Qualcomm hires Intel's Xeon architect to lead development of server CPUs
Qualcomm's datacenter effort begins to take shape.

Qualcomm has hired Sailesh Kottapalli, a former chief architect of Xeon server processors at Intel, to lead the development of the company's data center CPUs, reports CRN. Kottapalli spent 28 years at Intel and worked on various projects, including x86 and Itanium, as well as CPUs and GPUs. More recently, he was responsible for multiple generations of Xeon processors.
"As we head into 2025, I am excited to share that I have joined Qualcomm," Kottapali wrote in a post on LinkedIn. "The opportunity to innovate and grow while helping to scale new frontiers was immensely compelling to me, a once-in-a-career opportunity that I could not pass on. The start of this new chapter also coincides with the closing of a previous one at Intel that lasted 28 years. This experience was tremendously gratifying, and I would like to acknowledge it."
Kottapalli joins Qualcomm as a senior vice president and will lead the company's data center CPU efforts. Qualcomm's upcoming server CPUs are expected to use cores developed by engineers from Nuvia, a company Qualcomm acquired for $1.4 billion in 2021. Nuvia originally designed its Arm-based Phoenix (now called Oryon) cores with data centers in mind, but Qualcomm uses them for Snapdragon X system-on-chips (SoC) for consumer PCs, which upset Arm and led to litigation between the two companies.
This is not Qualcomm's first foray into server CPUs. The company previously attempted to enter the market with Centriq but abandoned those efforts in 2018 and laid off its development team. This new initiative marks a return with a stronger focus and expanded resources.
It should be noted that a wider range of data center software now supports the Arm instruction set architecture. Furthermore, as Amazon expands its Graviton-based offerings, the data center industry's confidence in Arm processors increases, so Qualcomm has every reason to assume that demand for its upcoming server processors will be higher than it was back in the day. To some degree, the hire of Sailesh Kottapalli serves the same purpose as people tend to trust server industry veterans.
Just yesterday we also learned that Qualcomm is looking for an SoC Security Architect for its Data Center Team.
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Anton Shilov is a contributing writer at Tom’s Hardware. Over the past couple of decades, he has covered everything from CPUs and GPUs to supercomputers and from modern process technologies and latest fab tools to high-tech industry trends.
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bit_user I wonder whether most of their sales are expected to come from off-the-shelf SKUs, or if they're primarily planning to contract to big cloud operators and server makers to provide customized, built-to-order CPUs.Reply
Also, while it seems a likely bet these will be ARM-based, I wouldn't rule out the possibility of them being RISC-V. -
ezst036 I hope being sued by ARM spooked Qualcomm just a little bit and they are at least having RISC-V conversations of the "this is coming sooner rather than later" nature.Reply -
bit_user
That started not long after the whole ARM legal drama got going.ezst036 said:I hope being sued by ARM spooked Qualcomm just a little bit and they are at least having RISC-V conversations of the "this is coming sooner rather than later" nature.
https://www.qualcomm.com/news/onq/2023/09/what-is-risc-v-and-why-were-unlocking-its-potential
It might've been posturing or hedging their bets. Or, maybe just a clear-eyed view towards the future. Probably, more than one of these. -
ezst036
I sincerely hope so - and if not, now there's news out that ARM wants to raise their rates by 300%.bit_user said:That started not long after the whole ARM legal drama got going.
https://www.qualcomm.com/news/onq/2023/09/what-is-risc-v-and-why-were-unlocking-its-potential
It might've been posturing or hedging their bets. Or, maybe just a clear-eyed view towards the future. Probably, more than one of these.
Hopefully that also helps Qualcomm to make the, uh, "correct" choice. -
bit_user
ARM sees the writing on the wall and is racing to maximize their revenue from their ISA before everyone can switch to RISC-V. It's a brutal strategy, but it explains a lot about why they tried taking such a hard line with Qualcomm.ezst036 said:now there's news out that ARM wants to raise their rates by 300%.
Meanwhile, ARM is pivoting towards designing AI chips, perhaps treating AArch revenue as something to bridge them over to their next big market.
Also, ARM appears to be working on selling their own silicon. Maybe not entire SoCs (although I think they're offering a contracting service that will make custom SoCs per the customer requests), but just chiplets which contain the CPU cores and can be integrated into multi-die solutions, so its customers who make their own chips that incorporate ARM's IP cores don't have to deal with layout and fabbing of that part. The relevance of this to RISC-V is that these capacities further shift ARM's value from the realm of IP into the realm of silicon, which then makes it possible for them to expand their offerings to include RISC-V.