Murthy Renduchintala, Chief Technology Officer of Global Chipmaker Intel Corp is exiting as part of a move that will split its main technology unit into five teams, the company has informed.
Intel said its technology, systems architecture and client group is being reorganized. Its new leaders will report directly to CEO Bob Swan.
Mr. Renduchintala will leave on August 3rd and all the reforms will come into effect immediately, according to the company statement.
Ann Kelleher, a 24-year veteran of Intel, will lead the development of processes for the 7-nanometer and 5-nanometer chip technology. The company had informed last week that it would have to rely more on outside chipmakers to keep its products competitive as its smaller, faster 7-nanometer chip-making technology was six months behind schedule.
In 2015, Renduchintala who was generally considered as a successor to Swan joined Intel. Earlier he held the position as Qualcomm’s executive vice president and has also been on the board of Accenture since April 2018.
Renduchintala was one of the crucial hires from outside Intel, which had become renowned for cultivating and fostering talent from within the organization. He was recruited as part of a plan to expand beyond the central processing units or CPUs to wider markets. The CPU business made Intel popular in the PC era.
Though the chipmaker attempted to develop modem chips that connect smartphones to mobile data networks, it had to be last year. Intel sold the business for $1 billion to Apple, a fraction of what they’d spent in the venture.
In November, though CEO Swan told investors that Intel was going to start catching up to rivals with its 7-nanometer process in early 2021, he was forced to reverse the statement last week due to the delays.
It should be noted that while Intel’s brief announcement fails to reference the revelation of last week, the timing and subsequent changes in staffing are unmistakably related to the 7-nanometer process delay. Today’s reorganization is Intel’s second restructuring in as many months, as the firm reorganized a number of product groups after Jim Keller (ex-Senior Vice President) quit for personal reasons.
