there. You can't assume this guy is going to Oregon.
 
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Bug-Creator

macrumors 68000
May 30, 2011
1,783
4,717
Germany
It may also be lifestyle changes. Apple, unfortunately, still demands many employees, or potential employees, to work in Cupertino. Quality of life in Silicon Valley, even with a good salary, was on the decline before the pandemic, and hasn't improved since. He may have the option to go to Austin, but Austin is already seeing ludicrous housing prices, traffic, etc. and will be worse than SV soon.

So you think that guy would care about the price of housing ever again after getting a job titled "CTO" at Intel?

mkay.....
 

pshufd

macrumors G4
Oct 24, 2013
10,149
14,574
New Hampshire
People change tech companies for a variety of reasons. Sometimes it's just a bucketfull of stock options. Sometimes you want to be in a different city.
 
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BeefCake 15

macrumors 68020
May 15, 2015
2,050
3,123
Seriously though, how do you go from working on state of the art chip to improving the x86 for Intel...seems intellectually disgusting.

If they're trying to go ARM, then that would be interesting.
 

bobcomer

macrumors 601
May 18, 2015
4,949
3,699
Seriously though, how do you go from working on state of the art chip to improving the x86 for Intel...seems intellectually disgusting.

If they're trying to go ARM, then that would be interesting.
Disgusting? It's still the same job, chip design, and from his move, you can tell he's not of the Apple faithful.
 

ahurst

macrumors 6502
Oct 12, 2021
410
815
As a sort of tangent, why are some people “macrumors regulars” and others “macrumors G3”s? Is it based on join date, or is there an option somewhere? I want to be an old Apple CPU too...
 

killawat

macrumors 68000
Sep 11, 2014
1,961
3,609
As a sort of tangent, why are some people “macrumors regulars” and others “macrumors G3”s? Is it based on join date, or is there an option somewhere? I want to be an old Apple CPU too...
Post Count

  • Newbie => 0 - 29 posts
  • Member => 30 posts
  • Regular => 100 posts (minimum required to post in the Political News forum)
  • 6502 => 250 posts (minimum required for access to the Marketplace forum)
  • 6502a => 500 posts
  • 65816 => 1,000 posts
  • 65832 => 1,500 posts
  • 68000 => 1,505 posts
  • 68010 => 2,000 posts
  • 68020 => 2,005 posts
  • 68030 => 2,500 posts
  • 68040 => 3,000 posts
  • 601 => 4,000 posts
  • 603 => 5,000 posts
  • 604 => 6,500 posts
  • G3 => 8,000 posts
  • G4 => 10,000 posts
  • G5 => 12,000 posts
etc....

Special titles for forum members:

  • Demi-God, Demi-Goddess, or Contributor => Member who has contributed to the site and has chosen to use one of those three titles.
Special titles for the MacRumors staff and volunteers:

  • Moderator => Forum moderator
  • Administrator => Forum administrator
  • Editor or Contributing Editor => Member who writes news content for the site
  • Moderator emeritus => Member who is a former moderator
  • [other title] emeritus => Member who formerly held the specified role
The numbers come from the increasingly powerful microprocessors used in Apple computers over the years. The 6502 and 658xx are from the Apple II family, 680x0 were used in early Macintosh systems, 601 and beyond are PowerPC chips.
 

JMacHack

Suspended
Mar 16, 2017
1,965
2,424
What is badge war? What’s this about?
A couple years back there were reports of internal issues within Intel between “blue badges” and “green badges”. Blue badges denote regular employees, and green ones denote contract employees (often cheaper).

Intel, at least at the time, was increasing the number of cheaper contract employees (green badges) and letting go of regular employees (blue badges).

The blue badges saw this as a threat to their employment and began treating any green badges poorly.

I’m certain this is one of the reasons that Intel fell behind in the first place.

I’m having difficulty finding the original article, but there’s quite a few glassdoor reviews that state the “second-class” treatment that green badges get.
 

yitwail

macrumors 6502
Sep 4, 2011
427
479
I went and read the actual article. Evidently, Wilcox was head of the M1 project, so to speak. He came to Apple from Intel in 2013, which predates the A11 bionic SOC. But from what I gather, Gerard Williams III was the chief architect of the A11, which more or less originated the architecture of the M1 chip, as in efficiency/performance cores, gpu, neural engine, etc, and he left in 2019, so if that didn't upset the Apple cart, then I think it's unlikely Wilcox's departure will. Aside from number of cores, perhaps the only thing substantially different in M1 from the A14 it's derived from is Unified Memory.

As to the 'something is rotten' statement people are objecting to, that's a quote from Hamlet. Not one I would have used, but that's a question of taste.
 
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dspdoc

macrumors 68000
Original poster
Mar 7, 2017
1,962
2,379
I went and read the actual article. Evidently, Wilcox was head of the M1 project, so to speak. He came to Apple from Intel in 2013, which predates the A11 bionic SOC. But from what I gather, Gerard Williams III was the chief architect of the A11, which more or less originated the architecture of the M1 chip, as in efficiency/performance cores, gpu, neural engine, etc, and he left in 2019, so if that didn't upset the Apple cart, then I think it's unlikely Wilcox's departure will.

As to the 'something is rotten' statement people are objecting to, that's a quote from Hamlet. Not one I would have used, but that's a question of taste.
It’s all opinions. IMHO something is rotten at Apple. Often is. Take a look at their macOS releases and their stability. I could be wrong. I’ve been wrong many times before. I hope I am wrong and that this was a good move for them.
 
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