Google hired Intel executive to lead its custom chip unit

The tech-giant Google announced that it has hired long-time Intel executive Uri Frank as vice president to lead its custom chip division.

According to Google Fellow and VP of systems infrastructure, Amin Vahdat, the future of cloud infrastructure is bright, and it’s changing fast. He says they continue to work to meet computing demands worldwide. Apparently, they are thrilled to welcome Uri Frank as VP of Engineering for server chip design.

With Uri Frank, Google gets an experienced chip industry executive, who worked more than two decades at Intel. He rose from his engineering role to corporate vice president at the Design Engineering Group. This remained his final position before leaving the company earlier in March.

Frank announced this was a big step to join an organization with a long history of building custom silicon.

Uri Frank noted that Google has designed and created some of the world’s largest and most efficient computing systems. For a long time, custom chips have been an essential part of this strategy. He said he looks forward to growing a team in Israel while accelerating Google Cloud’s innovations in compute infrastructure.

Google started building its chips in 2015

Google’s started building its chips in 2015 when it launched the first TensorFlow chips. It moved into video processing chips in 2018. They went on to add OpenTitan, an open-source chip with a security angle, in 2019.

Frank’s role will be to continue to build on this previous experience to work with clients and partners in order to create new custom chip architectures. The firm wants to move away from buying motherboard components from different vendors to building its own “system on a chip” or SoC, which it says will be more effective.

Significantly, we’ve seen other large-scale companies like Amazon, Facebook, Apple, and Microsoft begin building their own custom chips in the last years. They aimed to meet each company’s individual needs and give more precise control over the relationship between the hardware and software.

Moreover, it will be Frank’s job to lead Google’s custom chip unit and help develop it.