Jim Keller,53, has joined AMd as corporate vice president and chief architect of AMD?s microprocessor cores.

In this role, Keller will lead AMD?s microprocessor core design efforts aligned with AMD?s strategy with a focus on developing both high-performance and low-power processor cores that will be the foundation of AMD's future products.

"Jim is one of the most widely respected and sought-after innovators in the industry and a very strong addition to our engineering team," said Mark Papermaster, chief technology officer and senior vice president of technology and engineering at AMD. "He has contributed to processing innovations that have delivered tremendous compute advances for millions of people all over the world, and we expect that his innovative spirit, low-power design expertise, creativity and drive for success will help us shape our future and fuel our growth."

Keller was most recently a director in the platform architecture group at Apple focusing on mobile products, where he architected several generations of mobile processors, including the chip families found in millions of Apple iPads, iPhones, iPods and Apple TVs. Prior to Apple, Keller was vice president of design for P.A. Semi, a fabless semiconductor design firm specializing in low-power mobile processors that was acquired by Apple in 2008. While there, he led the team responsible for building a powerful networking SoC and its integrated PowerPC processor. Keller previously worked at SiByte and Broadcom as chief architect for a line of scalable, MIPS-based network processors that supported 1Gig networking interfaces, PCI and other control functions. Before Broadcom, he spent several years at AMD, playing a role on the design team responsible for the AMD Athlon 64 and AMD Opteron 64 processors.

Keller also co-authored the HyperTransport specification, as well as the x86-64 processor instruction set, which is used around the world today in hundreds of millions of desktop, notebook and server systems.