Intel's head of engineering is the first casualty of the 7nm node nightmare

(Image credit: Intel)

Intel has reshuffled its top executives following the announcement of a six-month delay to the 7nm process node. Unfortunately, that means previous incumbent, Dr. Murthy Renduchintala, Intel's chief engineering officer, will leave the company next week and his remit, the Technology, Systems Architecture, and Client Group (TSCG), divided up.

As Renduchintala steps away, Dr. Ann Kelleher will take the lead in technology development. This role will focus on the 7nm and 5nm process nodes, following a ramp-up in 10nm manufacturing. There's an awful lot of pressure on this position to deliver results, especially considering Intel's 10nm process node was heavily delayed and its 7nm node now slipping into the future.

But it's not all on Kelleher's shoulders. Sure to be familiar to gamers, and sticking around, is Raja Koduri, who will continue to head up architecture, software, and graphics. That means a continuation of Intel Xe development—whatever that may have in store for gaming—which is expected to launch initially within Intel Tiger Lake laptops sometime soon.

Manufacturing and operations will be led by Keyvan Esfarjani, who previously led Intel's Non-Volatile Memory Solutions Group (NSG). Supply chain management will be taken care of by Dr. Randhir Thakur, and whose importance for Intel specifically cannot be understated following recent years' concerns over chip availability.

Lastly, you've got Josh Walden leading design engineering in the interim while Intel goes about finding "a permanent world-class leader"—watch out AMD, Intel's on the prowl for new hires again.

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All of the above execs will now report direct to Intel CEO Bob Swan.

“I look forward to working directly with these talented and experienced technology leaders, each of whom is committed to driving Intel forward during this period of critical execution,” Swan says in a press release. “I also want to thank Murthy for his leadership in helping Intel transform our technology platform. We have the most diverse portfolio of leadership products in our history and, as a result of our six pillars of innovation and disaggregation strategy, much more flexibility in how we build, package, and deliver those products for our customers.”

Swan has certainly had a tough run at CEO stewardship so far, and Intel appears to be a slow ship to turn around. But when everyone else is turning on a dime, and making bank doing it, the company surely has got to do something drastic in order to keep up.

Jacob earned his first byline writing for his own tech blog, before graduating into breaking things professionally at PCGamesN. Now he's managing editor of the hardware team at PC Gamer, and you'll usually find him testing the latest components or building a gaming PC.