Former chip leaders of Apple founded the company to battle Intel and AMD

Three former senior semiconductor leaders of Apple, once responsible for iPhone chip design, have just established a startup specializing in processor design for data centers in order to confront the two leading companies in the industry. Currently Intel Corp and Advanced Micro Devices Inc. (AMD).

The NUVIA Inc startup, founded by Gerard Williams III, Manu Gulati and John Bruno in early 2019, is currently developing a microprocessor code-named Phoenix. On Friday, the company said it received $ 53 million in funding from Dell Technologies Capital and other Silicon Valley companies, helping them expand from 60 employees to around 100 by the end of the year.

William left Apple last spring after more than 9 years at the chief architect designing all central processors and Apple's SoC. Gulati has worked for 8 years at Apple, in the field of SoC, while Bruno spent 5 years leading Apple's architecture group. Gulati and Bruno also worked for Google before moving to NUVIA.

At NUVIA, the team's goal is to apply the experience gained from designing powerful chips for small, battery-powered devices, such as iPhones, and putting them on large data center servers. , consume a lot of electricity. The founders of the company expect to be able to make a chip faster, more energy-efficient, and more secure than existing data center processors.

" We want to bring all the things we have developed throughout our career to this new market and exploit them in this market, because this is a mature field for changes. new and progressive "- William said.

Chip suppliers such as Qualcomm Inc, Marvell Technology Group and Ampere Computing, a startup founded by former Intel chairman, are all looking to confront Intel and AMD in the server market with chip technology previously used. on mobile phones.

NUVIA logo

But Patrick Moorhead, an analyst at Moor Insights & Strategies, says NUVIA could be a potential competitor because of the founding team's impressive performance. He said that this group is the people who have brought "unprecedented" leaps in performance with each new generation of chips launched at Apple.

" I have been observing semiconductor companies for 30 years. There is never a guarantee, but one thing I learned is that the most successful chip companies have talented architects and developers. – Moorhead said.

Among NUVIA's investors is Dell Technologies Inc., a venture capital firm. Dell is one of Intel's largest customers. Scoot Darling, chairman of venture capital firm, once a veteran of Apple and Intel, said he could not comment on whether Dell would use NUVIA's chips in the future.

" The chip industry is constantly evolving. It's moving forward. You have to have a world-class team to make something that stands out, dominates despite the reaction of the opposition." At NUVIA, we think we have found such a group "- he said.

Reference: Reuters