Avtar Saini (1956-28 February 2024) was an Indian microprocessor designer and developer who held patents related to microprocessor design. He was also a director for

Intel Intel Corporation is an American multinational corporation and technology company headquartered in Santa Clara, California, and Delaware General Corporation Law, incorporated in Delaware. Intel designs, manufactures, and sells computer compo ...

's South Asia division. He was best known for his leadership role in the design and development of

Pentium Pentium is a series of x86 architecture-compatible microprocessors produced by Intel from 1993 to 2023. The Pentium (original), original Pentium was Intel's fifth generation processor, succeeding the i486; Pentium was Intel's flagship proce ...

processor at

Career and achievements

Saini held a bachelor's degree in electrical engineering from VJTI, Mumbai, and a master's degree in electrical engineering from the

University of Minnesota The University of Minnesota Twin Cities (historically known as University of Minnesota) is a public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in the Minneapolis–Saint Paul, Twin Cities of Minneapolis and Saint ...

. In April 1982, he joined Intel as a product engineer in the area of magnetic bubble memories. Through the 1980s he worked as a circuit designer on the Intel 80386 and a micro-architect/logic designer on the 80486. In 1989, he was promoted to co-lead the Pentium processor design team where he managed the design and its ramp into volume production. In 1994, Saini was promoted to general manager of Intel's Santa Clara microprocessor division, where he managed Intel's next-generation 64-bit architecture microprocessor. In May 1996, he moved to Folsom, California to head Intel's platform components division, where he was responsible for chipset and graphics solutions. In September 1999, Saini relocated to India as Intel's director of South Asia. He left Intel in January 2004. Saini held seven patents related to microprocessor design.

Death

Saini died on 28 February 2024 when a taxi hit him from behind while he was cycling in Navi Mumbai.

References

2024 deaths University of Minnesota College of Science and Engineering alumni American people of Punjabi descent People from Folsom, California Cycling road incident deaths Road incident deaths in India {{India-scientist-stub, honor=posthumous 1956 births