Apple loses Jeff Wilcox, a leader in the transition to Apple silicon, to Intel

There are a lot of people involved with Apple’s transition away from Intel processors for its computer lineup. And Apple is certainly not giving up on the effort as it moves forward into 2022. However, the company has lost a leader in that department, and to the company that wants to give Apple the biggest run for its money.

As reported first by AppleInsider, Jeff Wilcox, a leader in the transition from Intel to Apple silicon, has decided to leave Apple. According to Wilcox’s LinkedIn page, he officially left Apple as of December of 2021. He worked for Apple for a long stretch, just over eight years, and in that time led one of Apple’s biggest, and most ambitious, efforts to date.

Wilcox described his role at Apple as such:

Director of the Mac System Architecture team that included all system architecture, signal integrity and power integrity for Mac systems. Led the transition for all Macs to Apple Silicon beginning with M1 chip, and developed the SoC and system architecture behind the T2 coprocessor before that.

Now, Wilcox has transitioned to a new role at Intel. There, Wilcox is the leader of the Client SoC Architecture team, which is described as such per his LinkedIn page:

Leader of the Client SoC Architecture team in the Design Engineering Group at Intel. Responsible for the architecture of all SoCs for all Intel client segments.

Wilcox officially started at Intel as of January of this year.

Interestingly, this is not Wilcox’s first stint at Intel. Before he joined Apple in November of 2013, Wilcox actually worked with Intel for just over three years as a principal engineer. He has also worked for Nvidia and Magnum Semiconductor.

Wilcox confirmed his departure from Apple by saying:

After an amazing eight years I have decided to leave Apple and pursue another opportunity. It has been an incredible ride and I could not be prouder of all we accomplished during my time there, culminating in the Apple SIlicon transition with the M1, M1 Pro and M1 Max SOCs and systems. I will dearly miss all of my Apple colleagues and friends, but I am looking forward to the next journey which will start at the first of the year.  More to come!

So, a pretty big loss for Apple, to be sure. However, Apple isn’t slowing down with the Apple silicon transition by any means.