Intel's Skylake Visionary Returns to Lead Client Chip Development

Intel announced that it is bringing back another one of its famed chip architects, 28-year veteran Shlomit Weiss, as CEO Pat Gelsinger continues to rebuild the company's engineering roster. Weiss will lead all of Intel's consumer chip development and design. Weiss returns to Intel after a four-year stint as Mellanox/Nvidia's Senior VP of Silicon Engineering, where she ran the company's networking chip design group, a team of more than 1,000. Still, her achievements during her prior service at Intel are just as impressive.

During her tenure at Intel, Weiss received Intel's Achievement Award, the company's highest award, for her work developing the company's dual-core architecture. She was then entrusted with leading the team that developed Intel's famed Sandy Bridge and Skylake processors.

Intel's Skylake is perhaps one of the company's most famous chip architectures simply because the company shipped multiple iterations of the same design for six long years as it dealt with the fallout of its 10nm delays. Perhaps a testament to the potency of the design, Skylake played a big role in helping Intel survive an incredibly long delay between process nodes — the architecture spanned from Intel's sixth-gen to tenth-gen Core processors and multiple generations of server chips. Intel has ceded roughly 10% of its overall market share to AMD (~8% for server, ~10% for desktop/laptop) during that time frame, but that's surprisingly limited damage given the severity of the company's delays. 

Weiss rejoins Intel as the Senior VP and Co-General Manager of the company's Design Engineering Group (DEG) and will be responsible for all of the company's client chip development and design processes. It appears that Weiss will assume the same role previously held by Uri Frank, who recently left Intel to lead Google's SoC development.

Weiss will work with Sunil Shenoy, another long-term Intel veteran that recently rejoined the company. Shenoy will co-manage the Design Engineering Group with Weiss in Isreal. We aren't clear on the division of responsibilities yet (he will likely lead the data center design initiatives), but we're following up with Intel for more details. Both will also work with famed chip architect Glenn Hinton, who also recently returned to Intel. 

Intel's most famed architectures have long come from its Israel design teams. Gelsinger's continued focus on rebuilding the design teams comes on the heels of his recent restructuring of the data center group, which resulted in the departure of long-time DPG lead Navin Shenoy. 

Gelsinger is obviously relying upon experience from proven Intel veterans as he rebuilds the company after it has suffered from years of missteps and the exodus of much of its brain trust. Weiss holds an M.Sc. with honors in electrical engineering and a first degree in computer science from the Technion - Israel Institute of Technology. She has registered several patents on microprocessor development and also founded the Intel Israel Women Forum.  

Weiss commented on her appointment, "I am thrilled to return to the place that had been my home for 28 years, where I grew and developed professionally, as a manager and as a person. I have been following Intel Corporation's Pat Gelsinger, charting a new, bold strategy for the company, which I believe will accelerate the 'company's leadership. I will devote my energy to ensuring Intel continues to lead in hardware and chips."