Guru Decamps for AMD
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| Courtesy P.A. Semi |
Believe It or Not: Apple Chip Guru Decamps for AMD
It
seems like an odd choice to leave the world’s most successful
technology company for one that appears lost in the woods. But that is
exactly what Jim Keller has done. The chip design guru has left Apple (AAPL) for Advanced Micro Devices (AMD).
At
Apple, Keller served as a director in the platform architecture group
with a focus on mobile products. When translated, this means Keller led
much of the work around Apple’s custom chips that go into iPhones,
iPads, and iPods. The most famous of these chips are the A4 and A5,
which have added zip to Apple’s products while keeping power consumption
pretty low. At AMD, Keller will become chief architect of the company’s
chip designs. In this role, Keller will work on products that range from the data center to the PC to the mobile world.AMD has been in the midst of an executive mass exodus ever since its former chief executive, Dirk Meyer, was fired last year. AMD has given up major ground to Intel (INTC) in the data center and has no answer for smartphones. So it has been left playing second fiddle to Intel in the desktop and laptop markets and doing battle with Nvidia (NVDA) around graphics chips.
If there’s hope for AMD, it will come through Keller, who has something of a magic touch. Many years ago he worked at Digital Equipment and contributed to some screaming-fast server chips. He’s also done a previous stint at AMD, revamping its main product lines, and he has worked at a couple of startups that were sold for big bucks. Apple acquired his last startup, P.A. Semi, and then put those folks in charge of the A4 and A5 projects.
AMD declined to make Keller available for an interview, so we’re left wondering what on earth he’s thinking. He’s 53, and because of the lead times in the chipmaking industry, it’ll be at least four years before any major design changes appear in AMD products.
The rest of the main P.A. Semi gang has moved on as well. Amarjit Gil, a P.A. Semi co-founder, is the CEO of a startup called Maginatics. Dan Dobberpuhl, the former CEO, is retired and playing with his grandkids. Wayne Meretsky, one of the lead engineers, has decamped to New Zealand, according to his LinkedIn (LNKD) profile, to work at a robotics firm. And Leo Joseph, the chief operating officer, is a movie producer.
Apple can obviously afford to hire the best engineers in the world, but it will be tough to replace Keller. The A4 and A5 chips were designed well enough for Apple to use lower-cost, older manufacturing technology and still wring more out of the engines than rivals were getting from their more expensive chips. The A4 and A5 are also some of the keys to the battery life of Apple’s products. Keller was known for being particularly skilled at tuning the chips to use as little juice as possible.
Businessweek
Data Security: Most Finders of Lost Smartphones Are Snoops
(Corrects Francis deSouza’s title in the third paragraph)
I
was sitting in the food court of the Great Mall in Milpitas,
Calif.—Great Khan’s Mongolian BBQ to one side, Hot Dog on a Stick to the
other—when the adrenaline hit. It was go time for Operation Honey
Stick. Cris Paden, a public-relations man at security technology company
Symantec (SYMC), reached across one of the metal tables and passed me an Android (GOOG)
smartphone. I placed it on the seat behind me, waited a couple of
minutes, and then left—hoping someone would nick the device after our
getaway.
That day in early February, we “lost” 10 smartphones as
part of a multi-city clandestine project to see what happens when
digital devices go missing. Symantec organized Operation Honey Stick,
named after fake websites known as honeypots that investigators use to
snare hackers. A total of 50 smartphones were distributed in Silicon
Valley, Washington, D.C., New York, Los Angeles, and Ottawa. The
devices, loaded with a buffet of juicy, fake data, were left in
restaurants, elevators, convenience stores, and student unions. Symantec
equipped them with monitoring software that let its security gurus
track where the devices were taken once found, and what type of
information was accessed by the finders.
Symantec
executives admitted they hoped the project would have some shock value.
Francis deSouza, Symantec group president of corporate products and
services, contends that workers treat their employer-provided
smartphones like consumer devices rather than corporate machines. He
rattles off cases of stolen smartphones and data being sold on black
markets, where bank account credentials can go for $900 and e-mail
accounts for $20. “Beyond that, there’s a compliance risk for
companies,” deSouza says. “People use these devices to do their work
with corporate data, and we know criminals are targeting that
information for profit.”
Symantec and other security companies
have seized on the explosion of smartphones and tablets as an
opportunity. They promote software that requires strong passwords to
open certain apps, tools that block sensitive data from being pasted
into e-mails, and services that can wipe data off a lost device from
afar. Many smartphone owners don’t take even simple steps, like
requiring a PIN to unlock a phone, because they’re “taking a home PC
security model, where they don’t lock down the machines, and applying it
to a smartphone,” says deSouza. “Frankly, you are not likely to lose
your home PC at a Starbucks (SBUX).”
It
took about four hours for us to distribute our smartphones throughout
Silicon Valley. Paden had lined up crowded spots with lots of foot
traffic. We first did some reconnaissance at a Stop ’n Save convenience
store, then hit a restaurant on the Stanford campus, the student union
at San Jose State, and a San Jose taco shop. We skipped a high-end mall
in Palo Alto because Paden figured the iPhone-toting, wealthy clientele
would immediately turn in the lost phones. But the first lesson of
Operation Honey Stick is that it’s much harder to lose a cell phone than
you’d think. On a few occasions, we staked out a spot and planted the
phone, only to have someone yell out, “Hey, buddy, you left your phone!”
The
smartphones were set up to make it easy for people to return them. They
did not require a PIN, and the only contact listed in the address book
was “Me,” containing a number and e-mail address that reached Symantec’s
researchers. One humanity-affirming finding from Operation Honey Stick
is that, despite skewing the study so the phones were as easy to take as
possible, half the smartphones were returned within a couple of weeks.
One tortured soul sent the team the following e-mail: “I found your
phone at the Santa Monica Pier last Thursday. I used it for like a week
but now I feel bad and want to return it. I’m really sorry.”
The
downside is that even the angels indulged the devils on their shoulders.
About 90 percent of all finders rifled through the phone’s apps and
files, including ones that seemed to contain highly sensitive
information. The home screen of each phone included a file promising
salary information, a Bank of America (BAC)
app, a Facebook app, and standard fare such as apps for photos, e-mail,
and a calendar. More than 80 percent of people looked at the corporate
data on the phone and about half took the bait to peek at the salary
information and peruse the corporate e-mail account. Forty percent
couldn’t resist looking at the banking information, while 60 percent
jumped into the Facebook account. About half of the finders tried to use
an app that would let them remotely log into a corporate network.
Someone
started using the phone that began its journey at the Great Mall about
five minutes after it was lost. The finder quickly went through the
salary, banking, and Facebook information. The phone was later plugged
into a computer, and the finder tried to tap into the corporate network.
He or she then drove 150 miles on U.S. Highway 101, accessing Facebook
21 times over a 45-minute period and a folder containing passwords nine
times. After about a day the phone shut down and disappeared.
The
study “played out about how we suspected,” says deSouza. That confident
statement masks anxiety about keeping smartphones safe. Security
companies have spent years battling PC hackers with less than
spectacular success. Now they’re trying to defend products with an
exploding and confounding number of operating systems and apps. “We’re
having to move very quickly to match the innovation happening in the
mobile device world,” deSouza says. “It exceeds what we saw in the PC
world.” Chew over that comforting thought during your next visit to Hot
Dog on a Stick.
The bottom line: A Symantec study shows that although half of lost phones are returned, many finders can’t resist poring over sensitive data.
By Ashlee Vance
Dec. 16 (Bloomberg) -- Zynga Inc., the largest
maker of games for Facebook, declined in its first day of trading after
raising $1 billion in an initial public offering that gave it a greater
valuation than rival Electronic Arts Inc.
The shares, listed on the Nasdaq Stock Market
under the symbol ZNGA, fell 4.2 percent to $9.58 at 12:53 p.m. New York
time. The developer of games such as “CityVille,” “FarmVille” and “Mafia
Wars” sold 100 million shares for $10 each, the top end of a proposed
range, Zynga said in a statement.
Zynga gets more than 90 percent of its revenue
from Palo Alto, California-based Facebook Inc., and faces increasing
competition from Electronic Arts, which bolstered its own online
services by purchasing PopCap Games this year. Nexon Co., a Tokyo-based
maker of games for Facebook including “Zombie Misfits,” slumped 15
percent this week after raising $1.2 billion in an IPO, Japan’s biggest
this year.
“Zynga was offered at a pretty aggressive price
relative to other game makers in the marketplace,” said Jack Ablin, who
helps oversee $55 billion as chief investment officer for Chicago-based
Harris Private Bank. “Anyone that has any affiliation with social media
is getting bought up by an investing public that wants to be involved.
And then reality hits.”
The offering is the biggest by a U.S. Internet
company since Google Inc. raised $1.9 billion in its 2004 IPO, data
compiled by Bloomberg show.
‘Growth Potential’
Zynga’s increasing ubiquity and expansion
prospects appeal to investors, according to Colin Sebastian, an analyst
at Robert W. Baird & Co. in San Francisco.
“Zynga and its games are becoming consumer brands, and there is a lot of recognition for growth potential,” he said.
Founded by Chief Executive Officer Mark Pincus in
2007, Zynga doubled sales to $829 million in the first nine months of
2011. The IPO valued Zynga at as much as $7 billion, or 6.8 times
revenue in the year through Sept. 30. That’s more than three times rival
Electronic Arts’s price relative to sales over the same period.
“We’re bigger believers in the future of play and
social gaming than any other company and we wanted to be in a position
that we had the resources to invest more in that future than any other
company,” Pincus said in an interview today.
Electronic Arts, the maker of “The Sims” and
“Scrabble” for mobile devices, had a market value of $6.9 billion as of
yesterday’s close, or about 1.8 times trailing 12-month sales. The
company is based in Redwood City, California.
Bigger Float
Zynga planned to offer about 14 percent of its
common stock, according to a regulatory filing. That compares with less
than 10 percent for companies including Groupon Inc., LinkedIn Corp.,
and Pandora Media Inc., which made their public debuts this year.
Internet companies have used smaller free floats to boost initial demand
for their stock, pushing the price higher.
Zynga sold all of the shares in the IPO, and
plans to use net proceeds for game development, marketing and general
corporate purposes, according to its filing.
Underwriters have an option to buy an additional
15 million shares to cover over-allotments, Zynga said in its statement.
That may allow backers including Avalon Ventures, Foundry Group and
Google to trim their stakes, according to the original terms of the
offering. Venture firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, Zynga’s
biggest shareholder after Pincus, didn’t plan to sell shares in the IPO.
Groupon, Angie’s List
The market value Zynga sought in its IPO was less
than a $14.1 billion fair-value estimate of the company’s worth as of
August, according to the prospectus. The company settled on a price
range after taking into account recent IPOs that underperformed,
according to a Dec. 10 filing. Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs Group
Inc. led Zynga’s offering.
Groupon, the Chicago-based provider of online
coupons, raised $805 million in its IPO last month, including the over-
allotment option. The shares, which surged as much as 31 percent in the
first weeks of trading, have since fallen 12 percent from their high,
based on yesterday’s close.
Angie’s List Inc., the Indianapolis-based
operator of a consumer-reviews website, raised $132 million in its IPO
last month, including an over-allotment. The stock surged in its first
day of trading before falling as much as 11 percent below its offer
price.
Both Groupon and Angie’s List are trading above their offer prices.
‘Too Rich’
Facebook, operator of the world’s largest social
network, is examining a $10 billion IPO that would value the company at
more than $100 billion, a person with knowledge of the matter said last
month.
Sixty percent of the Internet or social-media
companies that completed U.S. IPOs since 2010 are trading below offer
price, Kevin Pleines, an analyst at Birinyi Associates Inc. in Westport,
Connecticut, said in a Dec. 13 research note. Buyers of the shares at
their opening trade in the public market have lost an average of 32
percent, Pleines said.
Zynga “shouldn’t be valued at three times what
other companies in that space are valued at,” said Jeffrey Sica, chief
investment officer of Morristown, New Jersey-based Sica Wealth
Management LLC, which oversees $1 billion. “That’s why people looked at
it as having a potential downside. Investors found it too rich.”
Zynga was also held back by “overall concern in
the market,” said Sica, who nevertheless advised clients to buy the
Zynga IPO. “An IPO investor can’t be oblivious of the environment the
IPO is coming out in.”
For related News and Information: Bloomberg Industries Internet
Company Analysis: BI INET <GO> Top Corporate Finance News: DTOP
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--With assistance from Ari Levy and Danielle Kucera in San Francisco. Editors: Elizabeth Wollman, Jennifer Sondag
To contact the reporters on this story: Lee Spears in New York at
lspears3@bloomberg.net; Douglas Macmillan in New York at
dmacmillan3@bloomberg.net
By Lee Spears and Douglas MacMillan
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