Jim Keller | |
---|---|
Born | 1958or1959(age 64–65) |
Alma mater | Pennsylvania State University |
Occupation | CEO at Tenstorrent |
Known for |
James B. Keller [1] (born 1958/1959) [2] is an American microprocessor engineer best known for his work at AMD, Apple, and Tesla. He was the lead architect of the AMD K8 microarchitecture [3] [4] [5] (including the original Athlon 64) [3] [6] [7] and was involved in designing the Athlon (K7) [5] and Apple A4/A5 processors. [3] [8] [9] [10] He was also the coauthor of the specifications for the x86-64 instruction set [8] [11] and HyperTransport interconnect. [3] [11] [12] From 2012 to 2015 he returned to AMD to work on the AMD K12 [13] and Zen microarchitectures. [14] [15]
He holds a B.S. in Electrical Engineering from Pennsylvania State University, which he earned in 1980. [16] [1]
Jim Keller joined DEC in 1982 and worked there until 1998, where he was involved in designing a number of processors, including the VAX 8800, [1] the Alpha 21164 and the Alpha 21264 processors. [3] [4] Prior to DEC, he had worked at Harris Corporation on microprocessor boards. [1] In 1998 he moved to AMD, where he worked to launch the AMD Athlon (K7) processor and was the lead architect of the AMD K8 microarchitecture, [17] which also included designing the x86-64 instruction set and HyperTransport interconnect, mainly used for multiprocessor communications. [3]
In 1999 he left AMD to work at SiByte to design MIPS-based processors for 1 Gbit/s network interfaces and other devices. [4] [12] [18] In November 2000 SiByte was acquired by Broadcom, [19] where he continued as chief architect [9] until 2004. [3]
In 2004 he moved to serve as the Vice President of Engineering at P.A. Semi, [3] [11] a company specializing in low-power mobile processors. [4] In early 2008 Keller moved to Apple. P.A. Semi was acquired by Apple shortly afterwards, reuniting Keller with his prior team from P.A. Semi. [6] [17] The new team worked to design the Apple A4 and A5 system-on-a-chip mobile processors. These processors were used in several Apple products, including iPhone 4, 4S, iPad and iPad 2.
In August 2012 Jim Keller returned to AMD, where his primary task was to lead development of new generation of x86-64 and ARM microarchitectures called Zen and K12. [15] [14] After years of being unable to compete with Intel in the high-end CPU market, AMD restored its ability to do just that with the new generation of Zen processors. [3] [13] On September 18, 2015 Keller left AMD. [20]
In January 2016 Keller joined Tesla, Inc. as Vice President of Autopilot Hardware Engineering. [21]
In April 2018 Keller joined Intel, where he served as Senior Vice President. [21] [22] [23] He resigned from Intel in June 2020, officially citing personal reasons, [24] though a later report said his departure was catalyzed by a dispute about whether the company should outsource more of its production. [25]
Jim Keller joined AI chip startup Tenstorrent as CTO in December 2020 [26] and became its CEO in January 2023. [27]
In 2023 Keller and Sam Zeloof founded Atomic Semi, a foundry that aimed to design and manufacture low-cost fabrication equipment. [28]
Jim Keller's wife Bonnie [29] is the sister of Canadian author and clinical psychologist Jordan Peterson. [30]
Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. (AMD) is an American multinational corporation and semiconductor company based in Santa Clara, California, that develops computer processors and related technologies for business and consumer markets.
Athlon is the brand name applied to a series of x86-compatible microprocessors designed and manufactured by AMD. The original Athlon was the first seventh-generation x86 processor and the first desktop processor to reach speeds of one gigahertz (GHz). It made its debut as AMD's high-end processor brand on June 23, 1999. Over the years AMD has used the Athlon name with the 64-bit Athlon 64 architecture, the Athlon II, and Accelerated Processing Unit (APU) chips targeting the Socket AM1 desktop SoC architecture, and Socket AM4 Zen microarchitecture. The modern Zen-based Athlon with a Radeon Graphics processor was introduced in 2019 as AMD's highest-performance entry-level processor.
Pentium 4 is a series of single-core CPUs for desktops, laptops and entry-level servers manufactured by Intel. The processors were shipped from November 20, 2000 until August 8, 2008. It was removed from the official price lists starting in 2010, being replaced by Pentium Dual-Core.
In a computer system, a chipset is a set of electronic components on one or more integrated circuits that manages the data flow between the processor, memory and peripherals. The chipset is usually found on the motherboard of computers. Chipsets are usually designed to work with a specific family of microprocessors. Because it controls communications between the processor and external devices, the chipset plays a crucial role in determining system performance.
SSE3, Streaming SIMD Extensions 3, also known by its Intel code name Prescott New Instructions (PNI), is the third iteration of the SSE instruction set for the IA-32 (x86) architecture. Intel introduced SSE3 in early 2004 with the Prescott revision of their Pentium 4 CPU. In April 2005, AMD introduced a subset of SSE3 in revision E of their Athlon 64 CPUs. The earlier SIMD instruction sets on the x86 platform, from oldest to newest, are MMX, 3DNow!, SSE, and SSE2.
In computing, a northbridge is one of two chips comprising the core logic chipset architecture on motherboards for older personal computers. A northbridge is connected directly to a CPU via the front-side bus (FSB) to handle high-performance tasks, and is usually used in conjunction with a slower southbridge to manage communication between the CPU and other parts of the motherboard.
The AMD K8 Hammer, also code-named SledgeHammer, is a computer processor microarchitecture designed by AMD as the successor to the AMD K7 Athlon microarchitecture. The K8 was the first implementation of the AMD64 64-bit extension to the x86 instruction set architecture.
The AMD K9 represents a microarchitecture by AMD designed to replace the K8 processors, featuring dual-core processing.
The AMD Family 10h, or K10, is a microprocessor microarchitecture by AMD based on the K8 microarchitecture. The first third-generation Opteron products for servers were launched on September 10, 2007, with the Phenom processors for desktops following and launching on November 11, 2007 as the immediate successors to the K8 series of processors.
AMD Accelerated Processing Unit (APU), formerly known as Fusion, is a series of 64-bit microprocessors from Advanced Micro Devices (AMD), combining a general-purpose AMD64 central processing unit (CPU) and 3D integrated graphics processing unit (IGPU) on a single die.
Larrabee is the codename for a cancelled GPGPU chip that Intel was developing separately from its current line of integrated graphics accelerators. It is named after either Mount Larrabee or Larrabee State Park in Whatcom County, Washington, near the town of Bellingham. The chip was to be released in 2010 as the core of a consumer 3D graphics card, but these plans were cancelled due to delays and disappointing early performance figures. The project to produce a GPU retail product directly from the Larrabee research project was terminated in May 2010 and its technology was passed on to the Xeon Phi. The Intel MIC multiprocessor architecture announced in 2010 inherited many design elements from the Larrabee project, but does not function as a graphics processing unit; the product is intended as a co-processor for high performance computing.
The AMD Bulldozer Family 15h is a microprocessor microarchitecture for the FX and Opteron line of processors, developed by AMD for the desktop and server markets. Bulldozer is the codename for this family of microarchitectures. It was released on October 12, 2011, as the successor to the K10 microarchitecture.
Mark D. Papermaster is an American business executive currently serving as the chief technology officer (CTO) and executive vice president for technology and engineering at Advanced Micro Devices (AMD). On January 25, 2019 he was promoted to AMD's Executive Vice President. Papermaster previously worked at IBM from 1982 to 2008, where he was closely involved in the development of PowerPC technology and served two years as vice president of IBM's blade server division. Papermaster's decision to move from IBM to Apple Inc. in 2008 became central to a court case considering the validity and scope of an employee non-compete clause in the technology industry. He became senior vice president of devices hardware engineering at Apple in 2009, with oversight for devices such as the iPhone. In 2010 he left Apple and joined Cisco Systems as a VP of the company's silicon engineering development. Papermaster joined AMD on October 24, 2011, assuming oversight for all of AMD's technology teams and the creation of all of AMD's products, and AMD's corporate technical direction.
K12 was to be AMD's first custom microarchitecture based on the ARMv8-A (AArch64) instruction set with a planned release in 2017. Its predecessor, the Opteron A1100 series, also ARMv8-A, used ARM Cortex-A57 cores. As of 2023 the product has officially been canceled.
Zen is the codename for the first iteration in a family of computer processor microarchitectures of the same name from AMD. It was first used with their Ryzen series of CPUs in February 2017. The first Zen-based preview system was demonstrated at E3 2016, and first substantially detailed at an event hosted a block away from the Intel Developer Forum 2016. The first Zen-based CPUs, codenamed "Summit Ridge", reached the market in early March 2017, Zen-derived Epyc server processors launched in June 2017 and Zen-based APUs arrived in November 2017.
Zen 2 is a computer processor microarchitecture by AMD. It is the successor of AMD's Zen and Zen+ microarchitectures, and is fabricated on the 7 nm MOSFET node from TSMC. The microarchitecture powers the third generation of Ryzen processors, known as Ryzen 3000 for the mainstream desktop chips, Ryzen 4000U/H and Ryzen 5000U for mobile applications, as Threadripper 3000 for high-end desktop systems, and as Ryzen 4000G for accelerated processing units (APUs). The Ryzen 3000 series CPUs were released on 7 July 2019, while the Zen 2-based Epyc server CPUs were released on 7 August 2019. An additional chip, the Ryzen 9 3950X, was released in November 2019.
Ryzen is a brand of multi-core x86-64 microprocessors designed and marketed by Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) for desktop, mobile, server, and embedded platforms based on the Zen microarchitecture. It consists of central processing units (CPUs) marketed for mainstream, enthusiast, server, and workstation segments and accelerated processing units (APUs) marketed for mainstream and entry-level segments and embedded systems applications.
Epyc is a brand of multi-core x86-64 microprocessors designed and sold by AMD, based on the company's Zen microarchitecture. Introduced in June 2017, they are specifically targeted for the server and embedded system markets.