Interesting news is crossing the ocean today as we learn that Richard Huddy, who has previously had stints at NVIDIA, ATI, AMD and most recently, Intel, is teaming up with AMD once again. Richard brings with him years of experience and innovation in the world of developer relations and graphics technology. Often called "the Godfather" of DirectX, AMD wants to prove to the community it is taking PC gaming seriously.

The official statement from AMD follows:

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). 

Kitguru has a video from Richard Huddy explaining his reasoning for the move back to AMD.

Source: Kitguru.net

This move points AMD in a very interesting direction going forward. The creation of the Mantle API and the debate around AMD's developer relations programs are going to be hot topics as we move into the summer and I am curious how quickly Huddy thinks he can have an impact.

I have it on good authority we will find out very soon.