Processors Toolkit

AMD gets new chip head

Tom Krazit CNET News

Published: 13 May 2008 14:44 BST

AMD finalised a major reorganisation on Monday, promoting a senior executive into a new role and waving goodbye to two others.

Randy Allen (pictured), formerly head of AMD's server business, will take on a new role as senior vice president of the Computing Solutions Group, the company said after the close of the stock market. Until recently that post was occupied by Mario Rivas, who is leaving the company to pursue "new opportunities". Allen will essentially oversee all of AMD's processor and chipset development.

As part of the reorganisation, AMD is also creating a new group, Central Engineering, which will be led by Chekib Akrout and Jeff VerHeul. This group will be responsible for developing AMD's roadmap and will report directly to AMD president and chief operating officer Dirk Meyer. Central Engineering will work with customers and internal business units to develop AMD's future plans for its processor designs, a company representative said.

Changes have been long expected at AMD, which has lost hundreds of millions of dollars over the past year and a half while it struggled to get Barcelona, a quad-core server processor, out of the door. As leader of the chip group, Rivas appears to be taking the fall for the Barcelona debacle. Earlier this year, Phil Hester also left AMD after serving as chief technology officer.

AMD chief executive Hector Ruiz has promised to get the company back to profitability in the third quarter of this year — otherwise these moves may not be the last executive changes at AMD in 2008.

Credit: AMD shuffles executives, creates new engineering group from CNET News