Top man behind Intel’s hardware division leaves company

Intel’s chief engineering officer, Venkata ‘Murthy’ Renduchintala, will be leaving the company on August 3. At Intel, Renduchintala was responsible for, among other things, the 7nm chip division. That division is now being broken up and will have leaders who will report directly to CEO Bob Swan.

Renduchintala was in charge of the Technology, Systems Architecture and Client Group division. This business unit was responsible for developing new and manufacturing current hardware products. Intel writes that this division will now be split into five separate teams, with leaders falling directly under Intel CEO Swan. Due to the discontinuation of this division, Renduchintala will leave the company on August 3, according to Intel.

The development of the 7nm and 5nm process will now fall under the new Technology Development department, headed by Mike Mayberry. Mayberry has been with Intel for 36 years and will retire later this year. Global production will fall under Manufacturing and Operations, which will be led by Keyvan Esfarjani. The other three teams are Design Engineering, Supply Chain and Architecture, Software and Graphics.

A specific reason for the split or departure of Renduchintala is not given. The company does say with this step ‘to improve the focus and responsibility’. The news comes shortly after Intel announced problems with the new 7nm process. The first 7nm products would be released in 2021, this has now been postponed to 2022 or 2023. The company is also considering outsourcing the production of certain 7nm products. Renduchintala has worked for Intel since 2016 and previously worked at Qualcomm, among others. In June, Intel senior vice president and chip designer Jim Keller announced his departure from the company.