Intel Hires Former GlobalFoundries CTO, IBM Chip Exec Gary Patton
The hiring of former GlobalFoundries CTO Gary Patton comes as Intel plans to return to a two to two-and-a-half year cadence for its manufacturing process after dealing with a multi-year delay for its 10nm processors, which are shipping in new laptops this holiday season.
Intel has hired former GlobalFoundries CTO Gary Patton, a semiconductor industry veteran who has experience leading design enablement as well as the development of process and packaging technologies for computer chips.
The Santa Clara, Calif.-based company confirmed to CRN the hiring of Patton, whose title will be corporate vice president and general manager of design enablement. A spokesman said Patton will report to Intel CTO Mike Mayberry. Reuters first reported the news.
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Patton was most recently CTO and senior vice president of worldwide research and development and design enablement at GlobalFoundries, a Santa Clara, Calif.-based semiconductor foundry that manufactures chips for other companies like AMD, Broadcom and Qualcomm. The company spun out of Intel rival AMD in 2008 after the chipmaker announced plans to go fabless.
According to his LinkedIn profile, Patton was responsible for developing GlobalFoundries' "differentiated process and packaging technologies and design enablement," which involved "building a world-class R&D team and culture" and "driving key customer engagements."
Prior to joining GlobalFoundries in 2015, he spent more than 10 years at IBM's semiconductor unit, where he managed a research and development organization of roughly 1,600 people. While there, he led the development of IBM's "entire portfolio of leading edge process and packaging technologies, design enablement and the successful ramp" of IBM's server processors and custom ASIC products, Patton wrote on his LinkedIn page.
The hiring of Patton comes as Intel plans to return to a two to two-and-a-half year cadence for its manufacturing process after dealing with a multi-year delay for its 10nm processors, which are only beginning to ship in volume in laptops for this holiday season.
In the company's most recent earnings call, Intel CEO Bob Swan said the company has applied the lessons the company has learned from its 10nm delay to improve the process for 7nm products, which will debut in 2021 with a 7nm data center GPU. The company is also "well on the path for 5nm," he said.
"We're investing to recapture process leadership going forward," Swan said at the time.
The chipmaker is also working on new ways to develop chips, which includes its 3D chip packaging technology called Foveros. That technology is being used in Intel's Lakefield processors for Microsoft's Surface Neo dual-screen tablet that is set for a holiday 2020 release.