Intel AI Data Center VP Departs for AMD
Saurabh Kulkarni, Intel’s Vice President of Data Center AI Product Management, has left the company to join AMD. This move represents the latest instance of a senior Intel silicon executive moving to a rival chipmaker.
Background and Career at Intel
Kulkarni first joined Intel in August 2023, after previously spending 13 years at the company. During his initial tenure, he served as a CPU senior design engineer and senior security and hardware architect before leaving to work at Microsoft, Oracle, and Graphcore.
Contributions and Responsibilities
- Led reference architecture definition for Ethernet-based scale-up and scale-out systems with Gaudi accelerators
- Championed the rack-scale systems initiative targeting AI data center scalability at Intel
- Drove silicon photonics strategy for GPU interconnect, aimed at enhancing scalability and performance in next-generation data center systems
Recent Developments
Kulkarni’s departure was first reported by CRN and later confirmed by Intel. It comes less than two months after the company lost its second senior fellow and Xeon chief architect this year.
His new position at AMD underscores ongoing shifts among senior executives in the semiconductor industry.
Author’s Summary
Saurabh Kulkarni's move to AMD reflects ongoing leadership changes in the chip industry as top AI and silicon experts shift between rival companies, impacting data center innovation.