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The real Ajay Bhatt, mugging for the camera in 2009. He agreed to be featured in Intel's "rock stars" ad campaign but the actual commercials featured an actor playing him.

(Oregonian file photo)

Ajay Bhatt, a top Intel researcher who flirted with pop celebrity several years ago, will retire later this month. Bhatt, 59, is taking advantage of an early retirement program Intel is offering in conjunction with ongoing job cuts but says the timing of his exit is unrelated to the company's restructuring.

In tech, Bhatt is known as co-inventor of the USB - the 1990s computer port that remains a universal connector for PCs, printers, keyboards and smartphones. He has worked at Intel for 26 years, most recently as chief architect in its PC division - known within Intel as the "client computing group."

Fake Ajay Bhatt, played by mustachioed actor Sunil Narkar in the 2009 commercial.

Intel made Bhatt a face of the company in 2009 for an ad campaign that imagined a world where scientists were treated like rock stars. (You can watch his ad here.) Except it wasn't Bhatt's face in the campaign - the company hired an actor who looks nothing like Bhatt to play him. Conan O'Brien learned of the switch and invited the real Bhatt onto "The Tonight Show" for a chat.

Bhatt said he had been planning to retire next year but recently wrapped up his work on a new Intel processor and decided the time was right. Intel's early retirement offer, which offers extended salary and benefits for some long-serving employees, was "incidental" to the decision, Bhatt said: "But the package helped."

Intel is restructuring the company to prepare for long-term decline in the PC industry. Kirk Skaugen, head of Intel's PC group, left in April amid a broad executive shuffle.

In retirement, Bhatt said "I'll see if I can help out with startups," serving on boards or as an adviser. He'll devote a lot of his newly free time to a "smart home" he's building just outside Portland, designing it himself with interactive security features, climate control, lights, dishwasher, video and audio - "as much as I can afford."

-- Mike Rogoway

mrogoway@oregonian.com

503-294-7699

@rogoway