AMD has hired a new Chief Graphics Product Architect for the Graphics Business Unit. This means that the visionary behind Gustafson's Law will be working on the AMD Radeon and AMD FirePro line of products. With fresh blood comes fresh ideas, so here's to hoping he can come up with something that really pushes graphics technology forward.

"Our industry-leading graphics technology predicates that we consistently deliver the most differentiated and superior graphics processor unit (GPU) architectures and products -- without compromise," said Matt Skynner, corporate vice president and general manager, AMD Graphics. "With the growing importance of parallel compute in defining the computing experience, John brings the full package of industry experience and knowledge needed to help us expand and execute our AMD Radeon and AMD FirePro graphics technology programs, and will help forge an aggressive long-term roadmap that allows AMD to continue to lead and win with our gaming and virtualization technologies."

John Gustafson's resume is impressive and he will surely be an asset to the company. He joins AMD from Intel, where he "headed the company's eXtreme Technologies Lab, conducting cutting-edge research on energy-efficient computing and memory, as well as optical, energy and storage technologies."

"I look forward to working with my teams to expand the AMD graphics technology roadmap," said Gustafson. "The next decade will serve as a watershed era for GPUs in graphics rendering power and compute capabilities, creating the opportunity for multi-teraFLOPS APUs. In terms of raw performance, the evolution of discrete graphics has far exceeded that of the CPU, and the programmable characteristics of today's GPUs have thrown open a door that could very well see it rival the CPU as the most critical element of computer performance in the near future."

Join me in wishing him luck in advancing AMD's graphics offerings so that NVIDIA will have to work to keep the lead. If he can provide competition, it's all the better for the consumer.