Raja Koduri Leaves AMD To Head New Intel CVC Group

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Within 24 hours of Intel announcing the integration of Vega into the 8th Gen Intel Core processor, Raja Koduri, the Radeon Technologies Group SVP and Chief Architect, announced that he was leaving AMD. 24 hours later, Intel announced his appointment as the head of the new Intel CVC group that will focus on such products!

Confused? Let us summarise his recent moves…

Raja Koduri Leaves AMD, Possibly Heading To Intel

 

Summary : Raja Koduri Leaves AMD To Head Intel CVC Group

For those who don’t have details, here is a summary of the recent events leading to the announcement that Raja Koduri is leaving AMD, possibly heading to Intel.

13 September 2017
Raja Koduri began his sabbatical from AMD, with a target return date in December. In his absence, AMD CEO Dr. Lisa Su was in charge of the Radeon Technologies Group. The point also marked his two years in charge of the new Radeon Technologies Group.

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6 November 2017
Intel announced that the 8th Gen Intel Core processors with integrated Radeon graphics.

7 November 2017
Raja Koduri announced his departure from AMD. Rumours have it that he would be announcing a leading role in Intel shortly.
He also switched his Twitter handle, with his old account now called Fake Raja Koduri.

8 November 2017
Intel announced that Raja Koduri has been appointed as Intel Chief Architect and Senior Vice President of the newly-formed Intel Core and Visual Computing Group, and general management of “a new initiative to drive edge computing solutions”.

Suggested Reading : GFXChipTweeter Is Now RajaOnTheEdge

For those who want more details, the article continues…

 

Raja Koduri Takes A Sabbatical

On 13 September 2017, Fudzilla and Tweaktown reported that Raja Koduri was taking a sabbatical from the Radeon Technologies Group. This was right after they launched the AMD Radeon RX Vega graphics cards. This was the letter he sent to his team (as provided by PC Perspective.

Raja Koduri's Sabbatical Letter To The RTG Team

RTG Team,

You haven’t heard from me collectively in a while – a symptom not only of the whirlwind of launching Vega, but simply of the huge number of demands on my time since the formation of RTG. Looking back over this short period, it is an impressive view. We have delivered 6 straight quarters of double-digit growth in graphics, culminating in the launch of Vega and being back in high-performance. What we have done with Vega is unparalleled. We entered the high-end gaming, professional workstation and machine intelligence markets with Vega in a very short period of time. The demand for Vega (and Polaris!) is fantastic, and overall momentum for our graphics is strong.

Incredibly, we as AMD also managed to spectacularly re-enter the high-performance CPU segments this year. We are all exceptionally proud of Ryzen, Epyc and Threadripper. The computing world is not the same anymore and the whole world is cheering for AMD. Congratulations and thanks to those of you in RTG who helped see these products through. The market for high-performance computing is on an explosive growth trajectory driven by machine intelligence, visual cloud, blockchain and other exciting new workloads. Our vision of immersive and instinctive computing is within grasp. As we enter 2018, I will be shifting my focus more toward architecting and realizing this vision and rebalancing my operational responsibilities.

At the beginning of the year I warned that Vega would be hard. At the time, some folks didn’t believe me. Now many of you understand what I said. Vega was indeed hard on many, and my sincere heartfelt thanks to all of you who endured the Vega journey with me. Vega was personally hard on me as well and I used up a lot of family credits during this journey. I have decided to take a time-off in Q4 to spend time with my family. I have been contemplating this for a while now and there was never a good time to do this. Lisa and I agreed that Q4 is better than 2018, before the next wave of product excitement. Lisa will be acting as the leader of RTG during by absence. My sincere thanks to Lisa and rest of AET for supporting me in this decision and agreeing to take on additional workload during my absence.

I am looking to start my time-off on Sept 25th and return in December.

Thank you, all of you, for your unwavering focus, dedication and support over these past months, and for helping us to build something incredible. We are not done yet, and keep the momentum going!

Regards, Raja

 

Raja Koduri Leaves AMD

On 7 November, HEXUS reported that Raja Koduri was leaving AMD, and shared his final memo to the Radeon Technologies Group :

Raja Koduri's Final Letter To The AMD Family

To my AMD family,

Forty is a significant number in history.  It is a number representing transition, testing and change. I have just spent forty days away from the office going through such a transition. It was an important time with my family, and it also offered me a rare space for reflection. During this time I have come to the extremely difficult conclusion that it is time for me to leave RTG and AMD.

I have no question in my mind that RTG, and AMD, are marching firmly in the right direction as high-performance computing becomes ever-more-important in every aspect of our lives.  I believe wholeheartedly in what we are doing with Vega, Navi and beyond, and I am incredibly proud of how far we have come and where we are going. The whole industry has stood up and taken notice of what we are doing. As I think about how computing will evolve, I feel more and more that I want to pursue my passion beyond hardware and explore driving broader solutions.

I want to thank Lisa and the AET for enabling me to pursue my passion during the last four years at AMD, and especially the last two years with RTG. Lisa has my utmost respect for exhibiting the courage to enable me with RTG, for believing in me and for going out of her way to support me.  I would also like to call out Mark Papermaster who brought me into AMD, for his huge passion for technology and for his relentless support through many difficult phases.  And of course, I want to thank each and every one of my direct staff and my indirect staff who have worked so hard with me to build what we have now got.  I am very proud of the strong leaders we have and I’m fully confident that they can execute on the compelling roadmap ahead. 

I will continue to be an ardent fan and user of AMD technologies for both personal and professional use.

As I mentioned, leaving AMD and RTG has been an extremely difficult decision for me.  But I felt it is the right one for me personally at this point.  Time will tell.  I will be following with great interest the progress you will make over the next several years.

On a final note, I have asked a lot of you in the last two years.  You’ve always delivered.  You’ve made me successful both personally and professionally, for which I thank you all from the bottom of my heart.  I have these final requests from you as I leave:

. Stay focused on the roadmap!
. Deliver on your commitments!
. Continue the culture of Passion, Persistence and Play!
. Make AMD proud!
. Make me proud!

Yours,
Raja

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Raja Koduri To Head New Intel CVC Group

On 8 November, 2017, Intel announced Raja Koduri’s appointment as Intel Chief Architect, Senior Vice President of the newly-formed Intel Core and Visual Computing Group, and General Manager of “a new initiative to drive edge computing solutions”. He will officially start in his new role at Intel in early December.

 

Intel's Announcement About Raja Koduri's Appointment To Head Intel CVC Group

SANTA CLARA, Calif., Nov. 8, 2017 – Intel today announced the appointment of Raja Koduri as Intel chief architect, senior vice president of the newly formed Core and Visual Computing Group, and general manager of a new initiative to drive edge computing solutions. In this position, Koduri will expand Intel’s leading position in integrated graphics for the PC market with high-end discrete graphics solutions for a broad range of computing segments.

Raja Koduri leaves AMD to head Intel CVC

Billions of users today enjoy computing experiences powered by Intel’s leading cores and visual computing IP. Going forward under Koduri’s leadership, the company will unify and expand differentiated IP across computing, graphics, media, imaging and machine intelligence capabilities for the client and data center segments, artificial intelligence, and emerging opportunities like edge computing.

“Raja is one of the most experienced, innovative and respected graphics and system architecture visionaries in the industry and the latest example of top technical talent to join Intel,” said Dr. Murthy Renduchintala, Intel’s chief engineering officer and group president of the Client and Internet of Things Businesses and System Architecture. “We have exciting plans to aggressively expand our computing and graphics capabilities and build on our very strong and broad differentiated IP foundation. With Raja at the helm of our Core and Visual Computing Group, we will add to our portfolio of unmatched capabilities, advance our strategy to lead in computing and graphics, and ultimately be the driving force of the data revolution.”

Koduri brings to Intel more than 25 years of experience in visual and accelerated computing advances across a broad range of platforms, including PCs, game consoles, professional workstations and consumer devices. His deep technical expertise spans graphics hardware, software and system architecture.

“I have admired Intel as a technology leader and have had fruitful collaborations with the company over the years,” Koduri said. “I am incredibly excited to join the Intel team and have the opportunity to drive a unified architecture vision across its world-leading IP portfolio that help’s accelerate the data revolution.”

Koduri, 49, joins Intel from AMD, where he most recently served as senior vice president and chief architect of the Radeon Technologies Group. In this role, he was responsible for overseeing all aspects of graphics technologies used in AMD’s APU, discrete GPU, semi-custom and GPU compute products. Prior to AMD, Koduri served as director of graphics architecture at Apple Inc., where he helped establish a leadership graphics sub-system for the Mac product family and led the transition to Retina computer displays.

Koduri will officially start in his new role at Intel in early December.

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