GPU Guru Raja Koduri Leaves Apple, Returns to AMD

Why did Apple hire two of AMD’s GPU CTOs, Raja Koduri and Bob Drebin, one after another back in 2009? Well, all you need to do is consider the impact of the work of these people. For Steve Jobs it was important to know that he has the best guys in the business.

But today, according to information obtained by Anandtech, Raja Koduri has put an end to his Apple era and returned to AMD, just to make history at the company: he returned to AMD as Corporate Vice President of Visual Computing, which means both GPU hardware and software are overseen by the same man.

“More immediately you’ll see bits and pieces of Raja’s influence emerge. Everything from hardware to drivers and developer relations now falls under Raja’s umbrella. Presumably, all should improve – with the latter two seeing impacts sooner than the 2 – 3 year timeframe it would take for us to see results in hardware. We recently spoke about AMD’s multi-GPU frame pacing issues and I wouldn’t be surprised if that’s one of the first bits of low hanging fruit that Raja gets his teams to address quickly.”

As Raja points out, he returned to a very different company. AMD became smaller, but more agile. With Raja heading both hardware/software/developer relations, the need company’s need for a great graphics and a great SoC seems to have a solution in sight. And Jim Keller, who was rehired by AMD last year after spending some time at Apple, is making sure AMD is in the best possible shape in terms of CPUs.

It will certainly take time to have the best GPU architecture/hardware possible in the industry, but Raja bets on a 2-3 year timeframe to realize this goal.