AMD Looking For New CEO as Dirk Meyer Resigns

Oh my! Maybe the name of her EX-Wife is Sandy which made him running scared.

This could either be a good or bad start for AMD this 2011.

I wonder how much he was making a year in pay??

Well maybe it's a good choice to change a bad weather CEO who pulled AMD out of the dirt in times where AMD has a lot of opportunities for growth with it's new products comming up soon. Maybe another CEO will be able to make more of AMD's good position which might come (we don't have bulldozer benchis so who knows)

Hmmm, that almost sounds like he was fired. I hope poor performance of Bulldozer was not a reason for it.

I'm not liking this news. Methinks I'll have to pass on Bulldozer... I'm an AMD fan, but stuff like this kinda implies something must have gone wrong.

He got fired because Bulldozer is a fiasco.

This is great. They need to take the company in a new direction so they FIRE the CEO but in an agreement, he gets to silently walk away with millions.

I can promise this bulldozer(which pretty much is a figmant of peoples imagination) was not going to live up to the hype after our girl Sandy pretty much blew the doors off anything AMD could even think of producing.

AMD does nothing but get the scraps that Intel and others dont want and It shows and thats why The CEO was fired.

Dont be surprised if they can "Bulldozer" and focus on 28nm chips.

The most important thing for Bulldozer wont be the desktop CPU's where sandybringe shines with its new video transcoding fixed function hardware.

It will be much more important for AMD if it can gain the crown in the Server market. Bulldozer is built for highly threaded performance. If it can compete in the server market AMD is going to do well

This is what happens when you consistently fail to grow the company and repeatedly post gigantic losses. Just two years ago they posted a quarterly loss of a whopping $300M. Q2 last year was a loss of $43M, and Q3 was a loss of $118M. They are hemorrhaging money, while their competitors post huge profits. To compare, Nvidia's last three quarters were all positive, $137M, $131M and $77M. Intel's numbers are positively obscene.

Why is it that people are so attached to AMD? It's got to be some kind of underdog thing, just wanting to see the little guy beat the big guy.

I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but AMD is just a company. A company that's been playing second fiddle to Intel (and more recently, Nvidia) for a long time. Current AMD processors are a generation and a half behind current Intel processors, and I'd wager damn near anything that Intel will be launching even faster i7 chips long before Bulldozer ever sees the market. If Bulldozer isn't as good as Sandy (and I'm guessing it isn't based on the last couple matchups between Intel and AMD), then they're set up to lose even more money.

Sometimes you just have to face facts and admit that you've been beaten. AMD seems to have done just this and is doing what they can to try to turn things around. I wish them the best of luck, but I'm not too optimistic.

"A CEO Search Committee has been formed to begin the search for a new CEO"

I love all the speculation from people that think they know what goes on at AMD. My sis works for them in an upper position and she said working there is weird because no one has their own office. Everyone is all in 1 room and she said it's hard to get work done. My guess the CEO resigned/got fired because of his leadership style not jiving with all of the employees.

Where's my O RLY link!!!! You wrecked my post!

This could either spiral them into closing, or usher in a new era where we see a dominant AMD, who knows. But one thing is for sure, things will change.

I propose myself.

Obviously I have no clue what is implicated in taking over but that don't matter, I can just copy the best business model ever; Apple.

Roll out old tech in a sleek and nice looking package, of course overpriced to add a touch of "can't afford it so it must be good", make everything proprietary but let other companies make accessories for it, but no upgrades, no. You want more memory? Buy another complete one.

Rename AMD to MAD and obviously get the MAD tv people to make commercials seeing as it is so fitting.

There, nothing has even been invented or whatever and I'm sure you're already interested in checking out reviews and pricing for the brand new, 2011, MAD iPaid 32.5gb with 4G running "iP.O.S. 12"

Obviously this is not going against any copyright / patent laws, and even if it is, everyone that buys into my crap will believe I invented it anyways.

Fire the spammers!!!

Hmmm, a new $1.5 billion partnership between Intel and Nvidia in one article, and the AMD CEO getting canned in the next article.

That wasn't a partnership. Nvidia hates Intel with a passion and Huang has made them bitter enemies. When AMD switched leadership last time they did awesome so this is very welcoming news.

Not it doesn't imply that at all. Changing your CEO can be the difference between slipping in old shoes or watching strong in new boots. They have a history of changing CEOs at the right time to kick some a**.

'walking' strong in new boots.. those walking strong was a good movie to watch

”However, the Board believes we have the opportunity to create increased shareholder value over time. This will require the company to have significant growth, establish market leadership and generate superior financial returns. We believe a change in leadership at this time will accelerate the company’s ability to accomplish these objectives."

This paragraph says it all, and it's not really that elegant towards the the ex-CEO; they make no hiding ofthe fact that they think they are not where they should. THey say good things about him in the paragraph above this one, but then go on with these non-elegant considerations, which means they are not happy with the way things are going. Not a good sign...

Cheap conspiracy theory: Mr Meyer saw Bulldozer benchies and said "hey, we can't make Intel angry with this, let's just position it behind Sandy and Ivy so we get a cookie".

Well, whatever it was, I'm sure the heads know better. And if Meyer "liked" (I don't know if a CEO can "like/love" his company, lol) and understood he wasn't the man they needed, he just stepped down as CEO (with a few thousands/millions on his pockets, off course).

GL Mr. Meyer. And hope the new CEO brings us good times (i.e. cheap times XD).

Cheers!

For the love of god where do you come up with this bullshit? Intel has not provided any significant performance improvement over previous generations. Sandy Bridge is 5% faster than skt 1156 Nahlem AT BEST and eats crow from the 1366 cpus. Just look at the benchmarks - an I mean REAL LIFE GAMES. My Core i7 950 @ 4ghz beats the sh** off core i7 2700 or whatever it's called and it's yesteryears tech. The Core i7 980 six core is STILL the fastest CPU to date!!

THEY HAVE NOT REALEASED ANYTHING NEW! THIS IS A MARKETING PLOT TO TAKE YOUR MONEY!

If you want a new intel sistem go for LGA 1366 or wait for the x78 platform ffs.

Until intel pulls their head out of their asses and launch the x78 platform with lga 1366 comparable performance, they have no miracle product to speak of.

If you're waiting for Bulldozer - be ready to wait until August, September at least. Also bear in mind that it'll still be slower than Sandy Bridge.

Ticks do not usually have significantly improved performance, it's just a process shrink but same architecture. Still, it's much more than 5%, around 20% or so at least according to AnandTech. http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/288?vs=191
I'm comparing an i5-760 at $205 with i5-2500K at $225 and this doesn't even take into account the overclocking potential.
Same when you compare an i7-870 at $280 with i7-2600 at $300, that's a pretty good improvement across the board (except in games of course but that's GPU constrained)

You're correct that AMD has continually posted quarterly losses and otherwise has not been in direct competition with Intel for several years (just look at the disparity in market share). However, I'm not sure people fully understand the incredible amounts of time, effort, and $$$ that is required to make something as complex and powerful as a modern CPU, whether consumer-level or enterprise-level.

I used to work for AMD. I've spoken with customers about the Blue vs. Green wars firsthand. AMD internally knows that they cannot compete with Intel blow for blow in a sustainable way like they did during the FX vs. Pentium D days. I mean, if that's really what most of TH sees as the "glory" days, where enthusiast processors were going for 400 bucks a pop but both sides had extremely competitive performance, then be my guest.

AMD knows they are the underdog at the consumer level. Their offerings are not meant to cater to people for whom money is no object. Why do you think Intel still has a $1,000 processor offering whereas the flagship offering from AMD barely costs 1/4th that (the price of which is still dropping)? AMD's enthusiast processors are geared towards the "value gamer" who knows that the savings they make on the CPU can be put towards a beefier graphics card - where the true performance gains are. Consider that "grandma" only needs a Sempron to check her email and play solitaire, and "mom and pop" only need at most an Athlon x2 to watch their DVDs, surf YouTube, use Microsoft Office, and transfer and organize their photos. Long story short: the people who need massive multithreaded processing power know that they need it (3D graphics designers, movie makers, music mixers, virtualizers, and so on), and will buy the CPU that fits their needs accordingly.

I don't foresee AMD trying to re-instigate the Socket 939 days any time soon. It's a fight they would lose, and they know it. It would be a war of attrition between Intel and AMD, a war that AMD is almost guaranteed to lose because Intel has the capital and existing market share to outlast them. AMD knows they are the underdog and will continue to play the underdog game, touting their CPUs as power- and price-efficient rather than going balls-out performance.

Just consider that Intel's revenue for 2009 was over 6 times as much as AMD's. Think of what portion of that amount is funneled back directly into JUST Research and Development - it more than likely exceeds the entirety of AMD's yearly revenue (and historically, it has). That's a huge resource disparity that ANY company would have difficulty overcoming - and plenty of people on Tom's Hardware and elsewhere would have you believe that AMD is meant to be on equal footing with Intel. That's just simply not the case, and a slightly unreasonable expectation. It smacks of a Dilbert-esque "AMD should be able to do more with less!" mentality. Absurd.

Even if AMD did try that, they could very well sink faster than they (supposedly) already are. Bulldozer - myth or not - is probably not going to beat or necessarily even be on par with whatever Intel's mainstream offerings are once it is released. Just like the Phenom and Phenom IIs did not unseat the Core2 Quads (or even the Duos, in some cases!) when they came out. But they offered a value alternative for people who wanted quad core computing on the cheap (and absolutely playable framerates in modern games, when paired with any halfway-decent video card). AMD may simply have to be relegated to putting out processors that are about half a generation to a full generation behind the cutting edge.

I personally use AMD products, not because I am a "fanboi" or an underdog devotee. I am fully aware Intel puts out great products and would absolutely recommend them to someone who can make full use of their capabilities. Hell, I don't even know if my next build will be AMD or Intel. I run a Phenom 955 and not a Core i7 920 because I can wait an additional 30 seconds to rip a CD, or am fine with a 3 FPS dip in performance from my favorite game, or any number of minor inconveniences to my time. Just because the benchmarks for an Intel CPU post higher numbers doesn't mean that it's the processor I simply must have, unless the benchmarks in question actually apply to what I am going to do with the rig.

/end rant

Not sure why he'd quit in a time for recovery for AMD. So I also think that he was ousted from power for some reason.

do you even have a clue what's going on outside your head?
good gawd man they bought out ATI, intel isn't even doing that with nvidia, but that's the comparable measure.
meyer replaced hector ruiz in 2008 part of a measure to keep AMD alive when the world economy took a dump. Meyer did that very successfully, he even streamlined operations and brought forth the business grahpics maker into a fierce contention for the top with nvidia in 2 years. sure they had to sacrafice something and they did that by gambling on the cpu market or did you like the 3 socket changes you went thru with intel in the last 2 years?
now AMD deems the economy has turned and it's time to be aggressive, you don't keep a defensive stream line ceo in charge do you? meyer served his purpose integrating ATI, that time is over and it's time for the company to progress. it will be interesting to see who the AMD board thinks they can scrape up to replace him and start progressing the company as a whole again.
we're all just left waiting how long it's going to take AMD to get a multi core cpu with integrated amd gpu to wipe what ever Intel throws up.
with the window xp to win 7 transition picking up steam in the corporate world there's still a few years to make sandy bridge a step child.

OK, so they fired the technically competent guy who understands CPUs, right after put the company in a position to finally start making money again(as if anyone else could've done better). I guess they're probably going to replace him with some sleazeball MBA who doesn't know jack about CPUs to milk the company for all it's worth and create "shareholder value", while running AMD back into the ground.

The idea that you can train people to manage something they don't understand is ruining America.

Everyone is going on about how slow amd cpu's are compared to intel, what they are forgetting is that amd also has GPU's. If software devs start taking more use of GPU accelleration intel can NOT compete with that. But yes, its obvious this change of CEO means something has gone wrong that he is partly responsible for, or he wants to leave just before something goes wrong. I think what AMD needed was, back when the first athlon64's were king of the hill, an AMD awareness campaign. All the general public know is intel and they are scared of AMD. But its probably a bit late for this now.

I got an Idea! Higher me for the job..

Henri left just before they released a dog of a graphics card and a dog of a CPU ... he went on to Freescale.

I imagine Bulldozer must be a flop and that is why Dirk is getting out now? That is going to be a perception any way you spin this.

The release reads like he is being fired ... moved on ... so be must have had a run in with the board.

Dirk took over from Hector and really improved the business.

I imagine he will turn up in a few months as the CEO or COO of another large tech company in weeks as he would be considered one of the best in his field.

I wish him all the best.

It is a loss for AMD.

I'd like to nominate John Fruehe for the vacant position !!!