Jim Keller Leaves Amd Zen In Trouble?

Jim Keller, one of the most successful CPU architect who was leading the development of AMD Zen, is leaving the Sunnyvale company before the new AMD microarchitecture is completed for Apple "looking for new opportunities."

Jim Keller is part of the history of AMD, from his hand came the Athlon K7 processors, the most successful of the Sunnyvale company. After leaving AMD in 2008 for Apple, he returned to AMD in 2012 and has since been working on the Zen microarchitecture that will succeed the unsuccessful Bulldozer.

Zen should be what restores competitiveness to AMD in the CPU market, it is said that it will mean a 40% increase in performance per clock cycle compared to Excavator, which could put AMD back in the fight alongside Intel in the CPU market. Zen will be present in future APUs (up to 4 cores) and upcoming processors (up to 10 cores) from AMD.

Now Zen receives a hard blow losing the man who can be considered his father, from AMD they warn that the Zen design is practically finished and that Keller's departure will not be a setback. Zen accumulates a delay of about 6 months and that could be the reason for Keller's departure from the company, which would mean that he could have been fired.

The new Zen-based microprocessors will start their mass production in the last quarter of 2016, so their arrival on the market could be delayed until 2017.

Source: extremetech