Legendary CPU architect Jim Keller leaves AMD

[humbug]

I hope zen does well humbug, my introduction to pc gaming was on s939 A64. 4000 kab1e san diego chip, didnt know how to overclock back then. But it was a very fast chip at stock. Ive actually kept it, hadnt got the heart to sell it as it was my first ever self bought cpu. Unfortunately intel brought out the c2d range, then the quads of which i owned several. And tbh ive owned every intel quad chip since, ivy i5 and i7, haswellm devils canyon and not to mention several bloomfield i7 900 series. Now on an X99 5820k setup, mostly out of boredom with cpu's. I fancied something different. But i would love to see amd offer a good alternative to intel.

My first AMD CPU was an Athlon 3200+, this after a disastrous experience with a P4 HT 3.2Ghz, after that i had the first of the 64Bit CPU's which was AMD and then the first dual core CPU again a fist in the main for AMD...

I have always thought of AMD as the innovators with Intel as the establishment stuck in a rut and making a killing purely for their name sake while the underdog was doing all the work.

The last really good CPU from AMD was the Thuban, i had one, a 1090T but at that point Intel put AMD back in their box with the i7 920 ect.... i had one of those too and liked it, the first Intel CPU i had that i kept long term.

Obviously i now have Vishera, its not as good as an Intel CPU on many levels, i know that, i agree but in my opinion and i guess experience its still a good CPU in its own right, i think all the negativity around it is over blown.

I have a lot of respect for AMD, and Intel, they have good reason to be respected, but sadly the underdog just cannot even sustain themselves any longer with the Intel leviathan chewing them up.

As for competition, look at Intel's prices, they are charging <£350 for an 8 thread CPU just because they can and there is no one to reign them in.

This game isn't what it used to be, tribalism is vicious these days, insane even.... and PC tek its boring, there is no innovation, there is never anything new there is no future to look to, all we have to look to is 3% increments of more of the same and 20% price hikes with each boring piece of the same old crap.

Its really sad.

 

[setter]

It is indeed sad mate, as i mentioned. After bloomfield, (and i still have a 930) intel's cpu range has stagnated because they are basically competing with their last generation. My spec in sig is a dead platform as my board is Z87. Albeit with the latest haswell i7 cpu. But, no more upgrade path. Hence i bought an X99 bundle, 5820k, mobo, 16gb of 3000mhz ram and a 128gb pcie ssd for a pretty good price of £400.00.

Intels pricing on the 6700k is crazy, it's not much faster than the 4790k it replaces, 4.5 on a 6700k equates to 4.7 on a 4790k which is pretty much standard for the 4790k. Sure you get faster dual channel ddr4 support. Which outside of benchmarks is as useful as an ashtray on a motorbike.

But, i still gotta say. The s939 A64 cpu's were fantastic, yes bloomfield were pretty stunning performance wise. But a pretty hot chip, i had two systems. One with a 920 and still have the 930 one. They need a very good cooler. As for ivybridge and haswell, theese can get dangerously high under certain conditions even on the highest end watercooling. Unless you delid so bang goes the warranty.

 

[drunkenmaster]

No idea if it's good or bad. He has a general history of moving on every 4-5 years. He really does seem to join up somewhere, design a new architecture then go somewhere to work on a new one.

His thing is making a new architecture almost from scratch, the iterations of said architecture, the year on year improvements he doesn't stick around for.

Worked at DEC making chips, he was only at AMD originally for 2 years, 1998 he basically worked more on K8 than K7, left. Spent 4 years at Broadcom, spent 4 years at another company I've never heard of. Apple from 2008-2012 where he was one of the biggest people behind Apple's line of CPUs. 2012 to AMD to work on Zen. Zen is finished and he moves on to probably another new chip somewhere else.


I mean, do Apple's SOCs suck because he left? He's more chip architect for hire than company running exec which I think I'd be in his position. Rather than get involved in politics and moving up, he just moves from the one interesting project to another leaving the politics and the updates to others.

Could entirely be because he hated AMD, or Zen sucked. Though he was the lead architect on Zen and AMD had no reason to really fight him on it as they know what he brings and what they need.

 

[h4rm0ny]

Im sure like any form of work, he will go where the money is. It's human nature. Im a painter and decorator, and pretty good at it. When a better paying opportunity comes up, better working conditions etc. You take it. Same in any industry. Good luck to the guy. Obviously he has seen a nice new opening somewhere else. He's no different from any other worker.

I don't think that's accurate. That's the behaviour of someone who doesn't make sufficient money to buy everything they want. Once you get past that point then some people don't know what else to do but carry on trying to earn more but a lot of people decide to focus on quality of life and enjoyment in what they're doing rather than prioritize even more money. Jim Keller is one of the leading people in his field - he is likely to have enough income to live a quite luxurious life wherever he chooses to work. So his priorities may be different.

And even if he didn't earn a very high salary, he still may not base everything around money. To go with your painting and decorating analogy, there is a difference between painting and decorating and an artist. The former tend to be focused around work that pays well. The latter are very often all about work that is interesting to them.

 

[Sumanji]

The former tend to be focused around work that pays well. The latter are very often all about work that is interesting to them.

Nailed it.

 

[Aretak]

They did pretty well to keep him for three years really, considering he's one of the most in-demand names in the industry. Zen has to be pretty much done at this point. I doubt a man like Jim Keller has spent three years sitting around twiddling his thumbs. I guess we'll see how competitive it is next year. It'd be great to have AMD back on par with Intel.

 

[Martini1991]

My first AMD CPU was an Athlon 3200+, this after a disastrous experience with a P4 HT 3.2Ghz, after that i had the first of the 64Bit CPU's which was AMD and then the first dual core CPU again a fist in the main for AMD...

I have always thought of AMD as the innovators with Intel as the establishment stuck in a rut and making a killing purely for their name sake while the underdog was doing all the work.

The last really good CPU from AMD was the Thuban, i had one, a 1090T but at that point Intel put AMD back in their box with the i7 920 ect.... i had one of those too and liked it, the first Intel CPU i had that i kept long term.

Obviously i now have Vishera, its not as good as an Intel CPU on many levels, i know that, i agree but in my opinion and i guess experience its still a good CPU in its own right, i think all the negativity around it is over blown.

I have a lot of respect for AMD, and Intel, they have good reason to be respected, but sadly the underdog just cannot even sustain themselves any longer with the Intel leviathan chewing them up.

As for competition, look at Intel's prices, they are charging <£350 for an 8 thread CPU just because they can and there is no one to reign them in.

This game isn't what it used to be, tribalism is vicious these days, insane even.... and PC tek its boring, there is no innovation, there is never anything new there is no future to look to, all we have to look to is 3% increments of more of the same and 20% price hikes with each boring piece of the same old crap.

Its really sad.

The i7 920 came out before the AMD Phenom II X4 940. AMD were in a box for a long time before the 1090T came out.

The 1090T was actually considered a surprise contender (In some workloads) to the i7 920 (Although, more because of dat 2.6GHZ clock)

 

[mmj_uk]

Jumping ship before his name is tarnished by Zen prehaps? I hope not as we all need AMD on their game in the next generation of CPU's

More like finding a secure job before AMD go under, which is what will happen if they don't turn things around.

 

[r7slayer]

Oh dear what a disaster!

AMD PR in damage control.

Deja Vu feelings all over again.

Ex CEO Dirk Meyer left AMD in 2011 after saw Bulldozer prototype first test tapeout was a disaster.

Ex CEO Rory Read left AMD in 2014 after saw Fuji tapeout with HBM prototype first test struggled to made many chips and it was as fast as GTX 980, it was very expensive disaster.

Jim Keller left today behind uncompleted Zen core design, he probably not happy with Zen first test run after tapeout. Now Mark Papermaster step in to help complete fixing Zen core design to get it ready for engineering samples in around 6 months time.

AMD damage control? I saw non until your troll attempt.
Most of what you said is opinion anyway. I'm not sure how you can call a product a disaster when its priced and performs the way it should. Only problem is that it was pinned up against intel and perhaps over hyped. But the chips are not priced up against intel they are much cheaper and make for great budget systems. Not a disaster at all. And fiji(fury x) is as fast as a 980 only you believe its slower than a 980.

Your just on for a good old green troll attempt. Go home troll go home

 

[GoogalyMoogaly]

AMD damage control? I saw non until your troll attempt.
Most of what you said is opinion anyway. I'm not sure how you can call a product a disaster when its priced and performs the way it should. Only problem is that it was pinned up against intel and perhaps over hyped. But the chips are not priced up against intel they are much cheaper and make for great budget systems. Not a disaster at all. And fiji(fury x) is as fast as a 980 only you believe its slower than a 980.

Your just on for a good old green troll attempt. Go home troll go home

Weren't the FX-9590s priced at ~£800 on launch? Did it perform like a £800 CPU? Intel's top CPUs were around the £800 range so in theory they were competing?

I've got a Phenom II 1055T and a FX-8350. They're both fine for most things, a few games might be CPU dependant and they struggle with them, but a for a lot of games (and admittedly I do play quite a few older games) they don't seem to cause any real issues.
For the CPU limited games and for things like video encoding they can't really keep up with my 4770K and 3930K, but for the price they do ok.

One thing I don't like about AMD CPUs (or the ones I have at least) is the rather low max temp threshold (now that I mention it, I'm not sure what the recommended max is for Piledriver) and the fact that the chips don't seem to accurately report their temperature which leads to a lot of confusion about which temperature to monitor and keep below the threshold.

 

[opethdisciple]

On the flip side, with this guy finally out the door, maybe someone new will come in and actually help AMD build a CPU that can close the gap on Intel.

If proof is in the pudding as they say then win win!

 

[Orangey]

On the flip side, with this guy finally out the door, maybe someone new will come in and actually help AMD build a CPU that can close the gap on Intel.

If proof is in the pudding as they say then win win!

Did you even read the thread?

 

[humbug]

On the flip side, with this guy finally out the door, maybe someone new will come in and actually help AMD build a CPU that can close the gap on Intel.

If proof is in the pudding as they say then win win!

Jim Keller is the man responsible for the Athlon XP, he then went to Apple and designed a bunch of the very good K series Mobile processors.

 

[Rroff]

On the flip side, with this guy finally out the door, maybe someone new will come in and actually help AMD build a CPU that can close the gap on Intel.

If proof is in the pudding as they say then win win!

Off the top of my head - though I can't find the links any more - I believe he was the author of a whitepaper that I mentioned before that described exactly how to make Steamroller competitive against Intel CPUs - which was all pretty much ignored in what Steamroller turned into. Its a big assumption on my part but maybe the same happened with Zen and this time he has walked.

(Or I could have the wrong end of the stick and its the opposite way around I don't remember specifics off the top of my head).

 

[Richdog]

We really need a third player to enter the desktop CPU market... it's getting a little sad now watching AMD gasping for their last breaths so often.

Zen isn't going to revolutionise anything (they are bringing the architecture in line with Intel) and will undoubtedly be slower than the Intel equivalents.

Maybe Samsung or some equivalent can buy them out and pump some money into the business to get them back on track.

 

[humbug]

Off the top of my head - though I can't find the links any more - I believe he was the author of a whitepaper that I mentioned before that described exactly how to make Steamroller competitive against Intel CPUs - which was all pretty much ignored in what Steamroller turned into. Its a big assumption on my part but maybe the same happened with Zen and this time he has walked.

He left for Apple before Phenom was released, i think that was his last CPU at AMD. the Bulldozer/Steamroller architect was sacked.

 

[Davedree]

On the flip side, with this guy finally out the door, maybe someone new will come in and actually help AMD build a CPU that can close the gap on Intel.

If proof is in the pudding as they say then win win!

 

[AthlonXP1800]

AMD damage control? I saw non until your troll attempt.
Most of what you said is opinion anyway. I'm not sure how you can call a product a disaster when its priced and performs the way it should. Only problem is that it was pinned up against intel and perhaps over hyped. But the chips are not priced up against intel they are much cheaper and make for great budget systems. Not a disaster at all. And fiji(fury x) is as fast as a 980 only you believe its slower than a 980.

Your just on for a good old green troll attempt. Go home troll go home

Yeah just like Nvidia did damage control after GTX 970 RAM fiasco.

Attempting to allay any fears over the impact of Keller's departure

This is AMD attempting damage control.

Yes bulldozer was absolutely disaster you can asked any AMD and Intel CPU owners and they will tell you the same I told you, bulldozer games performance was way far behind Intel and also much higher power consumption than Intel. This was the reason I switched to Intel Core i7 3770K from Phenom II X4 940 years ago after read Bulldozer reviews I was very disappointed in Bulldozer and lost all faiths in AMD. The CPU was great for cheap budget but very few people bought it, AMD CPU marketshare is struggled at 7.5% now while CPU business is not profitable.

You was wrong about Fiji, it not my opinion, it was Rory Read's opinion it performed very poorly weeks after tapeout and AMD R&D bought a GTX 980 and tested it in lab, GTX 980 was overclocker monster that very early alpha Fury driver cant catched up with it then Rory Read resigned, he really cant see AMD being profitable over the next 12 months with Fiji production issues and driver optimized so fast forward to now it turned out he was right. Fury X was original due to launched in March but AMD decided to delayed launch so they needed more time to optimized driver to matched or beaten Titan X performance.

I am not attempted trolled, you need to grow up and go home!

 

[Rroff]

He left for Apple before Phenom was released, i think that was his last CPU at AMD. the Bulldozer/Steamroller architect was sacked.

This is gonna bug me now as I half remember the details but I've lost my old bookmarks/don't have downloaded copies any more.

 

[humbug]

This is gonna bug me now as I half remember the details but I've lost my old bookmarks/don't have downloaded copies any more.

Yeah i don't know, you could be and probably are right.