AMD's New (Old) Talent

[Sleepingforest]

There's been quite a shift in top-level talent in the past few months. Raja Koduri (GPU side at Apple), Jim Keller (CPU side from Apple), Charles Matar (from Qualcomm), and Wayne Meretsky (from Apple's SoC team). Intriguingly, they all previously worked at AMD, and have been rehired in significant leadership positions. AMD seems to be getting back some of the talent they've been bleeding (though four is a pretty paltry number to a 30% decrease since 2007 from 16300 to 11000).

When and where do you think we'll being seeing their influence? I think that AMD is putting this new talent towards APUs and the console space, but who knows?

 

[AnandThenMan]

The AMD APU and what ended up in the PS4 and Xbox are essentially the same. On the high end CPU stuff, AMD has no plans to shuttle their Opteron business, so we will continue to see high end desktop processors from them. So I would imagine "getting the band back together" is part of the motivation.

 

[ShintaiDK]

Why even this assumption about 1 man that will somehow radically change things?

 

[Abwx]

Why even this assumption about 1 man that will somehow radically change things?

How many men like you or me would be necessary
to produce the same insight that this one..?...

 

[AnandThenMan]

Why even this assumption about 1 man that will somehow radically change things?

You tell us, you're making said assumption.

 

[Sleepingforest]

I think that senior employees can make a huge difference, and it's not one man, it's four. If they weren't highly effective, why would they get paid so much?

I realized that four people won't change this on their own, but their presence is probably a motivator for even lower-level employees. I mean, they'd be working under legends within the industry. I think that this could be the beginning of a comeback. Or it could be the last futile grasp of a dying company.

 

[Arkadrel]

Why even this assumption about 1 man that will somehow radically change things?

How many men like you or me would be necessary
to produce the same insight that this one..?...

What does one man matter? even if their named Steve Jobs, Bill Gates ect.
Why not just hire 10 x avg joe's ? 10 > 1 right?


http://www.anandtech.com/show/6907/the-king-is-back-raja-koduri-leaves-apple-returns-to-amd

I remember back when AMD’s CTO of the Graphics Product Group, Raja Koduri, first quietly left the company for Apple. This was hot on the heels of Apple’s hiring of another AMD GPU CTO, Bob Drebin. At the time (2009) I didn’t understand why Apple would want so many smart graphics guys on staff, were they working on their own GPU? Mac OS X was hardly a gaming platform of choice back then so the idea didn’t make much sense to me. It turns out that Steve Jobs wanted to surround himself with the absolute best in the business. Today, the impact of the work of folks like Bob Drebin, Raja Koduri, Jim Keller and others is quite evident. Apple tends to ship some of the fastest GPU hardware in the mobile industry, and its work in bringing high-DPI displays to virtually all of its products is unparalleled.

Chief Technology Officer.... and today we have iPhones & iPads ect.


http://www.brightsideofnews.com/new...ri-leaves-the-company2c-goes-back-to-amd.aspx

Mr. Koduri was instrumental in the past, with ATI Technologies winning over the Xbox deal from Nvidia, as well as paving path to future business wins with Sony, Microsoft, Nintendo and so on.

AMD has consol wins.


Some names are bigger than others.
Haveing good leader ship, can mean alot.

I realized that four people won't change this on their own, but their presence is probably a motivator for even lower-level employees. I mean, they'd be working under legends within the industry. I think that this could be the beginning of a comeback. Or it could be the last futile grasp of a dying company.

^ so much this.
Sometimes 4 names even when you have like 12,000 working there, can make a diffence.

 

[AnandThenMan]

Leadership is incredibly important yes, S. Jobs took a soon to be dead company and made it the most successful corporation on Earth. But I'd say that kind of radical rise from the ashes is rare.

I don't think these guys coming back to AMD will make a radical difference, at least not in the short term. But looking forward to see how it plays out, it sucks that we'll probably have to wait a couple of years to truly see the impact if any.

 

[OS]

ex-employees often keep their ears close to the ground about their old stomping grounds, so this isn't something that happened overnight. If those guys are actually A players, it's generally good news they are all willing to come back.

I think equally telling though, is most of these guys are leaving Apple.

 

[Gikaseixas]

Read somewhere that the fruits of his work will arrive in 2015 and Keller's about the same time. It's encouraging to see the company hiring back the big guns

 

[krumme]

Making the right strategic technological decisions is crucial.

One man can do the difference here.

Wether Raja Koduri and Jim Keller will do that remains to be seen. People of that caliber is from another world. They have tons of IQ and creativity besides their knowledge and social competence. People in those position tend to be extemely gifted.

 

[frozentundra123456]

I think that senior employees can make a huge difference, and it's not one man, it's four. If they weren't highly effective, why would they get paid so much?

I realized that four people won't change this on their own, but their presence is probably a motivator for even lower-level employees. I mean, they'd be working under legends within the industry. I think that this could be the beginning of a comeback. Or it could be the last futile grasp of a dying company.

Being highly paid does not necessarily correlate with effectiveness!! There are plenty of examples of that, notably previous upper levels of AMD management.

That said, it is a good sign that AMD is hiring back seemingly talented executives, especially at least some with experience and expertise in the PC and discrete graphics area, rather than focusing totally on ARM and SoC designers. I hope this means that they intend to devote a lot of resources to the discrete cards as well as to APUs and low power devices.

 

[AnandThenMan]

I wonder what employee has been with AMD the longest, anyone know?

 

[Arkadrel]

I think equally telling though, is most of these guys are leaving Apple.

Apple is big.... even with Steve jobs gone, and the key people behinde some of its success gone, it wont just implode.

But yeah Apple has lost a few big names.

 

[Abwx]

I wonder what employee has been with AMD the longest, anyone know?

David Russinoff , the mathematecian verificator is there
for about 20 years or so.

http://www.russinoff.com/papers/srt8.pdf

 

[AnandThenMan]

Interesting thanks for posting that.

 

[Sleepingforest]

It says 17 at the end of the paper? I guess it could have been 3 years since he published (it makes a reference to papers from 2010 but no later).

 

[Abwx]

This was published in 2011 or so , it s the formalisation
and demonstration of the Radix8 divider and square root
extractions FPU algorithm that will be implemented
in Steamroller.

 

[iCyborg]

How do you know that's the longest?
I could be wrong, but I seem to remember that the new CFO was there 20 something years...

 

[AnandThenMan]

I don't think he's saying the longest, just interesting to see someone with the company for 20 years and what their capacity is.

 

[Olikan]

This was published in 2011 or so , it s the formalisation
and demonstration of the Radix8 divider and square root
extractions FPU algorithm that will be implemented
in Steamroller.

wonders me, if radix-8 still is on track

 

[Russinoff]

I've been at Intel since 1/12.

 

[galego]

There's been quite a shift in top-level talent in the past few months. Raja Koduri (GPU side at Apple), Jim Keller (CPU side from Apple), Charles Matar (from Qualcomm), and Wayne Meretsky (from Apple's SoC team). Intriguingly, they all previously worked at AMD, and have been rehired in significant leadership positions. AMD seems to be getting back some of the talent they've been bleeding (though four is a pretty paltry number to a 30% decrease since 2007 from 16300 to 11000).

When and where do you think we'll being seeing their influence? I think that AMD is putting this new talent towards APUs and the console space, but who knows?

AMD claims they are transforming into a gaming company, therefore consoles, servers, APUs, RAM, and CPU+GPU will be the main targets.

 

[Rvenger]

I've been at Intel since 1/12.

He is a Principal Engineer at Intel. This must be a real post.

 

[pm]

I would never underestimate the importance of one key person - or even a group of key people. In large organizations, or even small ones, a leader can mean the difference between success, or muddling through, or failure. It's not about how much they get paid - like I said this applies to first-tier managers as much as it applies to CEO's and presidents. I liken it to a bunch of people thrown into a boat in the middle of the ocean with a bunch of paddles. One guy taking charge and saying "we are going that way" and getting everyone to row in sequence has a huge affect on forward progress. It helps even more if that one guy takes turns at rowing too. You could see this at Apple, where before Steve Jobs returned, they were spiraling down but you can see it even at a kids soccer team when there's a really good coach.

As far as the original topic, I don't know any of these guys so I really have no comment