Raja Koduri verlässt die Radeon Technologies Group und AMD

Der noch amtie­ren­de Lei­ter der Rade­on Tech­no­lo­gies Group bei AMD und geis­ti­ger Vater der Vega und Navi GPU-Archi­tek­tur, Raja Kodu­ri, wird AMD offen­bar ver­las­sen. Bereits seit Sep­tem­ber befin­det sich Kodu­ri in einer selbst ver­ord­ne­ten Aus­zeit, nach eige­nen Anga­ben, um nach der stres­si­gen Vega-Ent­wick­lung wie­der mehr Zeit mit sei­ner Fami­lie ver­brin­gen zu kön­nen. Heu­te nun wur­de Hexus ein inter­nes Memo zuge­spielt, in dem sich Kodu­ri bei sei­nem Team verabschiedet:

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

Kodu­ri war im April 2013 nach einem kur­zen Gast­spiel bei Apple zu AMD zurück­ge­kehrt. Im Sep­tem­ber 2015 wur­de er zum Lei­ter der neu geform­ten Rade­on Tech­no­lo­gies Group (RTG) beru­fen. Ob und wie sich der Abgang auf die Ent­wick­lung von Navi aus­wir­ken wird und ob der durch­wach­se­ne Markt­start von Vega etwas mit der Ent­schei­dung zu tun hat, muss an die­ser Stel­le noch offen bleiben.