About Mike
tl;dr: Principal Member of Technical Staff at AMD, focused on GPU compute performance and ROCm software for AMD Instinct accelerators. Spent 16 years at VMware before that, the last 10 as Product Manager for Fusion and Workstation. I am also a pirate.
What I'm doing now
I'm a Principal MTS at AMD in Product Application Engineering, working on AMD Instinct GPUs and the ROCm open-source software stack. My focus is performance — helping developers and researchers get the most out of AMD's GPU compute platform for AI, HPC, and scientific workloads.
This blog is where I write accessible summaries of AMD's technical content, plus occasional thoughts on GPU compute, software tooling, and the broader AI infrastructure space.
The opinions on this site are my own and don't represent AMD's views.
Before AMD
My 16 years at VMware included a stretch running product management and marketing for VMware Fusion and Workstation — desktop hypervisors for macOS and Windows. I started in Support in 2009, worked my way through enterprise cloud support, product marketing, and technical marketing before landing in product management in 2015.
Along the way I got to do things like craft demos for the VMworld keynote stage and write a book:
Outside of work
I enjoy solving problems with software and contributing to open source: https://github.com/mikeroySoft
I make music occasionally: https://soundcloud.com/michael-helix
Oh, and I'm also a professional Pirate! https://mermaidandmom.com/
I mean, you're really hiring the mermaids, but they need help getting around, you see!
Photos taken by the amazing Stephen Johnson at the Northern California Pirate Festival, 2019