Samuel Naffziger, a high-ranking designer of Intel's Itanium processors, has been hired by AMD in order to work on the design of new high-end processors.

Naffziger's departure was reported by Real World Technologies, and fired up conmments on how such a move could give a glimpse of AMD's forthcoming chip developments. He was director of Intel's Itanium circuits and technology. While not the only high-ranking designer behind the Itanium line, Naffziger played a leading role. He introduced two major Itanium models to the world at the International Solid State Circuits Conference, the "McKinley" version in 2002 and "Montecito" in 2005.

However, Naffziger is not the only former employee of Intel that will work for AMD. The company hired 10 former employees who previously worked at intel's Ft. Collins design center in Colorado.

"AMD provides an outstanding working environment that continually attracts and retains top talent from around the globe. Candidates from many employers in the Ft. Collins region, including Intel, have expressed interest in working for AMD, and we have hired a number of qualified individuals, including Sam Naffziger. As of March 29, AMD has hired 10 former Ft. Collins Colorado-based Intel employees. We have also made offers to and hired employees from other companies in the region," AMD representatives told CDRInfo.

AMD has chosen the Ft. Collins location to establish a design center.

The real question is what the team at AMD's Fort Collins design center will focus on. AMD did was not willing to disclose any details on this, "for competitive business reasons".

"The Ft. Collins location is planned to be a design center for AMD, and the employees there will be engaged in design work."

Considering that most of the engineers in the area have worked on PA-RISC or Itanium, it seems reasonable to expect that they will concentrate on the server side, rather than on desktop or mobile MPUs.