Raja Leaves Radeon Technologies Group for Now

Chief Architect on Zen is Michael Clark, according to EETimes reporting on the 2016 Hot Chips presentation. Team Leader on Zen is Suzanne Plummer, and according to the article, Jim Keller was in charge of the entire processor design group, and along with Clark and others worked on the early stages of Zen. I have no doubt that Jim Keller was a important part of Zen, but ignoring and acting like he was a one-man army is foolish and ignores the work of the team behind Zen. Now, Clark was also lead architect of Barcelona and Steamroller, your not entirely wrong about AMD having the same people working on Zen as previous architectures, but this just illustrates even more that while Jim Keller was important, assuming he was the glue behind Zen should have meant his departure would have doomed it. No, Zen is good, and is good because of a combination of factors ranging from a experienced design team led by capable managers and executives, etc, etc.
 
Chief Architect on Zen is Michael Clark, according to EETimes reporting on the 2016 Hot Chips presentation. Team Leader on Zen is Suzanne Plummer, and according to the article, Jim Keller was in charge of the entire processor design group, and along with Clark and others worked on the early stages of Zen. I have no doubt that Jim Keller was a important part of Zen, but ignoring and acting like he was a one-man army is foolish and ignores the work of the team behind Zen. Now, Clark was also lead architect of Barcelona and Steamroller, your not entirely wrong about AMD having the same people working on Zen as previous architectures, but this just illustrates even more that while Jim Keller was important, assuming he was the glue behind Zen should have meant his departure would have doomed it. No, Zen is good, and is good because of a combination of factors ranging from a experienced design team led by capable managers and executives, etc, etc.

(A very well-reasoned reply. Thank you for surprising me with it.) - I take this back, only because I thought you were shintai, lol. Well, kudos to you for making a better counter-argument to than Shintai could!

However, the argument does fall apart with regards to Zen and Keller's departure.

Keller has always been a sort of Hired Gun. He likes to go around and try new things. When he left, the reports coming out where that he left because the design portion of Zen was finished.

Remember what I said about Raja needing to get out from under the Arctic Island architecture? That's because brand-new designs tend to last a good 5 to 7 years if not more, and during that period the improvements come from iterations off of the initial core design. If the cord design is solid, then the iterations become better as well. If the core design is faulty, then the iterations will be limited.

Keller finished the cord design for Zen before he left. The reports when he left where that it was mission accomplished and now the leftover engineers were the ones who were taking the reins at that point.

To get granular with what I am saying, I do not think AMD had on staff a design genius who could make a competitive chip like Zen which is why Keller was required. However, when given a direction to go in, I think the engineers for AMD can be brilliant in their own right.

To put it another way, it's like the engineers knew how to build a house with the exception of laying the foundation. If you build a house without a solid foundation it will crumble and fall apart. That was bulldozer, and that was Arctic Islands.

They needed Keller to build that solid foundation on which the house of Zen could be established.

And since being there, we can only hope that Keller showed them how to build that foundation in his absence.

But I do think given that Zen is a brand-new technology, we haven't seen its limitations yet.

Contrast that with Intel, who is putting out fewer games per new processor because of scaling issues with the technology there-in.

One could make the argument that Intel is coming to the limits of their architecture whereas AMD is just beginning to find out what its architecture can do. Of course, if Zen plus and especially Zen to fall flat, that would lend more Credence to your argument about Jim Keller.
 
Chief Architect on Zen is Michael Clark, according to EETimes reporting on the 2016 Hot Chips presentation. Team Leader on Zen is Suzanne Plummer, and according to the article, Jim Keller was in charge of the entire processor design group, and along with Clark and others worked on the early stages of Zen. I have no doubt that Jim Keller was a important part of Zen, but ignoring and acting like he was a one-man army is foolish and ignores the work of the team behind Zen. Now, Clark was also lead architect of Barcelona and Steamroller, your not entirely wrong about AMD having the same people working on Zen as previous architectures, but this just illustrates even more that while Jim Keller was important, assuming he was the glue behind Zen should have meant his departure would have doomed it. No, Zen is good, and is good because of a combination of factors ranging from a experienced design team led by capable managers and executives, etc, etc.

One more note. The point of bringing up Jim Keller was not to make him like a one-man Army. But a successful army needs a smart and strategic General or at least commanding officer if you will. Someone who can see the whole Battlefield and know how to move the troops for success.

Jim Keller was that missing ingredient for AMD.
 
https://www.google.com/amp/wccftech...t-amd-pursue-opportunities-x86-zen-track/amp/

http://m.hexus.net/tech/news/cpu/86585-legendary-cpu-architect-jim-keller-leaves-amd/


http://www.pcworld.com/article/3027...ips-takes-over-teslas-autopilot-hardware.html


https://www.extremetech.com/extreme/214568-jim-keller-amds-chief-cpu-architect-leaves-the-company

These are all just the tip of the iceberg. A search on Jim Keller and Zen provides a wealth of articles that all attribute Zen's architecture and design to Jim Keller.

That's enough proof for most people who don't have a horse in the race.

Yes I am quite aware how the wrong projection was done. No different that how Raja is now a "god of graphics".

I asked you specifically for an AMD statement and you couldn´t deliver, because AMD never claimed so.
 
Yes I am quite aware how the wrong projection was done.

Yeah, I'm sure the legendary designer behind some of the greatest processors ever made was just there on contract to hand out doughnuts and coffee or something.

How dense are you? From here:

Keller “was involved in the early days of Zen, we worked together on the arch and he made me lead architect for it because he was running the whole [processor design] group,” said Clark. “The engineering team loved him because he’s an engineer at heart and you felt you had a champion,” he said.
 
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Yeah, I'm sure the legendary designer behind some of the greatest processors ever made was just there on contract to hand out doughnuts and coffee or something.

How dense are you? From here:


He's not dense in that regard - I believe he is an Intel fanboi, so he hates giving AMD the time of day.

The fact that I keep pumping rational arguments and linked articles, and he just deflects deflects deflects pretty much shows who's won this round - his cognitive dissonance won't allow him to be a grown up here though and admit he was wrong...
 
He's not dense in that regard - I believe he is an Intel fanboi, so he hates giving AMD the time of day.

The fact that I keep pumping rational arguments and linked articles, and he just deflects deflects deflects pretty much shows who's won this round - his cognitive dissonance won't allow him to be a grown up here though and admit he was wrong...

By saying its the entire AMD team behind Zen rather than some glamour type person that left AMD in a sudden move? Just as K8 was Fred Weber and nothing with Keller.

Maybe you should reconsider you post and stop trying to makes idols out of single persons that have no sole claim to it. Try ask yourself how many people worked on Zen for example. You are so busy trying to attack me that you glorify a person who doesn´t even work at AMD; while I say its the people working at AMD that has the credit.

And last time I checked Apple did better without the famous Keller. Not to mention how other companies like ARM, Intel, Samsung etc have done without the "god".

Talking about Apple, it´s funny that when Raja worked there and the following years they did nothing but buy more or less finished GPU designs.

These people are managers, they pretty much don´t do any work besides organizing it.
 
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