The lead designer behind Apple’s custom A-series chips A7-A12X, Gerard Williams III, has left the company.

Gerard Williams III was the senior director in platform architecture at Apple. He worked at the company for 9 years. Apart from the chip design, Williams also oversaw the layout of various other parts on the SoC.

Before Apple, Williams worked at ARM for 12 years. He was the technical lead on Arm’s Cortex-A8 microarchitecture which made its way into the iPhone 3GS and numerous other Android devices. His name is listed in over 60 Apple patents as an inventor.

Apple has been moving the development of key chips used inside its devices in-house. What first started as the A7 chip featuring a 64-bit microarchitecture with the iPhone 5s has now expanded to include a custom GPU, a Secure Enclave chip, W1/H1 wireless chips, and more. Apple is also expected to switch to its custom-designed PMIC (power management IC) in the future to further improve iPhone battery life.

Williams departure is a major blow to Apple as the company’s chip division has seen some notable executives leave in recent years. This includes chip guru Johny Srouji, Jim Keller, and Manu Gulati who went and joined Google. After Gulati’s departure two years ago, Williams took the mantle from him and oversaw SoC architecture development at Apple.

Our Take

Williams played a key role at Apple’s chip division and his excellent work has resulted in Apple’s chips being notably faster than the industry offering. The results of his work will continue to be visible in upcoming Apple chips in the near future.