AMD Loses Processor Veteran

Keller's departure won't delay Zen
Rick Merritt
9/18/2015 05:00 PM EDT

SAN JOSE, Calif. – Advanced Micro Devices Inc. said its product and technology road maps won’t be impacted by the departure today (Sept. 18) of Jim Keller. The veteran microprocessor designer led the effort to design AMD’s next-generation x86 core called Zen, a 64-bit custom ARM core and SoCs based on them.

Mark Papermaster, the company’s chief technologist and another veteran processor designer, has become the acting leader of Keller’s team. “We remain on track for Zen availability in 2016 with first full year of revenue in 2017,” said an AMD spokesman.

The news comes at challenging time when the PC market is on the decline. AMD and others hope the combination of their latest products and Windows 10 breathe new life into it.

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