According to Intel, the company has hired Rohit Verma, who was previously employed by AMD as the company’s lead SoC architect for Discrete GPUs. Verma will take up the role of Lead Product Architect at Intel’s Accelerated Computing Group in the near future. Because Verma formerly worked as a Senior Fellow at AMD, this is a high-profile acquisition for Intel.
While Intel is putting the finishing touches on its 1st generation Arc Alchemist graphics card lineup, the news (which comes through Tom’s Hardware) comes at an inconvenient time. Verma will not have a key role in the company’s development for the time being, but with the development of second, third, and fourth generation Arc cards in the works, the company will require huge brains to compete with Nvidia and AMD in the graphic card and high performance computer industries.
Verma had previously worked for Intel as the Lead SoC Architect from 1999 to 2013, and this is not his first time at the company. This coincides with a significant portion of CEO Pat Gelsinger’s time at Intel, and the two are almost certainly familiar with one another. Gelsinger himself is believed to have been involved in the process of reacquiring Verma’s services. Without a doubt, with a cheque book open as well!
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The announcement is just the latest in a series of aggressive Intel initiatives in recent months. Instead of simply adding employees, Intel is acquiring companies, making significant capital investments, and expanding into sectors outside of the company’s traditional areas of expertise.
There’s the recently announced purchase of Tower Semiconductor for $5.4 billion, as well as investments in production capability both domestically and internationally, as well as plans to open its foundries to third parties and even the potential of licencing the x86 architecture. Despite the fact that Intel is on a roll, and with Pat Gelsinger changing things up, there will almost certainly be more high-profile staff additions in the months to come.
