AMD Re-recruits Jim Keller as Chief of Processor Group

[Tharic-Nar]

In what might be the best news to come out of the AMD camp in quite a while, the company has announced that it's bringing Jim Keller back on board to become the Corporate Vice President and Chief Architect for CPU Cores. He'll be reporting to the company's CTO and Senior VP of Technology and Engineering, Mark Papermaster.

You can read the rest of our post and discuss here.

 

[Big Red Machine]

I have a soft spot in my Big Red Machine heart for AMD. When I got into this hobby, I did so with my first custom-built PC based on a Socket 939 Athlon 3700 San Diego. Almost everything I know about being a PC enthusiast - troubleshooting, mods, overclocking, water cooling, etc. - I learned on an AMD-based system.

Even today my daily driver is still based on AMD, though I do have a P67-based system waiting for a couple more water cooling-related parts to come in before I go all in.

It's a nice thought to believe that Mr. Keller's return to AMD might auger better times for fans for the brand; he was, after all, part of the team that brought on K8, which was the last CPU architecture that ruled the performance stakes that didn't carry an Intel badge.

Unfortunately, I think the more realistic scenario is for AMD to continue on its value-oriented philosophy and market approach, with a growing emphasis on the mobile market. Mr. Keller's expertise also extends to SoCs, after all.

 

[Rob Williams]

As sad as it might be, I've forgotten most of the time I spent with Socket 939, but damn, was it a fine platform. I forget which CPU I had, but I think it was similar to the 3700. This was back when I had a ton of fun benchmarking and overclocking RAM... something I find totally boring ever since DDR3 hit the market.

I admit that I prefer Intel over AMD (like most of the world at the moment), but I still have a soft spot for the company and do hope things look up soon. Competition is good, but AMD sure does have a challenge ahead of it. It's not easy taking a behemoth like Intel head-on.

Unfortunately, I think the more realistic scenario is for AMD to continue on its value-oriented philosophy and market approach, with a growing emphasis on the mobile market. Mr. Keller's expertise also extends to SoCs, after all.

Yup, which isn't great for enthusiasts... at all. But who knows... if AMD gets back on track with those kinds of parts, they'll be able to feed the machine to crank out some competitive parts. Maybe.

 

[MacMan]

"Fresh out of Apple, Jim's ideas and implementations could help get AMD back on the right track and become a fierce competitor once again."

Let's hope so?