Richard Huddy Returns to AMD, Takes on the Role of Gaming Scientist

After a somewhat brief stint at Intel, Richard Huddy returns to AMD to take on the role of Gaming Scientist – which is, without question, one of the coolest job titles around. At Intel, Richard helped the company with its graphics roadmap, and prior to joining the blue side in 2011 after layoffs at AMD, he worked as the company’s Developer Relations Manager.

In an email we were sent, AMD says:

AMD is proud to announce the return of the well-respected authority in gaming, Richard Huddy. After three years away from AMD, Richard returns as AMD’s Gaming Scientist in the Office of the CTO – he’ll be serving as a senior advisor to key technology executives, like Mark Papermaster, Raja Koduri and Joe Macri. AMD is extremely excited to have such an industry visionary back. Having spent his professional career with companies like NVIDIA, Intel and ATI, and having led the worldwide ISV engineering team for over six years at AMD, Mr. Huddy has a truly unique perspective on the PC and Gaming industries.

Mr. Huddy rejoins AMD after a brief stint at Intel, where he had a major impact on their graphics roadmap. During his career Richard has made enormous contributions to the industry, including the development of DirectX and a wide range of visual effects technologies. Mr. Huddy’s contributions in gaming have been so significant that he was immortalized as ‘The Scientist’ in Max Payne (if you’re a gamer, you’ll see the resemblance immediately).

Later this week, Richard will be posting a video to clue us in on a couple of things.

Richard’s return strikes me as a little interesting for a couple of reasons. Just last week, NVIDIA and AMD were in a bit of a Web battle. NVIDIA claims its developer relations don’t prohibit AMD from working closer with developers, while AMD claims that NVIDIA does effectively do just that. Ultimately, I think the biggest problem is AMD’s lack of ability to spend on certain “extras”, like enhanced developer relations. That fact could be the reason why NVIDIA pushes so hard… it’s able to spend, while AMD has to be careful where it decides to.

Nonetheless, Richard has an extremely impressive background, and knows the game and graphics industry inside and out. His return could be the beginning of great things to come. Perhaps NVIDIA’s pushed a wee bit too far, and AMD is on the verge of striking back. I sure hope that proves to be the case.