Intel’s Chief Technical Officer Justin Rattner to step down

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Rattner, who joined the Intel Corporation in 1973, and has been closely involved in the development of the industry standard x86 series of microprocessors, that are part and parcel of the operating process in the vast majority personal computers has been asked to step down.

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Justin Rattner / Getty

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/ By Stanley Green /

A spokesperson for the Santa Clara, California -based multinational semiconductor chip developer and producer hastened to point out that Rattner’s leaving the company in no way reflects upon his ability or his tremendous contribution to the company in 40 years that he has been there, but only as part of an Intel statutory requirement that states that employees cannot serve as corporate officers after the age of 65.

According to sources within the company, after a short leave of absence Rattner will be returning to Intel in a role yet to be determined.

For the time being Intel, the world’s largest and market leading semiconductor chip maker, will not be announcing who the successor to Rattner will be, but have emphasized that he will certainly be returning, more than likely in a consultancy position.

With Rattner having held the post of principal engineer at Intel since 1979, his shoes will obviously take some filling especially with the major changes afoot in the desktop computer industry.

 While these changes have played no part in Rattner leaving the company , industry commentators have speculated that Intel are finding it more difficult than they had imagined to make any form of impact on the Smartphone and tablets markets, largely dominated by semiconductor chips produced by one of their main competitors, ARM.

 Intel’s recently appointed CEO Brian Krzanich, in a recent statement announcing Justin Rattner’s departure from the company, went on to point out that Intel were pulling out major stops to advance their chip technologies, focusing more on power-efficient chips, whilst adding a number of features designed to improve connectivity and security.

 Krzanich also went on to express his appreciation of  Rattner’s tremendous efforts on behalf of Intel thanking him on behalf of the company for “his leadership in creating one of the leading research organizations in the high tech industry”.

Justin Rattner was elevated to the rule of Intel’s first principal engineer in 1979, later going on to become its fourth Intel Fellow in 1988 as well as being among the first Intel Fellows to be named Senior Fellow in 2001.

Justin R. Rattner qualified from Cornell University with a bachelor’s degree in Electrical Engineering in 1970 going on to achieve his master’s degree in Computer Science in 1972, joining Intel the following year .

As Intel’s corporation’s chief technology officer, Rattner has been responsible for  Intel’s microprocessor, communications and systems technology labs as well as head of all the Intel Research departments.

Justin Rattner ‘s contribution to the computer industry in general and to micro processing in particular has earned him a number of awards and recognition’s out with the company, including being named Scientist of the Year by R&D Magazine in 1989. Rattner also gained international recognition when he was featured as Person of the Week on ABC World News for his visionary work working on behalf of the US Department of Energy on their ultra-powerful ASCI Red System computer, the first to be capable of sustaining one trillion operations per second, at that time, the fastest computer in the world..

Rattner has been consistently recognised as being among the 200 individuals who have had the greatest impact on the development of the computer during the 20^th century.