
Apple's CPU lead Jim Keller heads back to AMD - neya
http://venturebeat.com/2012/08/01/apple-cpu-jim-keller-amd/
======
georgespencer
A few points of interest here which Venture Beat have skipped:

1\. Keller's company, PA, was bought by Apple mainly for its engineering
talent. Getting Keller was a huge deal for Apple.

2\. Keller has been hired away by Mark Papermaster, who was a disaster at
Apple (all of Bob Mansfield's reservations about him from the internal email
discussed in IBM v. Papermaster came true: cultural, pace of development,
etc.).

I would anticipate an outside hire from Apple to fill his shoes in the next
6-9 months.

~~~
kenjackson
Why was Papermaster a disaster at Apple? I've never really heard why. The only
thing I've ever heard was that Jobs lost confidence him in, and it was during
antennaegate, but it was never clear if he played any role in it.

~~~
bishnu
Whether or not it was his fault, Jobs blamed Papermaster for antennagate [1].
Papermaster was also there during the white iPhone shipping delay which may
have played a factor.

[1] <http://daringfireball.net/linked/2010/08/07/papermaster>

~~~
slurgfest
I would be interested to hear if Jobs blamed himself for anything.

~~~
kbutler
He blamed himself for hiring John Sculley:

"When the sales guys run the company, the product guys don't matter so much,
and a lot of them just turn off. It happened at Apple when [John] Sculley came
in, which was my fault, and it happened when [Steve] Ballmer took over at
Microsoft."

------
JVIDEL
The early days of the K8 were awesome, the FX would kill whatever Intel threw
at AMD, it was brutal. Even cheap Athlons were better than highend Pentiums,
and prescott? a disaster, plain and simple.

Is ironic that AMD hired Keller since Intel too found it's way out of the
Netburst fiasco by going back to Tualatin, which at the same time had more in
common with the good old Pentium Pro than it did with coppermine and katmai.

~~~
DeepDuh
Didn't Intel base Core Duo on their Israel branch' Pentium M design? I don't
remember too much about the architecture codenames but were they similar to
Pentium Pro?

~~~
nl
Yes.

 _The Core microarchitecture was designed by Israel's Intel Israel (IDC) team
that previously designed the Pentium M mobile processor_ [1]

The Pentium III Tualatin (mentioned above) and the Pentium M are closely
related.

[1] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_Core_(microarchitecture)>

------
cs702
In less than a week, we've had those 'genius' ads on TV that seem to insult
consumers' intelligence [1], and now the person who led CPU design for iOS
devices is leaving the company. These are not encouraging signs for Apple.

[1] [http://www.forbes.com/sites/roberthof/2012/07/30/viewers-
giv...](http://www.forbes.com/sites/roberthof/2012/07/30/viewers-give-apples-
genius-olympic-ads-a-d-for-dumb/)

~~~
avar
I don't work for Apple nor do I have any stake in them, but it can be really
frustrating when people make assumptions and conclusions about the company you
work for based on the limited information available to them as outsiders.

Do you really think that some silly advert made by the marketing department at
Apple has any relevance to whatever the reasons were for the head of CPU
design for iOS devices had for leaving?

Things might be changing for the worse inside Apple, but taking these two
datapoints and assuming that something big is going wrong in the company seems
to be a conclusion that isn't supported by the facts.

~~~
cs702
avar: I'm not making any assumptions that anything big is going wrong in the
company.

Falling short with national TV ads shown during the opening ceremony of the
Olympics is a big deal for a company that until recently showed mostly amazing
ads on TV. Losing a person who led CPU design for the company's fastest-
growing businesses is also a big deal for a company that considered having
that person a major coup.

Could you imagine either of these things -- lousy ads on a major TV event, key
person departing -- happening while Jobs was running the show?

\--

Edit: changed "only amazing" to "mostly amazing," which better reflects my
views.

~~~
furyofantares
The Mac vs PC ads were amazing? I found them unbearable

~~~
maximveksler
Yes they were. They were brilliant in creating a direct divide between the
"old" PC generation and the new hip Apple crowd.

Compare the message of PC vs. Mac to this message: "We have tools. Tools that
work. Oh, and you need a genius to use them right" ?

~~~
pjmlp
> We have tools. Tools that work

Not if it is XCode.

~~~
wsc981
What's wrong with Xcode? Seems fine for iOS / Mac OS X development. I surely
prefer it above Eclipse and it is in some ways also nicer as Visual Studio.

~~~
pjmlp
Keeps crashing all the time.

That is not a tool that "works".

~~~
wsc981
I can't say I share your experience. For my Xcode has been pretty stable,
though I will admit it's not a perfect product.

~~~
activepeanut
I use the latest Xcode day to day. Xcode is not the kind of tool you can push.
If you paint outside the lines, it'll crash.

------
rbanffy
I think this is good news, for both companies and for Jim Keller himself.

\- Apple's strength is not in its chips. It's in its software and tightly
integrated stack

\- It seems, from the outside, AMD needs an inspiring leader to give its
design teams a clearer goal.

\- I know first hand what it feels like when your work no longer lines up with
where your company is going. I wish him the best of luck on his new
challenges.

~~~
bluthru
>Apple's strength is not in its chips. It's in its software and tightly
integrated stack

Huh? Every time an iOS device is released, it usually is the industry leader
for mobile processors. Apple is huge and can be great at many things at once.

~~~
ajross
Apple doesn't design the CPUs, they license the IP (from ARM and Imagination
Technologies primarily) and put it on a SoC chip. The A5/A5X were
distinguished by the very large SGX cores, but that's not really an
engineering triumph -- it's just a bigger chip. Other manufacturers were first
with things like dual channel memory, PoP assembly, integrating the A8 and A9
(and SGX, for that matter) cores, etc...

SoC design at that level really that innovative. You take some IP, throw it
onto a floor plan and contract with a fab. Apple having their own designs is
more about optimizing their production chain than it is about driving
innovation.

~~~
koko775
> Apple doesn't design the CPUs, they license the IP

[citation needed]

I know someone who works on processor stuff at Apple. More detail would
obviously be bad for him, but they have digital design expertise which they
are actively using to design (presumably) their future generations of chips.

~~~
Aloisius
Apple's mobile chips are just systems-on-a-chip packages of ARM and PowerVR
chips that are then fabricated by Samsung. Apple has nowhere near the
engineering capability to design a full CPU from scratch.

See: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_A4> or
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_A5>

~~~
wmf
_Apple has nowhere near the engineering capability to design a full CPU from
scratch._

They did after buying PA Semi, but after Agnilux and Keller they may not now.
In any case it appears they didn't use that talent that way.

------
chucknelson
With the anticipated "the downfall of Apple begins!" comments that will
accompany this story, I'm trying to fathom what the comments will be when Jony
Ive eventually leaves...

~~~
joeguilmette
The dream will be dead with Jony Ive leaves.

~~~
jpxxx
And then the 20,000 employees of Apple corporate will walk around in a daze
and then collapse to the floor and curl up and die because obviously they
couldn't possibly understand what makes Apple special or be a part of how it
works or be a critical factor in the success of the most successful consumer
electronics business of all time.

~~~
mkramlich
I understand your point, but actual work experience at large companies
suggests to me that regardless of whether you have talented soldiers in your
company, if the very top folks are mediocre or fragmented or demoralizing then
it can cause the entire company to perform at a worse level, and to degrade
over time. Bad decisions flow downhill.

------
wtvanhest
Its just as likely that Apple has decided to use Intel's chip line (which no
one has any idea what it is) 2 years from now and no longer needs Jim Keller
than it is to assume that Jim Keller was "poached" by AMD.

The iPhone 5, might be the last phone with custom Apple chips.

~~~
twoodfin
That seems extremely unlikely. Even if Intel could produce a performance/power
competitive product in that timeframe, they're likely never going to give
Apple the influence over its SoC designs that they can currently exert over
their ARM partners.

It's more likely that Apple has and is satisfied with a 3-4 year roadmap for
the A* line that looked pretty boring to Keller, and the AMD job appeared much
more interesting (and potentially much more lucrative).

~~~
wtvanhest
I'm curious, why would Intel need to give Apple any influence over their SoC
designs?

All phones are basically moving toward the exact same shape and size.

~~~
wmf
Apple's "custom" A4 appears to be a Samsung SoC with features that Apple
doesn't need _removed_ to reduce cost. And the A5X has a bigger GPU (MP4) than
any other SoC. I would expect A6 to maintain some difference from off-the-
shelf SoCs.

~~~
wtvanhest
What does that have to do with future designs though? I'm under the assumption
that the roadmap is 18 to 24 months out.

In that time frame, they could have already selected a future Intel SoC.

Why would they need to continue upgrading the hardware at this point? It seems
like a useless effort given that they have a software technology advantage and
marketing brand advantage.

~~~
twoodfin
_Why would they need to continue upgrading the hardware at this point?_

I'm not sure what you're asking. Apple has demonstrated time and again that
their strategy depends on offering the best possible technology at desirable
price points. Consumers don't care about MHz the way they used to, but they
know the difference between a fast and slow UI, and they care about the
features and battery life that are dependent on an ever more powerful and
efficient SoC.

Intel, as much as they might want to please Apple and know what a coup it
would be to be inside the iPhone and iPad, is only one company, and one with a
history of engineering pride, sometimes to their detriment (see Itanium[1]).
Apple would have to be sure that Intel would respond to whatever crazy demands
their engineers come up with, and right now a bunch of scrappy ARM vendors
seem much more likely to do that. If one fails Apple, they can hire another
one for the next device. Worst case scenario: they can buy one. If Intel stops
playing ball, they'd be stuck with another painful ISA transition. They've
gotten better at those but they're not free.

Apple's seen what happens when a supplier roadmap (Motorola/IBM's PPC) goes
out of alignment with theirs. Even if Intel produced a product at parity with
the best ARMs, a competitive ARM market (albeit one currently dominated by
Samsung) serves Apple better than a single source.

EDIT: [1] I should mention that Itanium was actually fairly effective for
Intel at clearing the field of several major "enterprise" architectural
competitors, disaster though it was as a real product. But surely they would
have been happier if it had actually been a success instead of a multibillion
dollar embarrassment.

------
cicloid
And now, finally, we shall expect lower energy consumption of AMD
processors...

~~~
mtgx
Unless AMD wants him to work on ARM chips. AMD may be secretly building ARM
chips.

~~~
drp4929
[http://www.amd.com/us/press-releases/Pages/amd-
strengthens-s...](http://www.amd.com/us/press-releases/Pages/amd-strengthens-
security-2012jun13.aspx)

~~~
mtgx
I know about that, but that doesn't really count. I want to see if they are
really going to make an ARM chip like Samsung or Nvidia, and start selling it
to phone manufacturers.

------
DigitalSea
All signs are pointing to a dramatic shift in Apple, whether it's for the best
or worse has yet to be determined. What goes up must come down and the
departure of Jim Keller who is a engineering genius is a massive blow to
Apple. Seems like whatever energy/sales secret weapons Steve Jobs had stored
away in R&D labs is running dry and now we're starting to really see the
effects of a post-Jobs led company.

I would keep an eye on the Apple share price over the next few weeks, I have
an inkling that something is going to change regardless of how much money they
have in the bank.

------
Zenst
If you look ar ARM cpu's as bits of lego, sure you can use this brick or that
brick to make your CPU, but it's still made out of standard bricks.

Given that it may be understandable for Keller to move onto something more of
a challange for a person who likes to design the bricks.

Apple don't need to make there own add on's, they pick what they want and what
they don't want/need and in that the level of skills needed to assemble those
parts onto a workable CPU is at a level were you don't leverage the skill set
that Keller has as much as you could.

I can understand Apples needs and what they don't need and in that it is non
impacting to Apple and probably a good move for Keller.

To read anything else into this story is clutching at the speculation stick
and has no grounding.

------
powerslave12r
Can someone explain how there aren't any issues with Non-competition clauses
for this move?

Is it simply a case of 'maybe he never signed a NCC?'

~~~
spamizbad
Non-competes are invalid in California for non-equity stake holders.

This is a feature, not a bug in California's laws. I wish my state would adopt
a similar view.

------
Shorel
Easy: Bring back the WoZ.

