Statement from AMD - Raja Koduri Leaves

FrgMstr

FrgMstr

Just Plain Mean
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Earlier today, we announced two unrelated updates for our Radeon Technologies Group: 1) Raja Koduri has decided to leave AMD and 2) we are taking the next steps in our work to further strengthen RTG by streamlining and focusing the organization on key growth areas.

I wanted to also make sure you understood these updates do not impact our plans or the strategic direction we are driving our graphics business. We appreciate the contributions Raja has made helping establish our dedicated graphics focus and strong team that is capable of accomplishing the ambitious goals we have set for this part of our business. Also want to make sure it is clear that there are no changes to our public product or technology graphics roadmaps, and we remain on track to deliver on our commitments in 2018 and beyond. Lisa will continue to lead RTG on an interim basis while we complete our search for a new leader.

We have made significant progress across AMD these past two years delivering the first wave of our high-performance products, best exemplified by our improved financial performance and year-over-year market share gains across all of our client, graphics and server products. Today’s changes are designed to allow us to better take advantage of the significant growth opportunities in front of us.
 
Welp, you mentioned earlier that you didn't think he was coming back - and there it is!

As for your thoughts on RTG and their future... Scott a good pick? seems pretty natural to promote the VP...
 
He's a smart guy. I wish him luck. The problem is the hype and lack of delivery. With AMD that is standard most of the time. I just read that article. Wow I knew about some issues and not the full story it seems. I see the problem already. Well let's hope leaving calms him down.
 
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fuzzylogik said:
As for your thoughts on RTG and their future... Scott a good pick? seems pretty natural to promote the VP...
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He is already VP. :)

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I have been hearing a lot of good things about his actions at AMD. The last time I talked to Scott, he still had that "I love gaming" feel to him. And that has done a lot to drive him in the past
 
Well, there goes the stock. $10 im calling it.

Im assuming Raja's previous jobs let him pick and choose where he wants to go, so hopefully hes got a few passion projects to enjoy.
 
fuzzylogik said:
(I suppose I should have said "promote the VP to Raja's position" heh!) - That's always a good thing... having a person that actually has a passion for the thing they're building? :)
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Well Scott is not an engineer, but I think his enthusiasm and business savvy could be good at the top.
 
Zarathustra[H] said:
Makes me wonder if this really is a matter of "focusing on family" or if Raja lost the fight when it comes to keeping RTG independent after the Intel deal, now that AMD's CPU business is starting to make money again, and that's why he left.
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Might be where the problems between Lisa Su and he were, on the deal. All signs point to this.
 
I am taking bets that he shows up at Apple or NVIDIA in a couple weeks... :)
 
May also be why they brought on Mark Durcan to the board there. Was the CEO of Micron. Proven leadership.
 
my first thought when vega was released, is that Raja needed to go, he brought nothing to Radeon but empty promisses, more drinking and cringy jokes.
AMD needs to infuse money into the graphic division to build seperate gaming and pro GPUs, stop this jack of all trades and master of none chips, they need to understand that gaming is what shapes the mindshare of the brand and that inevitably impacts pro segement.
 
alamox said:
my first thought when vega was released, is that Raja needed to go, he brought nothing to Radeon but empty promisses, more drinking and cringy jokes.
AMD needs to infuse money into the graphic division to build seperate gaming and pro GPUs, stop this jack of all trades and master of none chips, they need to understand that gaming is what shapes the mindshare of the brand and that inevitably impacts pro segement.
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So you blame Raja but then go on to say AMD needs to infuse more money into RTG... which is it, lack of funding or Raja's incompetence? Could it be Raja was hamstrung by their lack of funding?
 
To my AMD family,

Forty is a significant number in history. It is a number representing transition, testing and change. I have just spent forty days away from the office going through such a transition. It was an important time with my family, and it also offered me a rare space for reflection. During this time I have come to the extremely difficult conclusion that it is time for me to leave RTG and AMD.

I have no question in my mind that RTG, and AMD, are marching firmly in the right direction as high-performance computing becomes ever-more-important in every aspect of our lives. I believe wholeheartedly in what we are doing with Vega, Navi and beyond, and I am incredibly proud of how far we have come and where we are going. The whole industry has stood up and taken notice of what we are doing. As I think about how computing will evolve, I feel more and more that I want to pursue my passion beyond hardware and explore driving broader solutions.

I want to thank Lisa and the AET for enabling me to pursue my passion during the last four years at AMD, and especially the last two years with RTG. Lisa has my utmost respect for exhibiting the courage to enable me with RTG, for believing in me and for going out of her way to support me. I would also like to call out Mark Papermaster who brought me into AMD, for his huge passion for technology and for his relentless support through many difficult phases. And of course, I want to thank each and every one of my direct staff and my indirect staff who have worked so hard with me to build what we have now got. I am very proud of the strong leaders we have and I'm fully confident that they can execute on the compelling roadmap ahead.

I will continue to be an ardent fan and user of AMD technologies for both personal and professional use.

As I mentioned, leaving AMD and RTG has been an extremely difficult decision for me. But I felt it is the right one for me personally at this point. Time will tell. I will be following with great interest the progress you will make over the next several years.

On a final note, I have asked a lot of you in the last two years. You've always delivered. You've made me successful both personally and professionally, for which I thank you all from the bottom of my heart. I have these final requests from you as I leave:

. Stay focused on the roadmap!
. Deliver on your commitments!
. Continue the culture of Passion, Persistence and Play!
. Make AMD proud!
. Make me proud!

Yours,
Raja
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alamox said:
my first thought when vega was released, is that Raja needed to go, he brought nothing to Radeon but empty promisses, more drinking and cringy jokes.
AMD needs to infuse money into the graphic division to build seperate gaming and pro GPUs, stop this jack of all trades and master of none chips, they need to understand that gaming is what shapes the mindshare of the brand and that inevitably impacts pro segement.
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Can't blame Raja for Vega. Vega is still based on southern islands. The first true Raja led design from scratch will be Navi.
 
Tyns said:
So you blame Raja but then go on to say AMD needs to infuse more money into RTG... which is it, lack of funding or Raja's incompetence? Could it be Raja was hamstrung by their lack of funding?
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I believe that is why we didn't see a truly new GPU design in Vega. Funding prohibited anything but yet another re-spun and shrunk Southern Islands.
 
Zarathustra[H] said:
Time will tell.

I think k that generally the problem with U.S. business is that we promote too many accountants and marketing people to the top jobs.

You like GM style badge engineering? Because that's how you get GM style badge engineering. :p

Scott could obviously be an exception. I don't know him, and there is no such thing as a hard and fast rule on this subject.

I trust your judgment.
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Scott was with VisionTek and BFG back in the day. He has been around the GPU market for a good long while.
 
Raja sounds better on paper than Scott, because diversity.

Joke aside, I with them the both of luck and for a great future.
 
Seeing AMD compete against Nvidia, is like watching a Monday Night football blowout.

Begins with excitement, but quickly disappointed.
 
5150Joker said:
Lol well both companies are dead so let’s hope he does a better job with RTG. I think we all knew Raja was on his way out after Vega, it was probably all the ammunition Lisa needed to get him out.
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I think there was a lot of distrust there and she wanted to get the GPU out then move forward....just my opinion. I like Raja, great guy, had many a drink with him, but I don't think Lisa likes his style. Just my 2 cents.

5150Joker said:
AMD is so dysfunctional that no amount of executive reorganization is going to save it.
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I have to disagree. I feel more confident about AMD as an organization right now than I have in a long time. A lot of folks have/are being shuffled around, and most for good reason. I think we may be seeing an AMD rebirth. We will see how it goes.
 
Well, I called it when he took his "leave".

Yet the always unhappy people in here called me all kind of names because of my comment.

Oh well, good luck Raja.
 
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vegeta535 said:
I dont know if that really is a promotion lol. He inheriting a major mess.
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Well, on the business side of things I think Scott could very much thrive and help get GPUs focused by on gaming. The Bethesda partnership is could be a huge boon going forward if they can get hardware straightened out. We say it is a mess now, but the fact is that AMD is selling every single GPU that it can produce.
 
Zarathustra[H] said:
I believe that is why we didn't see a truly new GPU design in Vega. Funding prohibited anything but yet another re-spun and shrunk Southern Islands.
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They say programmers are 1% of the general population
They say good web programmers are 1% of programmers.
Good game programmers are 1% of that
Good 3D circuit designers and driver developers are 1% of that.

Finding good talent is hard. You have to do exceptionally well at math, and circuit design, and 3D lighting concepts. There's a incredibly small percentage of the population that's good at all 3. I mean an engineer can write rough code which converts to circuits. But tuning that, and understanding that code and the signaling it truly a special talent. While a lot of us like to *@#$@! about how much the performance sucks, you don't realize what a small miracle exist in every one of these GPU's.
 
Lisa will have to fire his merry band of misfits as well.
Have to get everyone back on the same page. Efficient and fast.

Step 1: Only use HBM in professional products.
Step 2: Stop the lame marketing events.
Step 3: Concentrate on making a top card that battles the Titan line from day 1, trickle down from there.
Step 4: Make enough stock
Step 5: Only implement software/hardware that is needed in the very near future. Speed wins the race.
 
vegeta535 said:
This is true but it was mostly cause of mining. Vega prices have been coming down so it is starting to be kinda competitive but still think the stock of Vega been low from day one.
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Doesn't matter if it's mining or not. The point is that is money in RTG's pocket for next gen work.
 
WorldExclusive said:
Lisa will have to fire his merry band of misfits as well.
Have to get everyone back on the same page. Efficient and fast.

Step 1: Only use HBM in professional products.
Step 2: Stop the lame marketing events.
Step 3: Concentrate on making a top card that battles the Titan line from day 1, trickle down from there.
Step 4: Make enough stock
Step 5: Only implement software/hardware that is needed in the very near future. Speed wins the race.
Click to expand...

Lame marketing events and premature PR releases are the only thing propping the stock up. You think it was coincidental that they announced their Intel collaboration yesterday after their stock got slammed? Maybe even to coincide with Raja's departure. Why announce now if devices won't even ship until Q2? "Don't buy anything for the holidays, we have this coming up in April"...
 
My BFG GTX 260 was the last graphics card that I purchased from BFG Tech. All of my Nvidia cards (and even the PhysX accelerator) were from BFG until they folded (I switched to EVGA because they were the next close thing). With that being said, I hope Scott takes his vast experience and move RTG to the next level (a competitive or Nvidia-killer gpu and stable drivers).
 
I can tell you from personal experience that I created a number of architectures from the ground up and successfully released them. So I'm going to indulge a bit of my experience:

The first was a dependency injected data collection and analysis piece. It allowed you to inject the collection hardware, the data smoothing algorithm, and the analysis engine. It even had a simulation mode that allowed you to upload datasets and test the results of the engine before you actually tried it on live objects. It was the same engine that offloaded the Mexican hat algorithm onto the GPU to collect mass spec samples as they were in flight. But after I left the project died even though it sold for a very handsome sum per seat. No one understood it though. So the product was never really updated.

With product #2, however I was needed in other areas of the company, so I was pulled and responsibility for those architectures shifted to very capable people. I spent a week training them and wrote a 120+ page document to train them on the step by step process of the architecture. It was basically "If you implement these interfaces" I guarantee it to work. It was successfully implemented by several product branches using my successor. But when I came back 4 years later, I noticed my code became a mess with tons of patches which I would have never allowed. I don't want to say it was sloppy. But it's not something I would have personally allowed. But the important thing is, it still worked and was mostly true to it's original design.

So if I applied my own personal experience here, I would say Navi won't go as smooth as Raj probably envisioned it. But if he trained his people really well with his vision, they can pick up the ball and run with it. If they make it their own, they will succeed. If he didn't properly train them, then it might not go so well.
 
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