AMD Hires new Chief of Processor Group - Former AMD K8 Designer, Jim Keller

[caveman-jim]

Fomer K8 architect Jim Keller is back with the AMD team, now as Chief of the Processor Group. If you're expecting him to grab Bulldozer by the horns and ramp it past Intel, that's not going to happen - his influence won't be fully seen for at least 18mo., as the first changes he makes trickle through to products ready for sale, and his expertize is now all about small, low power, efficient chips... more in keeping with Bobcat, and the upcoming Jaguar micro-architecture.

Is AMD's new direction away from 'high performance' big cores to small, power-efficient cores?

AMD announced today that Jim Keller, 53, has joined the company as corporate vice president and chief architect of AMD's microprocessor cores, reporting to chief technology officer and senior vice president of technology and engineering Mark Papermaster. In this role, Keller will lead AMD's microprocessor core design efforts aligned with AMD's ambidextrous strategy with a focus on developing both high-performance and low-power processor cores that will be the foundation of AMD's future products.

"Jim is one of the most widely respected and sought-after innovators in the industry and a very strong addition to our engineering team," said Papermaster. "He has contributed to processing innovations that have delivered tremendous compute advances for millions of people all over the world, and we expect that his innovative spirit, low-power design expertise, creativity and drive for success will help us shape our future and fuel our growth."

Keller was most recently a director in the platform architecture group at Apple focusing on mobile products, where he architected several generations of mobile processors, including the chip families found in millions of Apple iPads, iPhones, iPods and Apple TVs. Prior to Apple, Keller was vice president of design for P.A. Semi, a fabless semiconductor design firm specializing in low-power mobile processors that was acquired by Apple in 2008. While there, he led the team responsible for building a powerful networking System on a Chip (SoC) and its integrated PowerPC processor. Keller previously worked at SiByte® and Broadcom as chief architect for a line of scalable, MIPS-based network processors that supported 1Gig networking interfaces, PCI and other control functions. Before Broadcom, he spent several years at AMD, playing an instrumental role on the design team responsible for the groundbreaking AMD Athlon™ 64 and AMD Opteron™ 64 processors, which featured the world's first native x86-64 bit architecture.

Keller co-authored the widely adopted HyperTransport specification, as well as the innovative x86-64 processor instruction set, which is used around the world today in hundreds of millions of desktop, notebook and server systems. Jim was a corporate consulting engineer at DEC, and architected two generations of Alpha processors during his tenure there. He holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Electrical Engineering from Penn State University.

AMD Press Release

[Dayblade]

Good to see AMD can still attract the talent. Interesting that it is the same guy that did the phone/mobile tech for Apple - is that where AMD is going to put the focus on?

[CurrentlyPissed]

Man I remember the days of the A64 chips, that was such a good time for AMD. I remember when I got my AMD 64 3200+ and thought it was a beast. I use to dream of having a 3800 and later 4400+

[acroig]

Man I remember the days of the A64 chips, that was such a good time for AMD. I remember when I got my AMD 64 3200+ and thought it was a beast. I use to dream of having a 3800 and later 4400+

Those were the days indeed. Intel's hot running P4 could not get close to their performance.

[gamefoo21]

Those were the days indeed. Intel's hot running P4 could not get close to their performance.

Meh,

Rose coloured glasses... P4 Northwoods definantly pulled them close, the Preshots while not gaming powerhouses were encoding beasts.

Then there was the K8 destroyer, ohhhh Pentium M, how I loved thee. Whose later generations went on to dominate AMD.

[clutch22]

Nah. Intel wasn't competative in the performance/gaming market with the Pentium 4. It was slower, produced a ton of heat, and was alot more expensive. The Core processors were a complete 180 for Intel and put them back on top and have kept them there ever since.

[VW_Factor]

Those were the days indeed. Intel's hot running P4 could not get close to their performance.

I remember a few guys running these in their gaming rigs, while most were running with the A64 bandwagon. Always sounded like hair dryers with the massive heatsinks and super fast fans to keep those stupid things cool.

[caveman-jim]

Then there was the K8 destroyer, ohhhh Pentium M, how I loved thee. Whose later generations went on to dominate AMD.

Pentium M was nothing to do with P4, it was P3 evolution. The processor we enjoy today have nothing from the P4 era, only the hyperthread concept.