Jim Keller joined
DEC in 1982 and worked there until 1998, where he was involved in designing a number of processors, including the
VAX 8800,[1] the
Alpha 21164 and the
Alpha 21264 processors.[3][4] Prior to DEC, he had worked at
Harris Corporation on microprocessor boards.[1] In 1998 he moved to AMD, where he worked to launch the AMD
Athlon (K7) processor and was the lead architect of the
AMD K8 microarchitecture,[17] which also included designing the x86-64 instruction set and HyperTransport interconnect, mainly used for
multiprocessor communications.[3]
In 1999 he left AMD to work at SiByte to design
MIPS-based processors for 1 Gbit/s network interfaces and other devices.[4][12][18] In November 2000 SiByte was acquired by
Broadcom,[19] where he continued as chief architect[9] until 2004.[3]
In 2004 he moved to serve as the Vice President of Engineering at
P.A. Semi,[3][11] a company specializing in low-power mobile processors.[4] In early 2008 Keller moved to Apple. P.A. Semi was acquired by Apple shortly afterwards, reuniting Keller with his prior team from P.A. Semi.[6][17] The new team worked to design the Apple A4 and A5
system-on-a-chip mobile processors. These processors were used in several Apple products, including
iPhone 4,
4S,
iPad and
iPad 2.
In August 2012 Keller returned to AMD, where his primary task was to lead development of new generations of
x86-64 and
ARMmicroarchitectures called
Zen and
K12.[15][14] After years of being unable to compete with
Intel in the high-end
CPU market, AMD restored its ability to do just that with the new generation of Zen processors.[3][13] On September 18, 2015 Keller left AMD.[20]
In January 2016 Keller joined
Tesla, Inc. as Vice President of Autopilot Hardware Engineering.[21]
In April 2018 Keller joined
Intel, where he served as Senior Vice President.[21][22][23] He resigned from Intel in June 2020, officially citing personal reasons,[24] though a later report said his departure was catalyzed by a dispute about whether the company should outsource more of its production.[25]
Keller joined
AI chip startup
Tenstorrent as CTO in December 2020[26] and became its CEO in January 2023.[27]
In 2023 Keller and
Sam Zeloof founded Atomic Semi, a foundry that aimed to design and manufacture low-cost fabrication equipment.[28]
Personal life
Jim Keller's wife Bonnie[29] is the sister of Canadian author and clinical psychologist
Jordan Peterson.[30]