Intel Xeon chief architect leaves just 8 months after appointment — Ronak Singhal latest departure in ongoing shakeup

Ronak Singhal, Intel senior fellow and chief architect of Xeon products, will leave the company by the end of the month, the company has confirmed to Tom's Hardware. Singhal appears to be the second chief architect of Xeon products to depart the company in less than a year. His departure emphasizes the deep restructuring under chief executive Lip-Bu Tan, though it remains to be seen who will be responsible for defining the future of Xeon CPUs.

Singhal's departure from Intel just eight months after he succeeded Sailesh Kottapalli as chief architect of Xeon products highlights the turmoil at Intel in general and the company's Data Center Group in particular. Sailesh Kottapalli left in January to join Qualcomm's renewed server CPU initiative, whereas Justin Hotard, general manager of DCG, left the company to become chief executive of Nokia in February. Hotard succeeded Sandra Riviera in early 2024 as Riviera chose to become chief executive of Altera, which was spun off later that year (Riviera was replaced this August). A few days ago, Intel appointed Kevork Kechichian as the head of DCG.

Ronak Singhal joined Intel in 1997, right after graduating from Carnegie Mellon University. His most recent role included responsibility for overall Xeon CPU strategy, roadmap execution, and platform-level integration. This included not only chip design but also adjacent technologies such as memory systems, platform security features, and AI acceleration. Singhal was the second chief architect of Xeon products (after Kottapalli) in Intel's history. It is unclear whether he has influenced Intel's Xeon roadmap significantly.

Throughout his 28 years at Intel, Singhal has shaped the architectural direction of several critical product generations. In the late 1990s, he was involved in Pentium 4 validation, and then he led performance optimization for Nehalem and Westmere. He also oversaw the development of Haswell and Broadwell server CPUs. In general, he was quite a cross-disciplinary architect deeply embedded in Intel products as his technical oversight extended beyond cores to encompass CPU microarchitecture, memory systems, platform security, and eventually AI acceleration. Singhal has been granted 30 patents covering CPU architectures.

The leadership transition aligns with Lip-Bu Tan's strategy to revamp the whole company and Intel's Data Center Group. To accelerate changes, Tan appointed former Arm executive Kevork Kechichian as executive VP and GM of the group. He also shifted accelerators development to a Sachin Katti-led AI subdivision, making CPUs the primary focus within the data center unit.

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