Dr Robert Yung Chi-shing, the head of Intel's new China Research Centre, is a workaholic who is credited with helping to create the chip that is keeping his former company, Sun Microsystems, ahead of his present employer.
At Sun, Dr Yung helped create the UltraSparc family of processors which are used in all of the servers and the workstations the company sells.
Dr Yung told the South China Morning Post last year that to design that chip, he worked alone for up to 100 hours a week. Later, he assembled an engineering team that grew to 150 members.
The effort paid off. In the past 3.5 years, Sun has shipped more than a million UltraSparc chips. Its latest version, the UltraSparc III, is claimed to be faster than Intel's top-runner, the Xeon, and is considered crucial for helping Sun maintain its top position in the lucrative market for expensive Unix machines.
Dr Yung's most recent position at Sun was as its chief technology officer for Asia.
The 37-year-old Hong Kong native has a doctorate in electrical engineering. Dr Yung said he chose to study engineering over medicine in college because 'there were fewer girls and I knew that would make it easier for me to concentrate'.