AMD Names a New CEO & President
AMD now has a new president and CEO: Rory P. Read, Lenovo's ex-COO
On Thursday, AMD announced that its Board of Directors officially appointed 49-year-old former Lenovo President and Chief Operating Officer Rory P. Read as the chipmaker's new President and Chief Executive Officer. Thomas Seifert, who served as interim Chief Executive Officer since January, will return to his role as Senior Vice President, Chief Financial Officer.
"On behalf of my fellow directors, I would like to thank Thomas Seifert for serving as interim CEO," said Bruce Claflin who assumed additional responsibilities specific to AMD’s search for a new CEO but now returns to his role as AMD’s Chairman of the Board. "Under Thomas’ leadership, AMD has continued to make important progress across key areas of the business, successfully executing on major initiatives and new product introductions while improving the company’s financial performance. We look forward to Thomas’ continued contributions to the Company as Chief Financial Officer."
Seifert replaced Dirk Meyer as a temporary CEO of AMD back in January 2011. Since then, the company has slowly emerged back in the mobile market, but at a distance behind Texas Instruments, Qualcomm and GPU rival Nvidia.
With Read now at the helm, it will be interesting to see where he takes the company. After spending 23 years serving under IBM's roof, Read joined Lenovo and worked his way up to managing the company's Americas group. He was then promoted to president and COO in 2009 and helped transform Lenovo "into the world’s fastest growing major PC manufacturer and achieving its largest worldwide market share ever." As Lenovo's former President and COO, he was responsible for leading day-to-day global operations while overseeing the development and implementation of the company’s growth strategy.
"I’m very pleased to be joining AMD at this important time in its history. AMD is a true innovator and is uniquely positioned to lead the industry forward, delivering the next big thing both within the PC ecosystem and beyond,” said Read. “AMD has strong momentum and the opportunity to continue profitably gaining share based on its highly differentiated products, solid financial foundation, and passionate and committed employees. I’m excited to be joining AMD’s employees as we write the next chapter not just for the company, but for the industry and consumers around the world."
AMD shares saw a nice little increase in early-morning trading right after the announcement, selling for $6.65 per share. But the short-lived spike dropped back down to $6.44 per share just after 2 p.m. EDT Thursday.
AMD shipped 12 million APU's in the 2nd Quarter alone. And APU's is just one of the new markets they are breaking into.
They got smart and stopped trying to focus on beating Intel in the dying desktop sector and decided to focus on where they can actually make profit and gain market share.
It's working.
Pretty much summed up AMD's position. They realized they couldn't win outright against Intel so theey decided to make up a one legged hop competition which Intel is too cool to even compete in.
As much as I like AMD GPUs, second that. Though we may see APUs become more useful in the future.
Sure you could say the Intel has been eating away at them for the past 2-3 years. But then again Bulldozer has been in development for so long that when it does hit the market, it will be old tech.
And I, for one, hope it keeps up with Sandy Bridge, because it will mean AMD's old tech is just as good as Intel's newest... and that'd be awesome.
Yea sure. But they sure as hell need to compete with Intel in the server and HPC market where the money to be made is, and currently they are not doing so well.
I bet they brought this guy in to help push AMD into other markets that are not even as important as getting a strong server line up is.
The new CEO won't need to work too hard for the first few months as AMD has everything under control for the foreseeable future but Read will need to start planning out new products for 2015 and beyond.
Fusion is good, but they still need to progress in desktop CPU so that they can later implement this into APU
good luck!
The new CEO won't need to work too hard for the first few months as AMD has everything under control for the foreseeable future but Read will need to start planning out new products for 2015 and beyond.
System builders buying APUs? Cool story bro. Bulldozer might be good, but it ain't here yet and meanwhile high-end is controlled by Sandy Bridge. Intel doesn't need APUs... if they want to make extra cash, they'll just license nVidia to make them. APUs are good for low-end, that's all.
However, AMD *REAL* graphics kick some real ass. I'd concentrate even more effort there to make sure no one buys nVidia at all
Intel's Core i7 (Sandy Bridge) is essentially a copy cat of AMD's original idea. Some of you, have already forgot the mere fact that Intel didn't have any plans on creating (neither, releasing) a CPU + GPU on die silicon chip.
Watch as AMD releases Bulldozer and Intel, will (most probably) be releasing, yet another copy cat.
The water cooled only is only a rumor, we don't know yet how a good air heatsink will do. And it's for extreme gamers, that's all. Not for servers. Also, ever heard of HT? If your software can work with 6 cores but not threads, too bad for you.
Somehow all the server setups I've seen go for Xeon and not Opteron. Strange. Don't have any real XP there, but I don't think it's as simple as you put it.
As for AMD dominating netbooks/laptops... there're WAY more SB/Atom laptops/netbooks sold. Though the number of netbooks might have went down (for good - I'd take and AMD solution over Atom any day!), AMD still doesn't have anything for hi-end laptops to compete with i5/i7 mobile series.
As has been noted, the portable phone/tablet and All-in-one markets trump any of us system builders by quite a bit. Focusing on that portable market and better APUs should be AMD's primary goal -- from a business standpoint. Of course I'd like to have a blazing fast CPU that competes with intel and is a better price
Who doesn't want a single chip that draws less power and means I can avoid buying a discrete graphics card and still game at 1080p? Throw in a discrete graphics card if it's not enough and who the hell would buy intel?
Let's hope this isn't another "make a fast buck" corporatist douche businessman who will ignore making good products, and focus on ways to become "profitable" by screwing everybody a la Intel, and otherwise engaging in shady business practices.
Unless it comes from iCrap, a compnay that thrives on propaganda and deceit for success, not advancement of technology.