Renee James

Renee James, former Intel president, returns with rival chip company

Updated February 7, 2018 at 2:24 PM; Posted February 5, 2018 at 5:57 AM

Renee James in 2014

Renee James in 2014 (Getty Images)

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By Mike Rogoway

mrogoway@oregonian.com

The Oregonian/OregonLive

Nearly three years after her surprise exit as Intel's president, Renee James is back in the chip industry with a heavily capitalized new company focused on cloud computing.

The business, Ampere Computing, makes chips for data centers based on technology from Intel rival ARM Holdings. Its headquarters is in Silicon Valley, just two miles from Intel's, but Ampere will have an office in downtown Portland, too, and outposts in Vietnam and India.

Ampere starts out with more than 300 employees, most of them hired last year when the Carlyle Group, the private equity firm where James has been working, acquired the computer chip division of MACOM Technology Solutions. Ampere has been operating in stealth mode since then.

James, a University of Oregon graduate who spent 26 years at Intel, is the new company's chairwoman and chief executive and will split her time between the Bay Area and Portland, as she did while she worked at Intel. She has hired a number of her former colleagues to help run the business and lead its research.

Though James plays down potential competition with her longtime employer, she allows there will be areas of overlap and says her new company will bring a fresh take to the industry.

"There aren't that many people in the world who build high-performance microprocessors," said James, 53. "And I do think we need new views on what's next."

A protege of legendary Intel CEO Andy Grove, James was a finalist for the chipmaker's top job in 2013. Ultimately, Intel picked another insider, Brian Krzanich, and he made James his top lieutenant.

The partnership didn't last, though - Krzanich has replaced many of the insiders in Intel's top executive ranks. When James left in 2015, she said she would seek a position as CEO elsewhere.

Many assumed she would take over an established company. In an interview, though, James said she had a particular technology in mind and doubted a larger company would make the commitment she felt it needed.

So she decided to start fresh.

"It's very risky, it's very hard, but it's incredibly rewarding," James said. "Every day you can come in with the idea you're inventing something nobody's done yet."

Read The Oregonian's 2009 profile of Renee James

The word "ampere" refers to a unit of measurement for electrical current. efficient power consumption is a key element in data centers, which can use as much energy as a small town.

Ampere is focused on memory-intensive tasks in data centers. Its technology is designed for hyperscaling, quickly accelerating to large computing needs for databases, web servers, web applications and big data analytics.

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