AMD Hints At Improved Software, Development Tools, and Linux Support In Hawaii

A few months back, AMD announced that it had lured Raja Koduri back from Apple and installed him as the new Corporate Vice President of its Visual Computing division. Koduri was a long time AMD employee who left for Apple, but came back to AMD at a relatively tumultuous time. Why someone as prominent as Mr. Koduri would leave the most valuable company in the world for a struggling AMD had many people scratching their heads. But at AMD’s GPU Tech event currently taking place Hawaii, Raja explained why he came back and also hinted at some upcoming technology, which should be revealed soon.

AMD's Chris Hook Introducing Raja Koduri At Diamond Head

Raja claimed he came back to AMD due to the excellent IP the company has in its repertoire and due to the good people and culture at the company. He dismissed much of the recent doom and gloom—directed at both AMD and the PC market in general--and claimed AMD is poised for a comeback in his opinion. He also said it is his goal to better intermingle AMD’s hardware and software development teams as R&D budgets for software development have swelled in recent years.

AMD's Raja Koduri, Corporate Vice President of Visual Computing

While speaking at the event, which went down at the Diamond Head state monument, Raja also dropped a few hints about improving AMD’s software and drivers to address issues and improve the user experience for CrossFire and Eyefinity users, and said that Linux users would be happy with some upcoming news as well. Raja also quickly mentioned that AMD’s got some new tools in the works for game developers too, which would ease development on next-gen consoles (which use AMD hardware) and the PC and help the devs to leverage all of the features and capabilities of AMD’s Graphics Core Next architecture.

Other than the few hints we’ve mentioned, there weren’t any juicy scoops to disclose, but stay tuned to HotHardware for more tomorrow. AMD will be Live Streaming an event in which many more details will likely be revealed.