AMD hires a senior CPU architect from IBM's Power division to lead CPU-GPU integration efforts.
AMD has hired Joshua Friedrich, the former IBM Power development lead, as a corporate vice president to lead the chipmaker's CPU-GPU integration efforts across both data center and client products. Friedrich joined the company in January, working under AMD CTO Mark Papermaster in the engineering organization, where he is "responsible for driving [the company's] integrated CPU and GPU technology approach," according to AMD spokesperson Drew Prairie. One AMD partner noted of the hiring: "It certainly paints a picture that AMD is going to be a significant factor for the continuing years."
Friedrich brings more than 20 years of experience from IBM's Power server processors division. Most recently, he served as a distinguished engineer and director of Power technology development within IBM's Server and Technology Group, where he was "responsible for the design and delivery of IBM's Power9 processors." He started at IBM in 1999 to work on circuit design for the Power5 CPU and, according to his LinkedIn profile, served as the "development leader for future Power processor designs," with responsibilities including design content decisions, staffing, and technology evaluation.
On the data center side, Friedrich's work supports AMD's plans to tighter integrate its EPYC processors and Radeon Instinct GPUs. Scott Aylor, corporate vice president and general manager of AMD's Datacenter Solutions, previously stated that the company plans more tightly coupled integration "from an architectural standpoint and a release cadence standpoint, to improve system performance." He added: "I think you'll see a greater and greater coupling in terms of timing, capability [and] workload affinity that I think will be more the norm."
Friedrich's role also encompasses AMD's SmartShift technology for mobile devices, which was announced at CES 2020. SmartShift dynamically shifts power between the CPU and GPU to boost performance depending on workload type, such as gaming and content creation, for laptops with Ryzen and Radeon parts. Patrick Moorehead, president and principal analyst at Moor Insights & Strategy, expects AMD's development on such technology could eventually benefit servers as well, stating: "I'd be surprised if AMD doesn't find more ways to connect its server CPUs and GPUs. They're already closely coupling with Infinity Fabric 2 but I'd expect faster interconnects and power sharing between components."
Dominic Daninger, vice president of engineering at Nor-Tech, a high-performance computing systems integrator and AMD partner based in Burnsville, Minnesota, characterized Friedrich's hiring as strategically sound for AMD's long-term roadmap. "It's probably a smart move on AMD's part. They're really continuing to spend money to grow that road map further out," he said, noting that Friedrich's work likely won't appear in products for some time.