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AMD has announced that Jim Keller has re-joined AMD as CVP and Chief Architect for CPU Cores reporting to Mark Papermaster. If The name sounds familiar, that would be because Mr. Keller was lead architect for K8, co-author of the HT specification, co-author of the 64 bit x86 spec and part of the system engineering team that launched K7.
With more than 30 years in the semiconductor industry, Mr. Keller has spent the past several years as the director of platform architecture at Apple and was a member of the team responsible for A4 and A5 mobile processor design. He previously served as the VP of Design for PA Semi; and at Sibyte, he created a scalable family of devices resulting in a successful business for Broadcom.
From AMD:
Mr. Keller's bio:
*UPDATE*
The official press release from AMD:
With more than 30 years in the semiconductor industry, Mr. Keller has spent the past several years as the director of platform architecture at Apple and was a member of the team responsible for A4 and A5 mobile processor design. He previously served as the VP of Design for PA Semi; and at Sibyte, he created a scalable family of devices resulting in a successful business for Broadcom.
From AMD:
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.
Mr. Keller's bio:
Jim has been a computer architect for 30 years. He's worked on processors for mobile, PCs, workstations, severs and networking. His passion is innovative yet practical computer design. He was the lead architect for two of the fastest processors, the Alpha 21164 and the 21264, the infrastructure for K8 and 64bit x86, powerful network processors and recently the most successful mobile processors ever. Practical to Jim means designing build-able systems and the teams and processes that go with them.
2008-12 Apple, Director, Platform Architecture Jim was a member of the small team that architected several generations of mobile processors including the A4 and A5 chips. He also worked with the Mac group specifying the compute, power and system needs for two generations of MacBook Airs.
2004-2007 PA Semi, VP engineering
Jim built and led the team to build a powerful networking SOC and it's integrated PowerPC processor. This chip combined low power, high performance out of order issue CPUs, and networking IO to support 10Gig processing and a wide range of control plane functions.
2000-2003 Sibyte, Broadcom, Director, Network Processors Jim was chief architect for a line of MIPS based network processors that supported 1Gig networking interfaces, PCI and other control functions. Jim and his team created a scalable family of devices that created a successful business for Broadcom.
1998-1999 AMD, Senior Fellow
Jim was the lead architect for K8, co-author of the HT specification, co-author of the 64 bit x86 spec and part of the system engineering team that launched K7. With K8 we created a new socket, glue less MP and brought 64 bits to the PC ecosystem.
1982-1998 Digital, Corporate Consulting Engineer I started my career in computer design at Digital. Jim's first project was the extremely successful VAX 8800, a large dual processor mini computer where I designed the cache controller and bus interface system. Jim joined the Semiconductor group in 1989 and was co-architect of the second generation Alpha chip, the 21164, then was co-architect of the third generation Alpha, the 21264 and lead for RTL and verification.
1980-1982 Harris, Design Engineer
Jim joined Harris right out of school as an electrical engineer doing board design, system debug and logic design for networking controllers.
*UPDATE*
The official press release from AMD:
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(R) 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(TM) 64 and AMD Opteron(TM) 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.
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