IBM’s vice president of microprocessor technology development, Mark Papermaster has been poached by Apple, and will begin working closely under CEO Steve Jobs in early November. In an attempt to protect its technology and intellectual property, IBM is suing Papermaster and hoping to prevent him from divulging any trade secrets to Apple.
IBM issued the following statement, “Mr. Papermaster’s employment by Apple is a violation of his agreement with IBM against working for a competitor should he leave IBM. We will vigorously pursue this case in court.” According to a lawsuit document, IBM believes that Papermaster’s position at Apple would entirely be to help the company expand its position with servers, and custom chips for handheld devices.
Losing Papermaster is surely a devastating blow to IBM, who once touted him as their “Top expert in Power architecture and technology.” Roots stem back further than one may initially understand. IBM used to make PowerPC processors for Apple’s computers, before they made the move to Intel processors.
As Cnet points out, if Apple ever decides to try and dominate the enterprise market, Papermaster’s position with the company could allow them to heavily focus on a beefed up Xserve (which has pretty much been ignored since the original iPhone was announced). Furthering that argument, Cnet contributor Gordon Gaff explains that Apple most likely won’t focus too much energy on the enterprise market. “Apple appeared to be serious about the server market when it launched the Xserve earlier this decade, but has spent less and less time extolling the product over the last two or three years,” he said.
Papermaster’s new position with Apple could also signal a lengthy transition to develop a full-blown cloud based infrastructure for services like Mobile Me. This doesn’t seem very feasible, nor does it seem a very efficient project for Apple to undertake. Besides, I can think of a perfectly capable partner that could teach Apple a thing or two about cloud computing. Additionally, conflicting interests might arise with Apple’s current stance on OS X. As cloud computing advocates tend to think a native OS can be done without.
One theory that makes a little more sense is that Papermaster would be taking over Apple’s chip design team. In essence, he would be leading P.A. Semi in designing future iPhone and iPod touch chips. Because of P.A. Semi’s stance in gaming with their chip architecture, speculation may lead many to believe Apple is going to make an effort in gaming. This is also less than likely, especially with how hard they tout the iPod touch as a gaming device, and how “anti-media-formats” Apple can be because of iTunes.
If Apple wants to continue its strategy of designing and building complete systems, hardware, software, and now chips for iPhone and iPod Touch, it’s going to need someone who can predict the future of chip design advise Jobs and Apple’s executive team on how Apple can best take advantage of those trends. Papermaster, with a unique set of skills in the tech industry, might be just that guy. “They probably need somebody with an experience set that doesn’t exist at Apple today,” Haff said.
This lawsuit was filed in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York. And while most company’s have very strict noncompete clauses, which (in theory) protect intellectual data from being passed around, they are generally considered useless, especially in California. Based on where the case gains traction, and how big of a deal IBM makes out of it (which will probably be on the bigger end of things), Apple might have to fork over some of that $25 billion to quiet things down.
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2 Comments to “Apple Poaches Top IBM Chip Designer, IBM Sues Back”
talk about being persuasive. that’s pretty remarkable at this point. IBM has a really credible and loyal corporate culture, and they’re in different sectors of tech (comparatively). This is a major move.
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Completely agreed. This is major for Apple. We can only intelligently speculate about what his role will entail, but surely we’ll find out soon enough.
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