Apple has suffered a significant loss. Apple processor director resigns. This comes at a time when apple is trying hard to gain more control of its hardware. According to people familiar with the matter, Gerard Williams senior director of platform architecture at apple resigned last month. However he is not the first person of the position to resign. Two years ago Manu Gulati who led the same post resigned and moved into Google.
Although not well known. Williams led the processor development division for 9 years. From Apple’s A7 (Its first 64bit processor) to A12X (its most powerful). The A12X is said to be the only mobile chip that can deliver near desktop level performance. Its reportedly faster than 90% of the worlds computers.
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With the past departures, Williams roles had increased. From designing processor cores to layout of other SoC components.
These days a SoC has almost everything a device needs to function. The wireless modems, GPU, Memory etc. This is what helps make a mobile device compact. In a desktop all the parts are separate modules. Other manufacturers too deploy similar Soc solutions but Apple takes it further. To have a larger control over its hardware, Apple has been known to designing customs chips and portions in the Soc. It used to be outsourced but a different company. This seems to have put the entire Semiconductor division under a lot of stress and pressure. Apple’s semiconductor division is doing as much work as an entire processor making company like Qualcomm!
This is enough to explain how much of a major loss it is for Apple. Though the Apple processor director resigns. His work will continue to appear in Apple chips. He is credited with over 60 patents.
Prior to joining Apple. Williams worked in ARM for 12 years.
