As the saying goes, “it’s not what you know, but who you know.” But in the technology industry, it’s really WHAT you know that matters most. Simply put: the best brains win. The importance of our strong engineering teams around the world and the talent they deliver to the business simply cannot be overstated. AMD has always made it a top priority to attract the best brains: engineering innovators bent on pushing the boundaries of what’s possible, and giving them the freedom to do just that. It’s that kind of mentality that’s kept us competitive in a tough business when so many others have tried – and failed – over the years.
With such a massive shift in our industry underway – namely the transition of growth from traditional PCs to more cloud-based mobile device computing – we thought it was important to tell you that some of the very best brains in the world have recently joined (and in some cases returned to) AMD. Why? Because these big, impressive brains believe in AMD’s business strategy, and believe in our already-strong nucleus of differentiated IP in graphics, client and server.
These are some of the very same people responsible for the world’s most popular tablets, smart phones, MP3 players and other mobile devices because they in-part architected them and the experiences they deliver. They are all distinguished innovators whose work had a major impact on x86 64-bit computing as well as low-power ARM-based mobile processing. And they now work for AMD.
As I mentioned, several of these innovators are former AMDers, so in a way you can say that AMD is “getting the band back together.” To carry that metaphor forward, we believe our engineering teams are poised to churn out a steady stream of hits for years to come.
Yesterday we announced the return of Raja Koduri to AMD as our corporate vice president of Visual Computing. Raja re-joins AMD from Apple, where he led the company’s graphics architecture. He is an accomplished engineering leader and notable graphics industry visionary. Formerly the graphics CTO for AMD, Raja now has overall responsibility for driving AMD’s innovation in visual and accelerated computing. With 20 years of hands-on experience advancing visual computing, from application software programming to GPU design, he has led engineering teams focused on graphics hardware, graphics software, parallel languages and power management.
Raja is a perfect complement to other recent, notable hires Jim Keller, Wayne Meretsky and Charles Matar as we round-out our engineering leadership team; a team stacked with both deep AMD and external experience. While we’re excited and fortunate to have world-class brains like Raja, Wayne, Jim and Charles coming to work at AMD because of the opportunity we have to disrupt the market, let’s also give thanks and credit to every one of the thousands of brilliant engineering minds working very hard all over the world to push the boundaries of what’s possible and bring AMD products to life. We hope you’re as excited as we are about what the future holds not just for our business, but for innovation itself and the impact our innovations can have on billions of peoples’ lives all over the world.
Mike Silverman is a Senior Manager in Corporate Communications at AMD. His postings are his own opinions and may not represent AMD’s positions, strategies or opinions. Links to third party sites, and references to third party trademarks, are provided for convenience and illustrative purposes only. Unless explicitly stated, AMD is not responsible for the contents of such links, and no third party endorsement of AMD or any of its products is implied.