With the computer industry shifting heavily to mobile systems, analysts are keeping a close eye on turnover in the mobile departments of the top companies. It’s one way (though not always an accurate one) to see which way the winds are blowing in the industry. So, it’s a little unsettling for
Nvidia watchers to see Mike Rayfield, Nvidia’s mobile business department general manager leaving for a new gig.
Rayfield joined Nvidia in 2005 and has been leading Nvidia’s efforts to expand from gaming-friendly GPUs to chips for mobile devices. Nvidia has been making waves with its
Tegra 3 dual-core and quad-core chips, which run phones and tablets. Not surprisingly, considering the company making them, Tegra chips are touted as bringing strong graphics capabilities to mobile devices.
So, where is Rayfield headed? That’s not clear yet, but Nvidia confirmed to the Wall Street Journal that Rayfield is indeed leaving for another company. Nvidia is facing off against different competition in the mobile market, including Texas Instruments. That company recently hung onto its lucrative position as the processor supplier for the Amazon
Kindle Fire, which Nvidia was reportedly gunning for. It will be interesting to see where he pops up, and who replaces him. For now, Nvidia hasn’t made an announcement.
Joshua Gulick
Josh cut his teeth (and hands) on his first PC upgrade in 2000 and was instantly hooked on all things tech. He took a degree in English and tech writing with him to
Computer Power User Magazine and spent years reviewing high-end workstations and gaming systems, processors, motherboards, memory and video cards. His enthusiasm for PC hardware also made him a natural fit for covering the burgeoning modding community, and he wrote
CPU’s “Mad Reader Mod” cover stories from the series’ inception until becoming the publication editor for
Smart Computing Magazine. A few years ago, he returned to his first love, reviewing smoking-hot PCs and components, for
HotHardware. When he’s not agonizing over benchmark scores, Josh is either running (very slowly) or spending time with family.
