Intel Hires Apple Engineer Who Helped Develop M1 Mac Chips

An engineer behind Apple’s M1 Mac processors is leaving the company to join rival Intel.

Jeff Wilcox is becoming Intel’s Design Engineering Group CTO for client system-on-chip (SOC) architecture. He announced the news on LinkedIn yesterday, saying he's excited to help Intel’s engineering teams “create groundbreaking SOCs.” 

Wilcox previously served at Apple for eight years, most recently as director for Mac system architecture. He has numerous patents filed under his name. According to his LinkedIn page, Wilcox also oversaw the recent Mac transition from Intel chips to Arm-based M1 processors. 

“It has been an incredible ride and I could not be prouder of all we accomplished during my time there, culminating in the Apple SIlicon transition with the M1, M1 Pro and M1 Max SOCs and systems,” Wilcox wrote last month. Now he’s rejoining Intel, where he previously served as principal engineer before starting work at Apple. 

The hiring occurs as Intel faces more competition than ever in developing PC chips. Apple once relied on Intel silicon for its Mac products. But in June 2020, the company announced it was ditching Intel processors for its own Arm-based chips. 

That resulted in Apple's M1 processors, which have paved the way for some of the best performing MacBooks we’ve seen. The same chips also have astonishingly long battery life that can surpass 20 hours on a single charge, trouncing the Intel-based competition. 

Intel, on the other hand, has struggled in recent years to advance its chip designs. However, the company’s new CEO, Pat Gelsinger, has made it a priority to beat the laptops from Apple. (The chip maker even poached ​​Justin Long, the actor featured in Apple’s “Get a Mac” ads, to switch sides and join Intel in promoting Windows PCs.)