MPU analyst returns to research with ARC

MPU analyst returns to research with ARC
By Peter Clarke, EE Times
July 21, 2000 (4:58 p.m. EST)
URL: http://www.eetimes.com/story/OEG20000721S0034

LONDON — Keith Diefendorff, formerly senior analyst with Cahners MicroDesign Resources and editor-in-chief of the Microprocessor Report newsletter, has been recruited as vice president of research at ARC Cores Ltd. (Elstree, England), a developer of processor intellectual property.

Diefendorff, an engineer with a background in processor architecture development, will be based in San Jose, Calif. He has been given the task of building a U.S. research and development group for ARC and has been made responsible for "blue sky" work at ARC.

Jim Turley, vice president of marketing at ARC, denied that Diefendorff had been hired specifically to develop a follow-up generation of the ARC configurable RISC architecture.

"It's not like we've dropped a particular project in Keith's lap. We've given Keith a very open job description. He gets to choose what he wants to do and how many people he wants to do it," said Turley.

In the late '80s, Di efendorff was chief architect of the Motorola 88110 and went on in the early '90s to serve as Motorola's chief PowerPC architect. In the late '90s, prior to joining MicroDesign Resources, Diefendorff directed all of Apple's microprocessor efforts and was the architect of the Altivec multimedia-instruction-set extension to the PowerPC architecture.