CNET reports Gerard Williams III, lead designer of Apple’s custom iOS chips from A7 to A12X, has left the company. However, his LinkedIn profile still lists Apple as his employer.
Williams’ chip design influence at Apple goes back farther than the A7, as he served as the technical lead for the Cortex-A8 design, ARM’s first superscalar core design, which powered the iPhone 3GS.
Williams’ role grew at Apple over the years, as his responsibilities eventually evolved into ownership entire system on chip (SoC), which contains the CPU, graphics processor,. motion, AI, image processing, and secure enclave.
His patent portfolio shows he was a driving force behind Apple’s entry into mixed CPU cores, beginning with the A10 Fusion chip. The technology transitioned to full heterogeneous cores with the A11 Bionic.
Williams is listed as an inventor on over 60 Apple patents, related to power management, memory compression, multicore processor technology, and more.
If Williams has left Apple, his departure is just the latest in a series of departures from Apple’s CPU development team. CPU architect Jim Keller and SoC team lead Manu Gulati, left Apple in recent years.
No word on where Willams might be headed, although Intel is a possible destination, as they have lured numerous key AMD executives to their fold.