Mike Filippo, a veteran within the chip industry, is moving from Apple to Microsoft. He previously worked for Intel and Arm.
According to Bloomberg, Mike Filippo was hired to join the Microsoft Azure group under the leadership of Rani Borkar. The new appointment has not yet been officially announced by Microsoft.
The move to Microsoft shows that more wants to use proprietary chips within the Azure cloud. In that regard, the cloud giant is lagging behind competitors AWS and Google, which already use proprietary ARM-based chips for certain applications with Graviton and TPU, respectively.
Obviously, a focus on proprietary chips is bad news for AMD and Intel in the long run. Both manufacturers are today court suppliers within virtually all Azure instances.
For Apple, the loss of Mike Filippo is a potential drain. He joined the team in 2019 and brought a carload of expertise to his position as a chip architect. In his career, he spent 10 years at Arm working on various ARM blueprints for custom chips, and before that he spent five years at Intel.
Windows 11 on ARM
Microsoft has been working within the PC world for some time on custom chips for laptops with the Surface Pro X as a result. Inside is an ARM chip with the Microsoft logo stuck on it, but in reality it is a custom Qualcomm chip.
Windows 10 on ARM was supposed to gain traction with developers and PC manufacturers, but for now it bore a mouse. Meanwhile, you can get started with Windows 11 on ARM that finally includes the long-awaited emulation of x64 apps.
In stark contrast, Apple with macOS delivered MacBooks in late 2020 with Apple’s own ARM-based M1 chip. The Apple M1 Pro and M1 Max followed in late 2021 with impressive performance that should scare Intel and AMD. By the end of 2022, the entire Mac lineup switched to ARM according to Apple, including the powerful high-end workstations.