Microsoft Hires Former Apple Chip Architect

Microsoft has hired Mike Filippo, a semiconductor designer who formerly worked at Apple as a chip architect, reports Bloomberg. Microsoft is aiming to further expand on chip designs for the servers that power its cloud computing services, and at Microsoft, Filippo will be working on processors for Azure servers.

Filippo joined Apple in 2019 after a decade of semiconductor design at Arm, where he was credited with developing some of the underlying technologies used in phones and other devices. Filippo was responsible for the development of several Arm chips, including the Cortex-A76, Cortex-A72, Cortex-A57, and upcoming 7nm+ and 5nm chips.

Prior to working at Arm, Filippo worked at AMD and Intel, and he was a high profile engineer on Apple's chip team. Apple has been losing some of its chip hires in recent weeks. Former Director of Mac System Architecture Jeff Wilcox departed Apple in December and has since transitioned to Intel, where he will work on Intel's new SoCs.