Jim Keller has resigned from Intel

Intel has confirmed that Jim Keller, the renowned CPU architect, has left Intel, effective immediately, causing a significant shakeup to the company’s IP Engineering Group and other areas of the company.  

At this time, the exact reasoning for Keller’s departure is unknown, as Intel has cited “personal reasons” for his resignation. Keller joined Intel two years ago, after time with Tesla. Before that, Keller was one of the leading minds behind AMD’s Zen core architecture, a CPU design which has allowed the company to move from near bankruptcy to become one of the leaders of the x86 processor market. 

Keller will remain as a consultant for Intel for the next six months, after which he will have nothing to do with the company. Below are a list of managerial changes that Intel will be making as a result of Keller’s departure. This list suggests that Keller’s departure has been planned for some time.    

– Sundari Mitra, the former CEO and founder of NetSpeed Systems and the current leader of Intel’s Configurable Intellectual Property and Chassis Group, will lead a newly created IP Engineering Group focused on developing best-in-class IP.

– Gene Scuteri, an accomplished engineering leader in the semiconductor industry, will head the Xeon and Networking Engineering Group.

– Daaman Hejmadi will return to leading the Client Engineering Group focused on system-on-chip (SoC) execution and designing next-generation client, device and chipset products. Hejmadi has over two decades of experience leading teams delivering advanced SoCs both inside and outside of Intel.

– Navid Shahriari, an experienced Intel leader, will continue to lead the Manufacturing and Product Engineering Group, which is focused on delivering comprehensive pre-production test suites and component debug capabilities to enable high-quality, high-volume manufacturing.