The god himself who was to singlehandedly to save AMD with Zen and K12?
Says a lot about those products.
... Ugh.
Ignoring comments from Intel investors/shills, I wonder what this means for the future of the company and the industry.
The god himself who was to singlehandedly to save AMD with Zen and K12?
Says a lot about those products.
His role as chief architect on Zen would have been over about two years ago. What was he doing all this time?
Lol. If this was planned there would have been a succession plan in a press release.
Are there any statements from him like "I love AMD, they are on a great course and now is the right time to try something new"? Of course there isn't, because when you are terminated without notice there isn't time.
Lol. If this was planned there would have been a succession plan in a press release.
Are there any statements from him like "I love AMD, they are on a great course and now is the right time to try something new"? Of course there isn't, because when you are terminated without notice there isn't time.
Maybe the Zen APU...His role as chief architect on Zen would have been over about two years ago. What was he doing all this time?
Well he was only at AMD for 1 year from 1998-1999 where he created K8 and X86-64 ISA.
This time he was at AMD for 3 full years from 2012-2015. AMD also had to assure the investors that this in no way affects their roadmap for 2016.
I'm confident Zen will deliver its promised 40% IPC improvements and keep AMD piggybacking off of Intel in the x86 CPU market.
Would 40% IPC improvements at 2.5GHz - 3GHz really make AMD competitive in desktops?
It would be odd if the decision was in any way related to Zen. You don't fire chief architects on the basis of timeline slips or failure to meet performance targets with first silicon samples. So I really doubt this change is an indicator of Zen's performance or timeline.
yeah planned departures are communicated well in advance. I would say 3-6 months. In cases of planned departures the leaving executive also assists in finding his replacement. The general notice period even in lower job profiles at big companies is 3 months.If Keller's departure was planned and executed by Keller of his own volition then it would have been communicated to management well in advance of today. In this industry, anyone in an org chart position at Keller's level would have communicated to his chain of command his intentions of leaving the company at least 4-6 weeks in advance. Anything less would be absolutely unprofessional by any measure of a business standard.
The fact that AMD had little option but to fill the vacant with the CTO, versus taking the opportunity to promote one of Keller's direct-reports in advance of Keller's departure says a lot.
Everything here points to this being a top-down decision. The decision makers could not coordinate the promotion of Keller's subordinate in advance of communicating to Keller that he was about to be departing the company, businesses cannot and do not function that way for a good reason.
So I'm with Phynaz on this one. I doubt Keller knew he was leaving the company when he woke up that morning. It was probably just as much news to him as it was to the rest of his organization. But it probably was not news to Mark Papermaster or Lisa Su as they were probably involved in the decision to boot Keller.
The question to ask is why was Keller booted? It could range from something professionally egregious to simple insubordination or an act of defiance that was grounds for immediate termination (which never happens at that level of management, but he would be told he either resigns on the spot or will be terminated thereafter).
It would be odd if the decision was in any way related to Zen. You don't fire chief architects on the basis of timeline slips or failure to meet performance targets with first silicon samples. So I really doubt this change is an indicator of Zen's performance or timeline.
But, had Keller decided to quit, he'd have given AMD his 4 or 6 week notice (it is not a 2 week notice at his level in the org chart) and the press release itself would have noted that Keller was staying on for a period of time to assist in the transition from himself to whoever was being appointed to the position.
If he really did just up and quit the company cold turkey with no advance notice, well that scenario would then say very dark things about AMD (in which case, questions about Zen would then become germane to his departure).
Would 40% IPC improvements at 2.5GHz - 3GHz really make AMD competitive in desktops?
"Jims departure is not expected to impact our public product or technology roadmaps, and we remain on track for Zen sampling in 2016 with first full year of revenue in 2017."
40% on 8 or more cores? yes.
The lesson we all learnt from Bulldozer is never take anything what AMD says seriously. Doubt them and believe only the final product when reviewed by the tech press. Here the situation is so bad that we have to doubt if AMD will even be around as a company to ship Zen.
Summit Ridge goes up only to 8 cores. I think it will be handily outclassed by Skylake-E, which I think will clock better, deliver more perf/clock, include more cores and have more robust integrated I/O (Summit Ridge has PCIe Gen 3 x16 only). If Zen is anywhere near half decent, Intel should be able to price Skylake-E in such a way to win the perf crown.
Perf crown does not matter much for cpus. It's price/performance.
This news has no real bearing in Amd at all.
what would be strange is if he stayed much longer
Ehh... I don't really think so... Keller tends to come and go for major, breakthrough designs, and then leave one the chip's been taped out. I mean he left after the (breakthrough) K7/Athlon, but AMD rode on with the evolutionary K8.Yeah, cuz the last thing AMD would have wanted is to retain their top-notch CPU architect to create an even more superior CPU to that of Zen for post-2017 sales. :|
That kind of thinking on AMD's (or Keller's) part would have just been strange...