Bulletins

Report: Microsoft hires Apple chip designer to work on server processors

Mike Filippo has left Apple to join Microsoft's server chip design team, according to a report.

Report: Microsoft hires Apple chip designer to work on server processors
A Microsoft data center. Cloud companies spend billions each quarter to support cloud services.
Photo: Microsoft

Another day, another prominent departure for an Apple chip designer.

Mike Filippo has joined Microsoft as part of the company’s effort to design its own server chips inside of its Azure group, according to a Bloomberg News report Wednesday. Like AWS before it with its Graviton processor, Microsoft is making an effort to design its own server chips that threaten Intel and AMD’s data center businesses. Hiring Filippo suggests the company is speeding up its effort to produce a custom data center processor.

Microsoft, Apple and Filippo did not respond to a request for comment.

Filippo worked for Apple for roughly three years, and prior to that served as Arm’s lead CPU architect, and lead system architect, among other roles, according to his LinkedIn profile. He has also served as a chip designer at Intel and AMD earlier in his career.

Filippo’s decision is a notable loss for Apple, which last week saw the departure of another prominent chip designer, Jeff Wilcox. Wilcox was one of the designers that helped make Apple’s custom chips for its laptops and desktop systems.

Max A. Cherney

Max A. Cherney is a senior reporter at Protocol covering the semiconductor industry. He has worked for Barron's magazine as a Technology Reporter, and its sister site MarketWatch. He is based in San Francisco.

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