Apple Loses Key Chip Architect To Microsoft: Report

Mike Filippo joined Apple in 2019 as a chip architect.

Microsoft has hired Apple semiconductor designer Mike Filippo to work in Azure, possibly to help Microsoft create its own chips for servers that power the cloud computing service, according to Bloomberg.

Microsoft, based in Redmond, Wash., has long used Intel and Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) for processors and Azure server chips. In 2020, Microsoft was reportedly designing Arm-based chips for Azure servers and some Surface PCs, signaling the computer giant’s increasing willingness to lower its reliance on Intel.

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Filippo joined Apple in 2019 as a chip architect, according to his LinkedIn account. He previously worked at Arm on and off for about 20 years.

CRN has reached out to Filippo, Microsoft and Apple for comment.

During his time with Arm, Filippo’s accomplishments included lead architect of Neoverse V1, also known as Zeus, Arm‘s first SVE-capable CPU, and the Neoverse N1 infrastructure-focused CPU used in Amazon’s Graviton2 AWS instances, according to his LinkedIn.

He was also lead architect of Cortex-A57 – Arm‘s first-generation 64-bit CPU – and Cortex-A76AE, the first generation of Arm’s automotive-enhanced high-end split-lock and dual-core lockstep (DCLS) CPUs built for autonomous driving and other safety applications, according to his LinkedIn.

Filippo also worked at Intel for about five years, from 2004 to 2009, in between Arm stints, according to LinkedIn. At Intel, Filippo was chief architect of the 24-core, 96-thread, supercomputing and high-performance computing system-on-chip, among other accomplishments.