Three Senior Executives To Leave AMD

H

HardOCP News

[H] News
Joined
Dec 31, 1969
Messages
0
According to the Wall Street Journal, three senior executives are leaving AMD to "pursue new opportunities."

The three executives are John Byrne, who served as general manager for AMD’s computing and graphics business group; Colette LaForce, the company’s chief marketing officer; and Rajan Naik, chief strategy officer. They couldn’t be reached for comment. An AMD spokesman said all three are leaving AMD to pursue new opportunities.
Click to expand...
 
Mayday, mayday, mayday... Our ship is sinking! SOS!

Sad really, I used to be an Athlon Fanboy in the 90's and early 2000's. Without Dirk Engineering and Sanders III leadership though, the company just hasn't been the same... Just a long list of failures.
 
Fine by me, they are not the ones to help produce actual products. More money for more important things.
 
As long as the engineers are going strong this isn't that bad of news. It might even be good news as we all know AMD's weak points are marketing and strategy. Some fresh faces may help steer the company in a more profitable direction.
 
Oh, shucks. This doesn't bode well for their next flagship GPU, either. I'm waiting for its' release to build my new PC, but it will probably disappoint or be delayed :(

We'll rue the day that Nvidia and Intel will step all over us customers completely unchallenged.
 
amirfoox said:
Oh, shucks. This doesn't bode well for their next flagship GPU, either. I'm waiting for its' release to build my new PC, but it will probably disappoint or be delayed :(

We'll rue the day that Nvidia and Intel will step all over us customers completely unchallenged.
Click to expand...

The PC sector is shrinking for sure. But the good news is the competition on the mobile side is heating up which could fill in the competitive gap since PCs are being replaced by mobile CPUs, GPUS, and alternative OS's at a constant rate.
 
Not really a good sign that three of them are leaving at the same time. Still rooting for AMD to stay competitive. Big fan of their cost vs performance.
 
Sounds a little bit too coincidental that the three of them are leaving at the same time.

Sounds more like they were asked to leave, but they have "positive references" clauses in their employment contracts (like most senior executives are able to negotiate) so "pursuing new opportunities" it is...
 
LakeErieWater said:
Not really a good sign that three of them are leaving at the same time. Still rooting for AMD to stay competitive. Big fan of their cost vs performance.
Click to expand...

On the GPU side this may still be the case, but unless you are going really low end, the bang for the buck argument is no longer in AMD's corner on the CPU side, and hasn't been for some time. :(

We all benefit from a competitive AMD, without them we get the lackluster performance improvements we've had in the CPU world for the last 5 - 6 years. If AMD's GPU performance drops off, then we will be there in GPU's too.

I've certainly been hoping for a CPU comeback and for them to remain competitive on the high end GPU side, and I'm not giving up.
 
This has the potential to be a positive thing. If new leadership comes in who can motivate and inspire AMD to begin to compete with Intel again - I mean REALLY compete like they did 15 years ago - this can be a great thing for the industry.
 
Stoly said:
Not gonna happen.
Click to expand...

Not going to happen the way things are done true. But AMD has been suffering from the same problem a lot of companies suffer from :shitty leadership who don't understand their own product. You fix that you can fix the company. I only say it because your saying sounds permanent. It's only to late to fix things once the company doesn't exist .
 
A shakeup in management is usually a GOOD thing.
Bad management techniques is usually the biggest impediment to progress and innovation.
 
Stoly said:
Not gonna happen.
Click to expand...

With the current architecture no.

It might be possible in their next major architecture redesign after bulldozer and other construction equipment.

For now they are tied to the construction equipment arch for the time being, but post this arch, things could happen, as long as they are able to secure the funding to do it right.
 
Do the engineers and scientists need management to tell them that they have fallen behind? I'm sure they know and are well aware that their products aren't cutting it. Sound to me like a R&D problem and not an upper management level problem.
 
Kongar said:
Do the engineers and scientists need management to tell them that they have fallen behind? I'm sure they know and are well aware that their products aren't cutting it. Sound to me like a R&D problem and not an upper management level problem.
Click to expand...

It was upper management's decision to fire the people designing part of the a-8 processor and use a piece of software to design it instead which is the reason it came out to complete shit and when they fixed this problem that would of put that ship on par with intel at the time it came on market it was too late because intel used that time to advance instead of fix fuckups. All problems at a company are upper management's fault. Thats why they get paid the big bucks. If they have a problem they are supposed to fix it. Thats literally their job. This was literally absolutly shitty project management done by people who dont understand the technology they are working with. Its part of the reason why Elon Musk doesn't hire people with MBAs and as much as i hate apple, steve jobs personal understanding and hands on each product made such a difference. For a technical company some level of technical understanding is required.
 
LakeErieWater said:
Not really a good sign that three of them are leaving at the same time. Still rooting for AMD to stay competitive. Big fan of their cost vs performance.
Click to expand...

Not true at all on the CPU side, and not much of an argument on the GPU side either for that being true if you look across the board on performance where amd's cards are pretty much outperformed at most every price range :( (plus all of the non-FPS factors are a clean sweep for nvidia's cards as well).

Their drivers are a mess for anything that isn't fully GPU-bound, for example...

dbcIyLv.png


and this continues to be true in a lot of other current and upcoming titles :(.
 
Kongar said:
Do the engineers and scientists need management to tell them that they have fallen behind? I'm sure they know and are well aware that their products aren't cutting it. Sound to me like a R&D problem and not an upper management level problem.
Click to expand...

No, but management sets priorities, raises funding and setsstaffi g levels.

After the original Bulldozer fiasco of a launch, there was an insider tell all that said they essentially all knew it was going to tank due to overutilization of automated layout tools in order to save on headcount, as well as an overall poor strategy in focusing on server architecture (bulldozer is pretty excellent in servers) and just relabeling higher clocked lower core count versions for desktop use.

They did this because they overspent on ATI, and had to cut back on Phenom development costs, causing it to fall behind and lose revenue, leading to further cost cutting needs in the development of Bulldozer.

Not sure it was the wrong strategic decision, seeig how the desktop CPU market has gone. They are probably better off today than they would have been with top notch CPU's if they hadn't bought ATI, but it does showcase that they are a MUCH smaller company than Intel and can't do everything at the same time.

They have the talent and IP to do regain a competitive standing with Intel, but they need a serious infusion of cash to do so. Might require a merger or takeover by someone else with lots of money to accomplish this.
 
Romale23 said:
Not going to happen the way things are done true. But AMD has been suffering from the same problem a lot of companies suffer from :shitty leadership who don't understand their own product. You fix that you can fix the company. I only say it because your saying sounds permanent. It's only to late to fix things once the company doesn't exist .
Click to expand...

At current pace, I see AMD going down more likely than making a comeback.

But I'm an optimist. So maybe AMD will get their act together, and will finally release a CPU with better IPC, better power efficiency, and solid performance
 
Stoly said:
At current pace, I see AMD going down more likely than making a comeback.

But I'm an optimist. So maybe AMD will get their act together, and will finally release a CPU with better IPC, better power efficiency, and solid performance
Click to expand...

They won't go down. Intel will bail them out again if they need to.
 
Romale23 said:
They won't go down. Intel will bail them out again if they need to.
Click to expand...

Intel bailing then out completely misrepresents what happened.

Intel was sued due to their monopolistic business practices used to prevent AMD from taking advantage of the performance advantage they had and selling to OEMs during the late 90s and early to mid 2000's.

They were pretty much caught red handed making illegal deals to keep AMD out of OEM's.

The settlement they paid to AMD was a pittance compared to the damage their illegal business practices caused.
 
Zarathustra[H];1041356344 said:
Intel bailing then out completely misrepresents what happened.

Intel was sued due to their monopolistic business practices used to prevent AMD from taking advantage of the performance advantage they had and selling to OEMs during the late 90s and early to mid 2000's.

They were pretty much caught red handed making illegal deals to keep AMD out of OEM's.

The settlement they paid to AMD was a pittance compared to the damage their illegal business practices caused.
Click to expand...

Stand corrected, what i get for just listening to people and not reading it myself
 
But the guys who left were super senior guys. The type of direction you'd get from them would be as follows: "cut costs by 25% in three years" The decision to overuse automated tools was mostly likely some a$$hat executive director level guy who was in charge of R&D guys but didn't appreciate or understand what they were doing. He/she then responds to "cut my costs" inappropriately (firing good engineers, keeping useless upper middle managers) and presents the less engineers/more automation solution as a major costs savings. Big bonuses all around! Product tanks.

Somebody sold that strategy to upper management - and 5 bucks says that guy is still around playing politics and causing problems. Everyone like to harp on CEOs of big businesses, but in my experience, it's the guys who aren't in the spotlight that can cause the most damage. Unless the new chiefs recognize the dysfunction and gut their management structure - I doubt things will change. Unfortunately.
 
Just makes me laugh that I nearly got banned from here by simply saying that AMD didn't have long to go a couple of months back...

The rats are running........
 
I know AMD had to play "lowest bidder" to get all the current gen console contracts, but there has to be some money in that.

Hopefully that money will be enough to revitalize the company and redesign the "construction equipment" architecture for their next gen CPU's, while giving the GPU's a little boost to keep them in the competitive range.

Money is IMHO AMD's biggest problem. They don't have the endless deep pockets Intel has, so they can't throw armies of engineers at problems.
 
Romale23 said:
They won't go down. Intel will bail them out again if they need to.
Click to expand...

That may no longer be the case.

Given that ARM has such a strong presence, Intel could argue monopoly rules no longer apply. Good thing for AMD that windows RT didn't take off, else we would have dozens of AIOs with ARM SoC.
 
Rumor has it all 3 are going to start making ratatouille, implications intended. :D
 
Zarathustra[H];1041356344 said:
Intel bailing then out completely misrepresents what happened.

Intel was sued due to their monopolistic business practices used to prevent AMD from taking advantage of the performance advantage they had and selling to OEMs during the late 90s and early to mid 2000's.

They were pretty much caught red handed making illegal deals to keep AMD out of OEM's.

The settlement they paid to AMD was a pittance compared to the damage their illegal business practices caused.
Click to expand...

The OEMs are just as much to blame, imo. I worked for HP in Enterprise Systems manufacturing and testing at the time the Athlon first appeared and there were ZERO offerings in the entire HP lineup to get one. As time went by and the heat was getting incrementally turned up by the FTC, Intel and OEMs tried to create their own loophole by allowing only around 5% of systems to contain AMD processors, be it Athlon or Opteron. The business desktops with AMD under the hood that came down the line were remarkably shoddy...the cheapest of materials and parts were used, and the price tags were intentionally over-inflated to help steer customers towards the more cost effective Intel-based offerings.

One saving grace for AMD getting a larger share of HP systems being sold: HP's embracement of RDRAM. That shit was so expensive at the time, we noticed a huge surge in AMD-based systems and more basic Intel DDR2-based systems such as those with a Celeron. People were avoiding the P4 + RDRAM systems like the plague because the computer had 50-300% higher cost depending on overall configuration and RAM capacity selected vs the DDR2 systems.

Other saving graces for AMD in the OEM world:
* Preliminary action laying the investigation groundwork by the FTC causing Intel and OEMs to back off of their grab-ass parties.
* Desktops and workstations offered with the Socket A K7 XP and MP models.
* Release of the vastly-improved and superior S754 Athlon64 (the very first x86-64 uProc), and Sempron (while Intel was embracing their dedicated IA-64 before caving to x86-64),
* Release of the even stronger S939 Athlon64, Sempron, and the game-changing X2, plus the Opteron variants that were a hit with SMP workstation and server customers.
* Release of the expensive Itanium2 with lackluster OS and software support that flopped hard, allowing Enterprise segment customers the ability to purchase at least four high-end AMD x86-64 multicore-based systems for the price of 1 Itanium2-based system, depending on configuration. Some Itanium2-based workstations (not servers) would exceed $30K. It was rare to see a high-end workstation with Socket-F AMD 2-6 core Athlon64 or Opteron ever exceed $5-8K, although it could be done depending on GPUs, RAM, and storage options.
 
DejaWiz said:
The OEMs are just as much to blame, imo. I worked for HP in Enterprise Systems manufacturing and testing at the time the Athlon first appeared and there were ZERO offerings in the entire HP lineup to get one. As time went by and the heat was getting incrementally turned up by the FTC, Intel and OEMs tried to create their own loophole by allowing only around 5% of systems to contain AMD processors, be it Athlon or Opteron. The business desktops with AMD under the hood that came down the line were remarkably shoddy...the cheapest of materials and parts were used, and the price tags were intentionally over-inflated to help steer customers towards the more cost effective Intel-based offerings.

One saving grace for AMD getting a larger share of HP systems being sold: HP's embracement of RDRAM. That shit was so expensive at the time, we noticed a huge surge in AMD-based systems and more basic Intel DDR2-based systems such as those with a Celeron. People were avoiding the P4 + RDRAM systems like the plague because the computer had 50-300% higher cost depending on overall configuration and RAM capacity selected vs the DDR2 systems.

Other saving graces for AMD in the OEM world:
* Preliminary action laying the investigation groundwork by the FTC causing Intel and OEMs to back off of their grab-ass parties.
* Desktops and workstations offered with the Socket A K7 XP and MP models.
* Release of the vastly-improved and superior S754 Athlon64 (the very first x86-64 uProc), and Sempron (while Intel was embracing their dedicated IA-64 before caving to x86-64),
* Release of the even stronger S939 Athlon64, Sempron, and the game-changing X2, plus the Opteron variants that were a hit with SMP workstation and server customers.
* Release of the expensive Itanium2 with lackluster OS and software support that flopped hard, allowing Enterprise segment customers the ability to purchase at least four high-end AMD x86-64 multicore-based systems for the price of 1 Itanium2-based system, depending on configuration. Some Itanium2-based workstations (not servers) would exceed $30K. It was rare to see a high-end workstation with Socket-F AMD 2-6 core Athlon64 or Opteron ever exceed $5-8K, although it could be done depending on GPUs, RAM, and storage options.
Click to expand...

I hadn't heard of it from this perspective before. Interesting, and thanks for sharing!
 
Stimpy88 said:
Just makes me laugh that I nearly got banned from here by simply saying that AMD didn't have long to go a couple of months back...

The rats are running........
Click to expand...

Yeah and how surprising is it that you and all the others that having been yelling this for past years never been right.

Everytime Nvidia comes with a new video card , AMD is dead, everytime Intel makes a new cpu, AMD is dead.
 
DejaWiz said:
The OEMs are just as much to blame, imo. I worked for HP in Enterprise Systems manufacturing and testing at the time the Athlon first appeared and there were ZERO offerings in the entire HP lineup to get one.
Click to expand...
As we remember from other sources at the time, AMD was bragging about selling all the processors it produced without needing to advertise. That brings up the bigger point: when AMD was less capacity constrained, before it nabbed Dell as a customer, AMD processors ran into severe shortages throughout various supply sources after beginning to supply Dell.

While not getting certain business was a legitimate gripe, the reality was that AMD couldn't have supplied the chips even if it had that business. That leads to another problem, directly caused by Hector Ruiz. Instead of investing in a second fab when it made sense, he instead started playing big shot by giving out dividends (given AMD's history, rainy days necessitated planning) and bonuses. By the time AMD finally had increased capacity (2006), it was the beginning of game over with the release of Core 2.

Coulda, shoulda, woulda. Great for imaginary games, but complicated by the reality of Ruiz's total incompetence and success only in driving AMD into the ground.
 
DejaWiz said:
The OEMs are just as much to blame, imo. I worked for HP in Enterprise Systems manufacturing and testing at the time the Athlon first appeared and there were ZERO offerings in the entire HP lineup to get one. As time went by and the heat was getting incrementally turned up by the FTC, Intel and OEMs tried to create their own loophole by allowing only around 5% of systems to contain AMD processors, be it Athlon or Opteron. The business desktops with AMD under the hood that came down the line were remarkably shoddy...the cheapest of materials and parts were used, and the price tags were intentionally over-inflated to help steer customers towards the more cost effective Intel-based offerings.

One saving grace for AMD getting a larger share of HP systems being sold: HP's embracement of RDRAM. That shit was so expensive at the time, we noticed a huge surge in AMD-based systems and more basic Intel DDR2-based systems such as those with a Celeron. People were avoiding the P4 + RDRAM systems like the plague because the computer had 50-300% higher cost depending on overall configuration and RAM capacity selected vs the DDR2 systems.

Other saving graces for AMD in the OEM world:
* Preliminary action laying the investigation groundwork by the FTC causing Intel and OEMs to back off of their grab-ass parties.
* Desktops and workstations offered with the Socket A K7 XP and MP models.
* Release of the vastly-improved and superior S754 Athlon64 (the very first x86-64 uProc), and Sempron (while Intel was embracing their dedicated IA-64 before caving to x86-64),
* Release of the even stronger S939 Athlon64, Sempron, and the game-changing X2, plus the Opteron variants that were a hit with SMP workstation and server customers.
* Release of the expensive Itanium2 with lackluster OS and software support that flopped hard, allowing Enterprise segment customers the ability to purchase at least four high-end AMD x86-64 multicore-based systems for the price of 1 Itanium2-based system, depending on configuration. Some Itanium2-based workstations (not servers) would exceed $30K. It was rare to see a high-end workstation with Socket-F AMD 2-6 core Athlon64 or Opteron ever exceed $5-8K, although it could be done depending on GPUs, RAM, and storage options.
Click to expand...

A few clarifications
RDRAM didn't go against DDR2, but DDR1 and SDR
Athlon 64 debuted with socket 940 not socket 754.
 
Stoly said:
A few clarifications
RDRAM didn't go against DDR2, but DDR1 and SDR
Athlon 64 debuted with socket 940 not socket 754.
Click to expand...

RDRAM was around long enough to compete with DDR2.
The A64 did debut with S940, but almost no OEM offered them. Not until S754.
 
DejaWiz said:
RDRAM was around long enough to compete with DDR2.
The A64 did debut with S940, but almost no OEM offered them. Not until S754.
Click to expand...

Forgot to add: customer demand for S754 was certainly there because it was the platform that x86-64 debuted on. S940 did not.
 
Romale23 said:
Not going to happen the way things are done true. But AMD has been suffering from the same problem a lot of companies suffer from :shitty leadership who don't understand their own product. You fix that you can fix the company. I only say it because your saying sounds permanent. It's only to late to fix things once the company doesn't exist .
Click to expand...

AMD could simply be facing a competitor that is better, was there ahead of them, and continues to outspend them on R&D, funded by their premier position in the market, to stay out ahead of them.

The best management on the planet couldn't help AMD win the CPU battle with Intel. Intel is holding all the cards.

Things are only slightly less worse on the GPU front.
 
pxc said:
As we remember from other sources at the time, AMD was bragging about selling all the processors it produced without needing to advertise. That brings up the bigger point: when AMD was less capacity constrained, before it nabbed Dell as a customer, AMD processors ran into severe shortages throughout various supply sources after beginning to supply Dell.

While not getting certain business was a legitimate gripe, the reality was that AMD couldn't have supplied the chips even if it had that business. That leads to another problem, directly caused by Hector Ruiz. Instead of investing in a second fab when it made sense, he instead started playing big shot by giving out dividends (given AMD's history, rainy days necessitated planning) and bonuses. By the time AMD finally had increased capacity (2006), it was the beginning of game over with the release of Core 2.

Coulda, shoulda, woulda. Great for imaginary games, but complicated by the reality of Ruiz's total incompetence and success only in driving AMD into the ground.
Click to expand...


They certainly could have supplied the necessary volume: remember, there was a brief stint that the Athlon outsold the Pentium in global volume, counting retail and not just OEM.
 
DejaWiz said:
They certainly could have supplied the necessary volume: remember, there was a brief stint that the Athlon outsold the Pentium in global volume, counting retail and not just OEM.
Click to expand...

Ahh..... My first computer based upon the Intel ass kicking Athlon axia 1.33gjz socket 370 with the very first Nvidia George 3 from Visiontek. Those were the glory days......
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top