A man who once worked for Intel and then jumped ship to join AMD has been accused of stealing his erstwhile employer's chip secrets.

Last week, the FBI alleged that Biswahoman Pani of Worcester, Massachusetts copied a stack of sensitive Intel documents which detailed future chip designs, the Boston Globe reports.

The FBI laid the charges at Pani's door in August, but the contents of the agency's formal charge-sheet were only made public last week. The charges were made after an investigation which involved a raid on Pani's Worcester, Massachusetts home in early July.

Federal detectives allege they discovered 19 CAD designs and more than 100 pages of confidential Intel documentation.

The Feds say Pani left Intel on 11 June - even though, they claim, he had already begun working for AMD on 2 June. They maintain the engineer used his Intel-provided laptop to tap into the chip giant's network to gather up the top-secret files.

Pani's alleged motive: to impress his new employer, say the Feds. They added that there is no evidence that AMD condoned or was even aware of Pani's alleged actions, which the FBI said the engineer admitted to during a interview in late July.

Pani told detectives he had taken the documents out of curiosity, according to the FBI complaint.

Intel called in the cross-state cops after conducting a review of company files Pani may have had access to, a probe initiated when it learned the engineer had joined its arch-rival.