Intel has rehired one of the key engineers behind its Sandy Bridge and SkyLake architecture CPUs. Shlomit Weiss has been appointed as SVP and co-general manager of the Design Engineering Group. Weiss has 26 years of experience working at Intel and only left five years ago to work for Mellanox/Nvidia, for whom she led a 1,000+ team in Israel. Conveniently, she will be able to stay in Israel and work at the Intel engineering facilities there.
Recently, a similar role at Intel was vacated by Uri Frank (on his way to Google SoC design), which might have accelerated the decision to bring back Weiss. In her new position at Intel, Weiss will work alongside Design Engineering Group global head, Sunil Shenoy, who was also inspired by CEO Pat Gelsinger's appointment to make a return to the chipmaker.
"I am thrilled to return to the place that had been my home for 28 years, where I grew and developed professionally, as a manager and as a person," Weiss said in a statement, which included admiring asides about Pat Gelsinger "charting a new, bold strategy for the company".
The above re-appointment seems to be part of a wider strategy of CEO Pat Gelsinger to hire trusted and proven Intel veterans from the era before he felt it was time to leave (to begin work at VMware). Certainly, Sandy Bridge and Skylake were standout chip designs in Intel's recent history, so the re-hiring of Weiss looks like the remixing of a winning formula. Gelsinger is also cherry-picking former lieutenants from VMware in his work to revitalise Intel.
