Stefan Mileschin

The man who put AMD chips under the bonnet of the top three consoles has defected to Nvidia.

Bob Feldstein who brokered the deal which saw AMD getting the work for the Xbox 360's Xenos GPU and the original Wii's Hollywood GPU has cleaned out his desk and fled.

Feldstein is a long term inmate of AMD and worked for ATI before it was bought by the chipmaker. To say he will be missed is an understatement. It was thanks to his work that of the previous console generation, only the PS3, with its Nvidia-powered RSX, had a GPU designed by a rival firm.

According to the Wall Street Journal, he left AMD on Friday the 13th and started work at Nvidia on July 16th. Apparently he left on "amicable terms" which means that he did not have to be escorted from the building.

AMD said it was his decision to leave and praised his work. Nvidia wouldn't confirm or deny that Feldstein was hired to try to take the console gaming market back.

Instead it told the Journal that Feldstein would "help us think through current and possible future technology licensing projects".

Feldstein is the latest in a number of high profile exits from AMD lately. Graphics CTO Eric Demers defected to Qualcomm back in February of this year, and laid off a VP among 1,400 workers in November. SVP Rick Bergman left in September, and former CEO, the comedian Dirk Meyer, resigned last January.

http://news.techeye.net/chips/amd-lo...-man-to-nvidia