Intel hires GlobalFoundries tech chief

Intel has hired Gary Patton, the former CTO of GlobalFoundries. Patton worked at the chip manufacturer on the 7nm processes and smaller, but GlobalFoundries stopped developing them last year.

Reuters news agency says it has seen an internal memo from Intel, which shows that Patton is employed by Intel. The processor manufacturer has not disclosed anything about this, but a spokesperson confirms the authenticity of the memo. Patton will be named corporate vice president and general manager of design enablement at Intel, under Mike Mayberry, Intel’s CTO.

Until last week, Patton was the chief technology officer of GlobalFoundries. The about him page on that company’s website has been removed. Patton’s LinkedIn page states that he is currently in a transition period.

GlobalFoundries was spun off from AMD in 2009. The chip manufacturer makes processors at 14nm and 12nm for AMD, but also worked on 7nm processes and smaller. Last year, the company decided to stop and focus on existing processes, because it cannot compete with large companies such as TSMC and Samsung.

Patton worked at GlobalFoundries from 2015 to 2019. Before that, he spent ten years in the chip division of IBM. Intel has attracted various chip designers from outside in recent years. For example, former AMD Radeon CEO Raja Koduri has been working at Intel on GPUs since the end of 2017, and Jim Keller, who was responsible for the AMD Zen architecture, among other things, has been working at Intel’s chip division since 2018.