Sept. 17, 2025, Sept. 17, 2025 –
At SEMICON Taiwan 2025, the spotlight turned to Jim Keller, the legendary chip architect known for his work at Apple, AMD, and Tesla.
During his keynote, Jim Keller shared insights into the future of AI chips and made a major announcement: Tenstorrent, the United States-based startup where he serves as CEO, is opening a new office in Taiwan. The company is beginning to hire chip and software engineers locally. Jim Keller also expressed his intention to build stronger partnerships with Taiwan’s semiconductor supply chain.
The move quickly sparked industry buzz: What’s Keller’s strategy, and why is Tenstorrent betting on Taiwan?
Jim Keller earned the title of “chip legend” for a reason. At every critical phase of the semiconductor industry, he has been the person behind major breakthroughs, pushing the boundaries of what chips could do and helping to reshape the industry more than once.
In the 1990s, Jim Keller helped design the Alpha series of RISC microprocessors, which were considered the fastest processors in the world at the time. He later led the development of the Athlon (K7) architecture at AMD, positioning the company to challenge Intel head-on in performance for the first time. At the startup SiByte, he pioneered dual-core processor designs, a concept that quickly spread across the PC and server industries.
In 2008, after Apple acquired P.A. Semi, Jim Keller joined the company and led the development of the A4 and A5 chips. His work helped Apple reduce its reliance on external chip suppliers and gain greater control over its hardware. In 2012, he returned to AMD to lead the design of the Zen architecture, which launched in 2017 and marked a major comeback for the company.
Jim Keller then turned his focus to automotive AI, joining Tesla as Vice President of Autopilot Hardware. Within two years, he led the development of Tesla’s first custom-designed chip. After a brief stint at Intel in 2018, he joined the startup Tenstorrent in 2020, where he is now focused on developing next-generation chiplet-based processors...