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Intel hires AMD's Raja Koduri to work on high-end, discrete graphics

Koduri, who joins Intel in December, led AMD's Radeon Technologies Group and oversaw the development of its Vega GPUs.
Written by Stephanie Condon, Senior Writer
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Raja M. Koduri will join Intel in December as chief architect.

Intel

Intel has poached a key graphics expert from AMD to ramp up its high-end, discrete graphics offerings.

Raja M. Koduri will join Intel in December as chief architect, senior vice president of the newly formed Core and Visual Computing Group, and as general manager of a new initiative to drive edge computing solutions.

Inteil said Koduri will expand Intel's high-end graphics capabilities for a "broad range of computing segments."

"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," Intel said in a release.

Koduri has more than 25 years of experience in visual and accelerated computing under his belt and spent the last four years at AMD. There, he most recently served as senior vice president and chief architect of the Radeon Technologies Group and oversaw the development of the advanced Vega GPUs.

Koduri helped AMD begin to revive its position in the semiconductor market, as AI workloads and high-performance computing increased demand for GPUs. The trend that has shaken up the market, making Nvidia a key enterprise player and leaving Intel more vulnerable. In fact, just this week, ZDNet reported that Intel is teaming up with AMD to produce a next-generation notebook chip that should help both companies fend off Nvidia.

"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," Dr. Murthy Renduchintala, Intel's chief engineering officer and group president of the Client and Internet of Things Businesses and System Architecture, said in a statement. "We have exciting plans to aggressively expand our computing and graphics capabilities and build on our very strong and broad differentiated IP foundation."

AMD, for its part, said this week that Koduri's departure will not impact the company's plans for its graphics business or its strategic direction. The company is for now sticking to its 2018 product and technology graphics roadmaps, and AMD CEO Lisa Su will lead the Radeon Technologies Group on an interim basis.

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