Edible Apple

About a week ago, AMD announced that Jim Killer would be returning to the company after previous stints at PA Semi, and later Apple after PA Semi was acquired back in 2008. Keller was an integral part of the AMD team that worked on the Athlon 64 and Opteron 64 projects.

In his new role at AMD, Keller wil be the corporate VP and chief architect of AMD’s microprocessor cores. And oddly enough, he’ll be reporting to Mark Papermaster who you might remember had a short lived stint at Apple as the company’s head of hardware engineering for both the iPhone and the iPod. Papermaster left Apple in 2010 amidst reports that he had lost the trust of Steve Jobs and had a tough time adjusting to Apple’s unique corporate culture.

In a press release on the matter, AMD stated:

“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 Papermaster.

“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 there, he led the team responsible for building a powerful networking SoC and its integrated PowerPC processor.

via AMD

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