AMD (http://www.amd.com) has announced that former Apple director, 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,” says 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.
Keller co-authored the HyperTransport specification, as well as the x86-64 processor instruction set, which is used around the world today in hundreds of millions of desktop, notebook and server systems. He was a corporate consulting engineer at DEC, and architected two generations of Alpha processors during his tenure there. Keller holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Electrical Engineering from Penn State University.
