On September 12, news emerged that Ronak Singhal, the principal architect behind Intel’s Xeon server processor lineup, is set to step down from his role at the end of this month, marking the end of a nearly three-decade tenure at Intel. Singhal’s departure adds to a recent wave of high-profile exits at Intel, sparking industry-wide concerns about the company’s ability to retain top talent and execute its strategic vision.

Singhal joined Intel in 1997 and played a pivotal role in developing the 22nm Haswell and 14nm Broadwell processor architectures. His influence extended beyond Xeon, shaping key aspects of Intel’s Core and Atom processor families as well. While the Xeon division has made strides in closing the performance gap with AMD through its Granite Rapids Xeon 6900 processor, it continues to face intense competition from both AMD and Arm-based architectures. Processors built on Arm’s framework now command a 25% share of the server market, while AMD accounts for roughly 41% of server revenue, underscoring the challenges Intel faces in maintaining its competitive edge.