Qualcomm purloins Intel’s chief Xeon designer with eyes toward data center development

If Intel was hoping for a turnaround in 2025, it will have to wait at least a little bit longer. The chief architect for Intel’s Xeon server processors has defected to chip rival Qualcomm, which is making yet another run at entering the data center market.

Sailesh Kottapalli, a 28-year Intel veteran and a senior fellow and chief architect for the company’s Xeon processors, made the announcement on LinkedIn on January 13, stating that he joined Qualcomm as a senior vice president.

“My journey took me through roles as a validation engineer, logic designer, full-chip floor planner, post-silicon debug engineer, micro architect, and architect,” he wrote. “I worked on CPU cores, memory, IO, and platform aspects of the system, spanning multiple architectures across x86 and Itanium, and products including CPU and GPU, most importantly shaping the Xeon product line.”