Another Intel veteran is returning to Intel. Sunil Shenoy, who moved to SiFive in 2014 after 33 years at Intel, is returning as senior vice president of the Design and Engineering Group.

Shenoy's appointment is Intel's third high-profile hire in recent weeks. First, engineering leader Pat Gelsinger was scheduled to take over as CEO in mid-February. This seemed to bring back from retirement Nehalem's lead architect, Glenn Hinton, with the promise of working on a "high-performance CPU project."

Now Shenoy joins his new Intel colleagues to oversee "the design, development, validation, and manufacturing of intellectual property and system-on-chips (SoCs) for client and data center applications." So that's most of the gear we're interested in.

"Sunil is a proven engineering leader with deep experience in microprocessor and SoC design and R&D," says outgoing Intel CEO Bob Swan.

"His experience both inside and outside Intel will enable us to combine the strengths of Intel culture with an entrepreneurial spirit and fresh perspectives to strengthen our technical leadership team and to mentor and develop a new generation of technical talent." [Shenoy was Senior VP and GM of RISC-V at SiFive, where he was responsible for bringing the RISC-V instruction set architecture to market in custom silicon.

But for all of Intel's new hires, the road ahead is a daunting one. Intel is undoubtedly facing tough times, and getting through them will require careful and skillful planning.