Yahoo Autos Tesla's Autopilot Chief Has Left the Company
Jim Keller, who had been in charge of Tesla's Autopilot hardware program since 2016, is leaving the company for Intel. The resignation is a major loss for the automaker and was first reported by Electrek.
Keller has been a crucial player in the development of several major tech projects over the last decade. Prior to joining Tesla, he played a large role in Apple’s development of its A4 and A5 processors, which powered many of that company’s mobile devices earlier this decade. Before that, he worked at chipmaker Advanced Micro Devices (AMD), developing the Zen computer-processor microarchitecture.
At the time of Keller’s hiring, Tesla said that “Jim will bring together the best internal and external hardware technologies to develop the safest, most advanced autopilot systems in the world.”
Autopilot has seen both successes and failures, and the system has been embroiled in controversy. For example, a crash into a fire truck earlier this year showed that further refinement is needed, and Tesla and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration have been embroiled in a feud over investigating such incidents.
In a press statement, the company said, “prior to joining Tesla, Jim’s core passion was microprocessor engineering, and he’s now joining a company where he’ll be able to once again focus on this exclusively. We appreciate his contributions to Tesla and wish him the best.”
Losing an engineer of Keller’s stature would be a loss for any company, and in Tesla's case it represents only the latest loss of a high-level employee. The California automaker recently also parted ways with its top sales executive and chief financial officer.
Tesla does not seem to be having trouble recruiting top-tier replacements for its departures. Keller’s role will be filled by Pete Bannon, who has quite the industry stature in his own right. Tesla released a statement saying that Bannon has been with the company for more than two years and “will now lead Autopilot hardware. Pete has been building processors since 1984, co-led the development of Apple’s A5 chip, and then continued development through to the A9 chip. Prior to Apple, Pete was the VP of architecture and verification at PA Semi. Andrej Karpathy, Tesla’s Director of AI and Autopilot Vision, will now have overall responsibility for all Autopilot software.”
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Keller will be reuniting with Intel’s chief chip architect Raja Koduri. Keller and Koduri worked together at AMD and at Apple. The band having gotten back together, the two will work on new products at Intel, according to the Wall Street Journal.
This story originally appeared on Popular Mechanics.
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