Close
  • Latest News
  • Cybersecurity
  • Big Data and Analytics
  • Cloud
  • Mobile
  • Networking
  • Storage
  • Applications
  • IT Management
  • Small Business
  • Development
  • Database
  • Servers
  • Android
  • Apple
  • Innovation
  • Blogs
  • PC Hardware
  • Reviews
  • Search Engines
  • Virtualization
Read Down
Sign in
Close
Welcome!Log into your account
Forgot your password?
Read Down
Password recovery
Recover your password
Close
Search
Menu
Search
  • Latest News
  • Cybersecurity
  • Big Data and Analytics
  • Cloud
  • Mobile
  • Networking
  • Storage
  • Applications
  • IT Management
  • Small Business
  • Development
  • Database
  • Servers
  • Android
  • Apple
  • Innovation
  • Blogs
  • PC Hardware
  • Reviews
  • Search Engines
  • Virtualization
More
    Home Blogs First Read
    • Blogs
    • First Read

    Ex-AMD, Apple CPU Architect Keller Heads to Tesla

    By
    Jeff Burt
    -
    February 1, 2016
    Share
    Facebook
    Twitter
    Linkedin
      CPU architect

      The key architect behind some of the more successful processors for Advanced Micro Devices and Apple will now head up the self-driving automobile efforts at electric car maker Tesla.

      Jim Keller, who left AMD in September 2015 after his second stint at the chip vendor, will be vice president of Tesla’s Autopilot Hardware Engineering unit, according to the car company. According to a statement put out by Tesla officials, “Jim will bring together the best internal and external hardware technologies to develop the safest, most advanced autopilot systems in the world.”

      Self-driving cars require a lot of processing power, which fuels the need for greater energy efficiency in their designs. Tesla currently uses Nvidia’s ARM-based Tesla systems-on-a-chip (SoCs) for its in-car systems, and the chip maker has made such emerging market segments as machine learning and self-driving cars a priority for its SoCs and its GPUs.

      A growing number of tech companies and automakers are putting a lot of effort behind self-driving cars.

      Keller was a driving force behind some of AMD’s most successful efforts during his two tenures with the company. In the late 1990s, he helped develop the K7 and K8 Athlon architectures and the 64-bit x86 chips, which were introduced with the company’s first Opteron server processors in 2003 and helped grow AMD’s server market share to more than 20 percent. Opteron also forced Intel to push aside its Itanium initiative and bring 64-bit capabilities to its own x86-based Xeon chips.

      He left AMD for semiconductor maker P.A. Semi, which was later bought by Apple. While at Apple, he worked on the device maker’s A4 and A5 chips for iPhones and iPads. He returned to AMD in 2012, leading the development of the “Zen” CPU, a core design more than two years in the making that AMD officials say will play a key role in its future PC and server chips. It will support simultaneous multi-threading (SMT)—a technology similar to Intel’s Hyper-Threading—and DDR4 memory, and will feature a FinFET transistor design for the 14-nanometer chips.

      The Zen architecture will first appear in chips for desktop PCs later this year, and will ramp in servers in 2017, according to officials. Engineers at AMD already are working on the follow-on to Zen, which officials last year called “Zen+.” While losing Keller was a blow to AMD, officials said the bulk of the work for Zen had been completed by the time he left.

      AMD officials are banking on Zen to help the company become more competitive with larger rival Intel in the high-end PC and server markets.

      Avatar
      Jeff Burt
      Jeffrey Burt has been with eWEEK since 2000, covering an array of areas that includes servers, networking, PCs, processors, converged infrastructure, unified communications and the Internet of things.

      MOST POPULAR ARTICLES

      Android

      Samsung Galaxy XCover Pro: Durability for Tough...

      Chris Preimesberger - December 5, 2020 0
      Have you ever dropped your phone, winced and felt the pain as it hit the sidewalk? Either the screen splintered like a windshield being...
      Read more
      Cloud

      Why Data Security Will Face Even Harsher...

      Chris Preimesberger - December 1, 2020 0
      Who would know more about details of the hacking process than an actual former career hacker? And who wants to understand all they can...
      Read more
      Cybersecurity

      How Veritas Is Shining a Light Into...

      eWEEK EDITORS - September 25, 2020 0
      Protecting data has always been one of the most important tasks in all of IT, yet as more companies become data companies at the...
      Read more
      Big Data and Analytics

      How NVIDIA A100 Station Brings Data Center...

      Zeus Kerravala - November 18, 2020 0
      There’s little debate that graphics processor unit manufacturer NVIDIA is the de facto standard when it comes to providing silicon to power machine learning...
      Read more
      Apple

      Why iPhone 12 Pro Makes Sense for...

      Wayne Rash - November 26, 2020 0
      If you’ve been watching the Apple commercials for the past three weeks, you already know what the company thinks will happen if you buy...
      Read more
      eWeek


      Contact Us | About | Sitemap

      Facebook
      Linkedin
      RSS
      Twitter
      Youtube

      Property of TechnologyAdvice.
      Terms of Service | Privacy Notice | Advertise | California - Do Not Sell My Information

      © 2021 TechnologyAdvice. All Rights Reserved

      Advertiser Disclosure: Some of the products that appear on this site are from companies from which TechnologyAdvice receives compensation. This compensation may impact how and where products appear on this site including, for example, the order in which they appear. TechnologyAdvice does not include all companies or all types of products available in the marketplace.

      ×