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AMD Brings Back Athlon K8 Designer as Chief Architect

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the alpha-king-of-architectures dept.

MojoKid writes with exciting news from AMD. From the article: "After more than six months of high-to-mid profile executive departures, AMD has major news to announce on its new executive hire — and he's a welcome addition. Starting today, Jim Keller will serve as a Vice President and the company's Chief Architect for CPU Cores. Keller has spent more than thirty years in the semiconductor business, including a few at AMD. When AMD brought members of DEC's Alpha team aboard in the late 1990s, Keller was one of the CPU architects that came along. Having worked on Alpha's EV5, Jim was lead architect on the first K8 project. Keller moved on and eventually became one of the core members of PA Semi which was bought by Apple in 2007."

4 of 63 comments (clear)

  1. interesting loss from the other side by Trepidity · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Keller didn't just accidentally end up at Apple as the result of the purchase of PA Semi; the consensus is that PA Semi were specifically bought to acquire the team led by Keller, moreso than Apple caring about the company itself (i.e. it was what startups these days like to call an "acquihire"). Keller headed the A4/A5 design at Apple (the system-on-a-chip in the iPhone and iPad), so there's now a noticeable staffing gap if they plan to continue in-house development of their mobile chips.

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    10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
    1. Re:interesting loss from the other side by serviscope_minor · · Score: 5, Insightful

      K8, one of the most under-rated chips of all time

      You misspelled "kept from market dominance by illegal abuse of monopoly by intel".

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      SJW n. One who posts facts.
    2. Re:interesting loss from the other side by Ironhandx · · Score: 4, Insightful

      I did. Thank you for fixing that for me.

      If it wasn't for pre-existing exclusivity deals and pushes against it by intel at the time Intel probably would have been forced to burn through their entire cash-on-hand supply to catch up rather than just half of it.

  2. Re:I'm waiting for the next version by thsths · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Haha, the K10 is long out, and while not bad, it is no where near as revolutionary as the K8. Of course the K8 was competing against the P4, which could be called a dog or an easy target.

    If he can repeat what he did with the K8 (and if it was indeed due to his leadership), than AMD again has a chance. If not, they will end up like VIA and all the other Intel competitors, somewhere in a niche market.