Intel Corp. has lost one of its most talented chip engineers. Jim Keller, who joined the company from Tesla Inc. two years ago, has resigned from the company citing “personal reasons,” the tech giant said today.

Keller (pictured) joined Intel in 2018 and was tasked with leading an engineering group that aims to develop new, low-powered microprocessors as part of the firm’s efforts to expand beyond chips for personal computers and servers.

He was one of three key hires Intel has made in recent years as it tries move into new markets. The others are Murthy Renduchintala, who left rival firm Qualcomm Inc. in 2015 to become Intel’s chief engineering officer, and Raja Koduri, who previously worked for Advanced Micro Devices Inc. and now leads Intel’s graphics chip team.

Intel has faced some headwinds in recent years. Personal computer sales have been declining steadily for years, and it has faced growing competition from AMD and Nvidia Corp. in the data center server market. As a result, Intel is looking at several emerging markets to drive new growth, including artificial intelligence, cloud computing, high-performance computing, graphics, networking and self-driving cars.

Keller, who began his career at Digital Equipment Corp. in the 1990s, was tasked with streamlining product development at Intel and cementing the firm’s position at the top of the chip market.

He also worked at AMD in the late 1990s, helping design the Athlon K7 and K8 processors that enabled it to emerge as a rival to Intel in the server chip market. Then, after working for a couple of startups, he joined Apple Inc. in 2008, helping to design the A series processors for the early iPhones. In 2012 he rejoined AMD, where he worked on that company’s Zen architecture, before switching to Tesla in 2015.

“Jim Keller is a rock star and Intel is losing a great architect,” Moor Insights & Strategy analyst Patrick Moorhead told SiliconANGLE. “Historically, Keller has left after a specific milestone like he did at Apple, Tesla and AMD. I don’t have insights into his personal reasons for leaving, but I hope he’s OK. For Intel, the company has a deep bench and it’s a place architects want to work.”

Indeed, Intel has already reorganized its bench to accommodate Keller’s departure. Sundari Mitra, who formerly served as Chief Executive Officer at NetSpeed Systems Inc. until its acquisition by Intel in 2018, will head up a new IP Engineering Group at the company. Gene Scuteri will now lead Intel’s Xeon and Network Engineering Group, Daaman Hejmadi is the new chief of its Client Engineering group that’s focused on developing system-on-chip architecture, and Navid Shahriari will take over at the Manufacturing and Product Engineering Group.

Meanwhile, Keller will stay on at Intel as a consultant for the next six months to help ease the transition.

Photo: Intel