14 DAY TRIAL // In a surprise move and without any detailed explanation, AMD has allowed Jim Keller, a legendary microprocessor architect, to leave the company effective immediately. Not to scare stockholders, AMD has announced that his departure will not have any effect on products spanning on the next several years, but it will affect products coming on the company’s long-term roadmap.
Apparently, the main reason Jim supposedly left the company was to “pursue other opportunities,” with no other details given. Jim originally came back to AMD in 2012, after working at P.A. Semi as Vice President of Engineering while specializing in low-power processors. After the company was acquired by Apple in 2008, he worked on developing the Apple A4 and A5 system-on-a-chip mobile processors, being included in products like iPhone 4, 4S, iPad and iPad 2.
He left Apple in 2012 and went to AMD to design the next-generation Zen microarchitecture, in order to finally beat Intel in the high-end CPU market and restore AMD’s position in the exclusivist x86-64 processor market segment. Apparently, Mark Papermaster, AMD’s chief technology officer, will be the intermediary leader of CPU architecture development group that was previously led by Mr. Keller.
The Zen architecture will follow the established roadmap
According to Hexus, who spoke with an AMD source, "Jim helped establish a strong leadership team that is well positioned for success as we enter the completion phase of the 'Zen' core and associated system IP and SoCs" and that AMD will "remain on track for 'Zen' sampling in 2016 with first full year of revenue in 2017." This means that all Zen iterations until 2018 are all completed to a certain degree and can be launched without any problems when they are scheduled.
If one looks at Jim Keller’s resume, one can see that he has never worked at a single company, whether it was AMD or Apple, for more than a couple of years, so probably, it was just a matter of time until he had to leave again.
However, although the Hexus source might be reliable, since a possible leave of Jim Keller makes sense, given that AMD has just passed through some very serious internal reconstruction while it is also enduring some tough times financially, there hasn't been any official response to this news, nor any statement of some sort, so it's better to take everything with the same proverbial pinch of salt.