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Comment by afandian | Hacker News Reader

Got a link for that?

> ... In 2019, Nuvia was founded and later acquired by Qualcomm for $1.4B. Apple’s Chief CPU Architect, Gerard Williams, as well as over a 100 other Apple engineers left to join this firm. More recently, SemiAnalysis broke the news about Rivos Inc, a new high performance RISC V startup which includes many senior Apple engineers. The brain drain continues and impacts will be more apparent as time moves on. As Apple once drained resources out of Intel and others through the industry, the reverse seems to be happening now.

> We believe Apple had to delay the next generation CPU core due to all the personnel turnover Apple has been experiencing ...

https://semianalysis.com/apple-cpu-gains-grind-to-a-halt-and...

Interesting they’re talking about the A15, since then the M1 chips have come out and they seem pretty good…

The A15 was released in September with the 2021 iPhone; the M1 was released in November 2020.

A15 was released with the iPhone 13 series this year, after the M1.

M1 isn't a generational leap for Apple. It is just 7% faster for single core than last year's iphone 12. Apple was already so far ahead of the competitors in the chip department for multiple years.

https://browser.geekbench.com/ios-benchmarks

Gerard Williams claims credit for M1 Pro and M1 PRO Max as well:

> Chief Architect for all Apple CPU and SOC development. For CPU, lead the Cyclone, Typhoon, Twister, Hurricane, Monsoon, Vortex, Lightning and Firestorm architecture work. Chief Architect for Apple MAC hardware platform M1 Pro and M1 Max.

I guess they were in the works long before he left.

https://www.linkedin.com/in/gerard-williams-iii-27895aa

Microarchitectures are not developed within a year.

While this shows that talent has left, I don't think that the quote about "most of Apple's top talent has left" is quite well explained by this article. Your comment make it seem like there's hardly anyone left and all they can do now is delay the competition with exclusive contracts... which is quite a leap.

I drew the conclusion that the top "innovators" had left. Without them, can Apple Silicon really keep improving?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com