Apple sues its former CPU chief architect

Earlier this year, Gerard Williams left Apple to co-found a new data center chip design company called Nuvia. Williams was the chief architect of the iPhone and iPad processors and now he's facing legal action as Apple claims he breached the terms of this contract.

In particular, Apple alleges that Williams hid the fact that he was planning to start his own CPU business while still working at Apple. The Cupertino giant's lawsuit reckons that Williams exploited the technology he was working on for Apple, and that he tried to lure away Apple engineers for his new venture.

Williams and has lawyers believe the lawsuit has no merit. They point out that some of the employment contract provisions mentioned in the case amount to non-compete clauses, which are not legally recognized in California. Furthermore, they also allege that some of the evidence presented by Apple, like text messages, were collected illegally.

Overall, Nuvia seems like a pretty interesting firm. Over the past couple of months the startup made some impressive hires:

The startup is armed with a who's-who of semiconductor engineers and enterprise software experts. It was co-founded by ex-Google system-on-chip architect Manu Gulati, who also toured Apple, Broadcom, and AMD, and former Google, Apple, and AMD architect John Bruno, as well as Williams, who previously was an Arm fellow and Texas Instruments design lead. The company also includes former Red Hat chief Arm architect Jon Masters, Intel marketing veep Jon Carvill, and various other brains from across Silicon Valley.

Source: The Register