AMD recruits Apple processor guru as chief chip architect

LONDON – Advanced Micro Devices Inc. (Sunnyvale, Calif.) has announced the appointment of Jim Keller as corporate vice president and chief architect for microprocessor cores reporting to CTO Mark Papermaster.

Keller is aged 53 but has broad experience. He has designed several generations of mobile processors for Apple and prior to that worked with Broadcom, AMD and prior to that spent time as a consulting engineer with Digital Equipment Corp. where he architected two generations of Alpha processors.

Keller has been asked to lead the microprocessor core design efforts with a focus on developing both high-performance and low-power processor cores that will be the foundation of AMD's future products.

"Jim is one of the most widely respected and sought-after innovators in the industry and a very strong addition to our engineering team," said senior vice president and CTO Papermaster, in a statement issued by AMD. "He has contributed to processing innovations that have delivered tremendous compute advances for millions of people all over the world, and we expect that his innovative spirit, low-power design expertise, creativity and drive for success will help us shape our future and fuel our growth."

Keller was most recently a director in the platform architecture group at Apple focusing on mobile products, where he architected several generations of mobile processors, including the chip families found in millions of Apple iPads, iPhones, iPods and Apple TVs. Prior to Apple, Keller was vice president of design for P.A. Semi, a fabless semiconductor design firm specializing in low-power mobile processors that was acquired by Apple in 2008.


While at P.A. Semi, he led the team responsible for building a powerful networking system-on-chip and its integrated PowerPC processor.

Keller previously worked at SiByte and Broadcom as chief architect for a line of scalable, MIPS-based network processors. Prior to working at Broadcom he spent several years at AMD, playing an instrumental role on the design team responsible for Athlon and Opteron processors, which featured the world's first native x86-64 bit architecture. In addition Keller co-authored the widely adopted HyperTransport specification, as well as the x86-64 processor instruction set.

Keller holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Electrical Engineering from Penn State University.


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