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Apple's CPU lead Jim Keller heads back to AMD
- cicloid 14y agoAnd now, finally, we shall expect lower energy consumption of AMD processors...
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- apendleton 14y agoIn terms of TDP, maybe, but not performance per watt, unless I've missed something.
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- mtgx 14y agoUnless AMD wants him to work on ARM chips. AMD may be secretly building ARM chips.
- shareme 14y agoit's no secret as they are a licensee of arm chips
- drp4929 14y agohttp://www.amd.com/us/press-releases/Pages/amd-strengthens-security-2012jun13.aspx http://www.amd.com/us/press-releases/Pages/amd-strengthens-s...
- mtgx 14y agoI know about that, but that doesn't really count. I want to see if they are really going to make an ARM chip like Samsung or Nvidia, and start selling it to phone manufacturers.
- gringomorcego 14y agoAh, thanks for being okay with making UEFI standard for Macs, so that nerds would be forced to accept it. Fuck you.
- cs702 14y agoIn less than a week, we've had those 'genius' ads on TV that seem to insult consumers' intelligence [1], and now the person who led CPU design for iOS devices is leaving the company. These are not encouraging signs for Apple. [1] http://www.forbes.com/sites/roberthof/2012/07/30/viewers-give-apples-genius-olympic-ads-a-d-for-dumb/ http://www.forbes.com/sites/roberthof/2012/07/30/viewers-giv...
- avar 14y agoI don't work for Apple nor do I have any stake in them, but it can be really frustrating when people make assumptions and conclusions about the company you work for based on the limited information available to them as outsiders. Do you really think that some silly advert made by the marketing department at Apple has any relevance to whatever the reasons were for the head of CPU design for iOS devices had for leaving? Things might be changing for the worse inside Apple, but taking these two datapoints and assuming that something big is going wrong in the company seems to be a conclusion that isn't supported by the facts.
- cs702 14y agoavar: I'm not making any assumptions that anything big is going wrong in the company. Falling short with national TV ads shown during the opening ceremony of the Olympics is a big deal for a company that until recently showed mostly amazing ads on TV. Losing a person who led CPU design for the company's fastest-growing businesses is also a big deal for a company that considered having that person a major coup. Could you imagine either of these things -- lousy ads on a major TV event, key person departing -- happening while Jobs was running the show? -- Edit: changed "only amazing" to "mostly amazing," which better reflects my views.
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- furyofantares 14y agoThe Mac vs PC ads were amazing? I found them unbearable
- georgespencer 14y agoA few points of interest here which Venture Beat have skipped: 1. Keller's company, PA, was bought by Apple mainly for its engineering talent. Getting Keller was a huge deal for Apple. 2. Keller has been hired away by Mark Papermaster, who was a disaster at Apple (all of Bob Mansfield's reservations about him from the internal email discussed in IBM v. Papermaster came true: cultural, pace of development, etc.). I would anticipate an outside hire from Apple to fill his shoes in the next 6-9 months.
- kenjackson 14y agoWhy was Papermaster a disaster at Apple? I've never really heard why. The only thing I've ever heard was that Jobs lost confidence him in, and it was during antennaegate, but it was never clear if he played any role in it.
- bishnu 14y agoWhether or not it was his fault, Jobs blamed Papermaster for antennagate [1]. Papermaster was also there during the white iPhone shipping delay which may have played a factor. [1] http://daringfireball.net/linked/2010/08/07/papermaster http://daringfireball.net/linked/2010/08/07/papermaster
- slurgfest 14y agoI would be interested to hear if Jobs blamed himself for anything.
- kbutler 14y agoHe blamed himself for hiring John Sculley: "When the sales guys run the company, the product guys don't matter so much, and a lot of them just turn off. It happened at Apple when [John] Sculley came in, which was my fault, and it happened when [Steve] Ballmer took over at Microsoft."
- Steko 14y ago"The Difference Between the Janitor and the Vice President." Jobs tells the VP that if the garbage in his office is not being emptied regularly for some reason, he would ask the janitor what the problem is. The janitor could reasonably respond by saying, "Well, the lock on the door was changed, and I couldn't get a key." It's an irritation for Jobs, but it's an understandable excuse for why the janitor couldn't do his job. As a janitor, he's allowed to have excuses. "When you're the janitor, reasons matter," Jobs tells newly minted VPs, according to Lashinsky. "Somewhere between the janitor and the CEO, reasons stop mattering," says Jobs, adding, that Rubicon is "crossed when you become a VP." http://www.businessinsider.com/steve-jobs-on-the-difference-between-a-vice-president-and-a-janitor-2011-5 http://www.businessinsider.com/steve-jobs-on-the-difference-...
- chucknelson 14y agoWith the anticipated "the downfall of Apple begins!" comments that will accompany this story, I'm trying to fathom what the comments will be when Jony Ive eventually leaves...
- joeguilmette 14y agoThe dream will be dead with Jony Ive leaves.
- jpxxx 14y agoAnd then the 20,000 employees of Apple corporate will walk around in a daze and then collapse to the floor and curl up and die because obviously they couldn't possibly understand what makes Apple special or be a part of how it works or be a critical factor in the success of the most successful consumer electronics business of all time.
- mkramlich 14y agoI understand your point, but actual work experience at large companies suggests to me that regardless of whether you have talented soldiers in your company, if the very top folks are mediocre or fragmented or demoralizing then it can cause the entire company to perform at a worse level, and to degrade over time. Bad decisions flow downhill.
- archgoon 14y agoThere has been precedence for this happening. In fact, it happened at Apple 20 years ago.
- rbanffy 14y agoI think this is good news, for both companies and for Jim Keller himself. - Apple's strength is not in its chips. It's in its software and tightly integrated stack - It seems, from the outside, AMD needs an inspiring leader to give its design teams a clearer goal. - I know first hand what it feels like when your work no longer lines up with where your company is going. I wish him the best of luck on his new challenges.
- bluthru 14y ago>Apple's strength is not in its chips. It's in its software and tightly integrated stack Huh? Every time an iOS device is released, it usually is the industry leader for mobile processors. Apple is huge and can be great at many things at once.
- rm999 14y agoCan't you say the same thing about top-of-the-line android phones, e.g. Galaxy S3? Of course the newest stuff will have the best hardware.
- ajross 14y agoApple doesn't design the CPUs, they license the IP (from ARM and Imagination Technologies primarily) and put it on a SoC chip. The A5/A5X were distinguished by the very large SGX cores, but that's not really an engineering triumph -- it's just a bigger chip. Other manufacturers were first with things like dual channel memory, PoP assembly, integrating the A8 and A9 (and SGX, for that matter) cores, etc... SoC design at that level really that innovative. You take some IP, throw it onto a floor plan and contract with a fab. Apple having their own designs is more about optimizing their production chain than it is about driving innovation.
- wmf 14y agoBut Apple "curates" the best Imagination GPU (edit: or the biggest number of GPUs) and for some reason all their competitors don't...
- JVIDEL 14y agoThe early days of the K8 were awesome, the FX would kill whatever Intel threw at AMD, it was brutal. Even cheap Athlons were better than highend Pentiums, and prescott? a disaster, plain and simple. Is ironic that AMD hired Keller since Intel too found it's way out of the Netburst fiasco by going back to Tualatin, which at the same time had more in common with the good old Pentium Pro than it did with coppermine and katmai.
- throwaway64 14y agocoppermine and katmai were architectural steps between the pentium pro and Tualatin, perhaps you meant northwood and prescott, the codenames of p4 chips.
- DeepDuh 14y agoDidn't Intel base Core Duo on their Israel branch' Pentium M design? I don't remember too much about the architecture codenames but were they similar to Pentium Pro?
- JVIDEL 14y agoPentium M was based on the Tualatin
- nl 14y agoYes. The Core microarchitecture was designed by Israel's Intel Israel (IDC) team that previously designed the Pentium M mobile processor[1] The Pentium III Tualatin (mentioned above) and the Pentium M are closely related. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_Core_(microarchitecture) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_Core_(microarchitecture)
- wtvanhest 14y agoIts just as likely that Apple has decided to use Intel's chip line (which no one has any idea what it is) 2 years from now and no longer needs Jim Keller than it is to assume that Jim Keller was "poached" by AMD. The iPhone 5, might be the last phone with custom Apple chips.
- twoodfin 14y agoThat seems extremely unlikely. Even if Intel could produce a performance/power competitive product in that timeframe, they're likely never going to give Apple the influence over its SoC designs that they can currently exert over their ARM partners. It's more likely that Apple has and is satisfied with a 3-4 year roadmap for the A* line that looked pretty boring to Keller, and the AMD job appeared much more interesting (and potentially much more lucrative).
- wtvanhest 14y agoI'm curious, why would Intel need to give Apple any influence over their SoC designs? All phones are basically moving toward the exact same shape and size.
- wmf 14y agoApple's "custom" A4 appears to be a Samsung SoC with features that Apple doesn't need removed to reduce cost. And the A5X has a bigger GPU (MP4) than any other SoC. I would expect A6 to maintain some difference from off-the-shelf SoCs.
- wtvanhest 14y agoWhat does that have to do with future designs though? I'm under the assumption that the roadmap is 18 to 24 months out. In that time frame, they could have already selected a future Intel SoC. Why would they need to continue upgrading the hardware at this point? It seems like a useless effort given that they have a software technology advantage and marketing brand advantage.
- powerslave12r 14y agoCan someone explain how there aren't any issues with Non-competition clauses for this move? Is it simply a case of 'maybe he never signed a NCC?'
- spamizbad 14y agoNon-competes are invalid in California for non-equity stake holders. This is a feature, not a bug in California's laws. I wish my state would adopt a similar view.
- Zenst 14y agoIf you look ar ARM cpu's as bits of lego, sure you can use this brick or that brick to make your CPU, but it's still made out of standard bricks. Given that it may be understandable for Keller to move onto something more of a challange for a person who likes to design the bricks. Apple don't need to make there own add on's, they pick what they want and what they don't want/need and in that the level of skills needed to assemble those parts onto a workable CPU is at a level were you don't leverage the skill set that Keller has as much as you could. I can understand Apples needs and what they don't need and in that it is non impacting to Apple and probably a good move for Keller. To read anything else into this story is clutching at the speculation stick and has no grounding.
- DigitalSea 14y agoAll signs are pointing to a dramatic shift in Apple, whether it's for the best or worse has yet to be determined. What goes up must come down and the departure of Jim Keller who is a engineering genius is a massive blow to Apple. Seems like whatever energy/sales secret weapons Steve Jobs had stored away in R&D labs is running dry and now we're starting to really see the effects of a post-Jobs led company. I would keep an eye on the Apple share price over the next few weeks, I have an inkling that something is going to change regardless of how much money they have in the bank.
- Shorel 14y agoEasy: Bring back the WoZ.