Friday, January 25th 2019
AMD Re-structures Leadership Team; James Prior Leaves AMD
Let me be the first to say that the two may not be directly related, but it is an awfully strong coincidence that both pieces of news come out on the same day. Indeed, earlier in the day AMD put out a press release (full release past the break) announcing "multiple organizational changes focused on strengthening the company's senior leadership team and accelerating growth." Several familiar names have been promoted within the company to be in charge of more products and visions across their CPU and GPU business units. Mark Papermaster, for example, is now an executive VP as well as CTO of AMD, and the company has also hired in new talent, including industry veteran Sandeep Chennakeshu, as executive VP of "Computing and Graphics responsible for the company's high-performance PC, gaming and semi-custom businesses".
Perhaps all this re-structuring and new hiring comes in handy, at a time when we have seen several people leave AMD for Intel or otherwise. Indeed, shortly after that press release went out, word got to us that James Prior, Senior Product Manager for AMD, and an ardent employee for nearly 6 years, is no longer working for the company. We have no word yet on what is next for James, but it was more than a small surprise to know that the person you just spoke with at CES, and had a long conversation of AMD's desktop processors, is gone just like that. We have known James for many years now, and can attest to his work ethics as well as being a great guy all-round. We wish him the best in his future ventures, and look forward to also seeing how AMD's re-structuring turns out.
The AMD press release follows below:
AMD today announced multiple organizational changes focused on strengthening the company's senior leadership team and accelerating growth.
AMD will unify all sales operations under Darren Grasby, senior vice president and chief sales officer. Grasby will now lead the global sales and go-to-market activities across all product lines, channels and regions. Previously, Grasby was responsible for worldwide sales to PC manufacturers and channel partners. -- AMD has hired industry veteran Sandeep Chennakeshu into a new position as executive vice president of Computing and Graphics responsible for the company's high-performance PC, gaming and semi-custom businesses. Chennakeshu brings extensive semiconductor experience, a deep technology understanding from a systems and software perspective, and extensive general management experience. He has spent the last 30 years serving in multiple senior engineering and executive roles at Ericsson, Freescale, Sony and Blackberry. -- As the datacenter business continues to grow in importance for AMD, Forrest Norrod, senior vice president and general manager, Datacenter and Embedded Solutions Group, will now have responsibility for all AMD datacenter products across both CPUs and GPUs. -- AMD is promoting Mark Papermaster to executive vice president and CTO in recognition of his leadership in driving the technology vision and roadmap execution of the company.
"2019 marks an important inflection point for AMD as we prepare to launch our next-generation high-performance 7nm products," said Dr. Lisa Su, AMD president and CEO. "I am excited to strengthen and align our leadership team around our customers and end markets to sharpen our focus on continued growth and market share gains."
Source:
James Prior, on Twitter
Perhaps all this re-structuring and new hiring comes in handy, at a time when we have seen several people leave AMD for Intel or otherwise. Indeed, shortly after that press release went out, word got to us that James Prior, Senior Product Manager for AMD, and an ardent employee for nearly 6 years, is no longer working for the company. We have no word yet on what is next for James, but it was more than a small surprise to know that the person you just spoke with at CES, and had a long conversation of AMD's desktop processors, is gone just like that. We have known James for many years now, and can attest to his work ethics as well as being a great guy all-round. We wish him the best in his future ventures, and look forward to also seeing how AMD's re-structuring turns out.
AMD today announced multiple organizational changes focused on strengthening the company's senior leadership team and accelerating growth.
AMD will unify all sales operations under Darren Grasby, senior vice president and chief sales officer. Grasby will now lead the global sales and go-to-market activities across all product lines, channels and regions. Previously, Grasby was responsible for worldwide sales to PC manufacturers and channel partners. -- AMD has hired industry veteran Sandeep Chennakeshu into a new position as executive vice president of Computing and Graphics responsible for the company's high-performance PC, gaming and semi-custom businesses. Chennakeshu brings extensive semiconductor experience, a deep technology understanding from a systems and software perspective, and extensive general management experience. He has spent the last 30 years serving in multiple senior engineering and executive roles at Ericsson, Freescale, Sony and Blackberry. -- As the datacenter business continues to grow in importance for AMD, Forrest Norrod, senior vice president and general manager, Datacenter and Embedded Solutions Group, will now have responsibility for all AMD datacenter products across both CPUs and GPUs. -- AMD is promoting Mark Papermaster to executive vice president and CTO in recognition of his leadership in driving the technology vision and roadmap execution of the company.
"2019 marks an important inflection point for AMD as we prepare to launch our next-generation high-performance 7nm products," said Dr. Lisa Su, AMD president and CEO. "I am excited to strengthen and align our leadership team around our customers and end markets to sharpen our focus on continued growth and market share gains."
29 Comments on AMD Re-structures Leadership Team; James Prior Leaves AMD
I don't know which areas who will cover as both are in the leadership
www.amd.com/en/corporate/leadership
You've been doing so much right lately....60% of the PC's in my house is ryzen based..... you gotta fight it don't go!!!
don't......awe man.........
He was only SPM for 1yr 8m. Probably got promoted and things didn't pan out.
RTG really needs all the resources now if their cpu lineup confidence is anything to judge by they can :)
So basically all the people that left were more or less expandable, replaceable within hours.
Here though, its a little confusing to me, "I now longer work for AMD (smiley face)" ? makes me feel he really wanted to get out of there or something.
2nd, Intel has been waiting for Prior.
"Finance" is not just about preparing financial statements. It's also about investing, about securing R&D funds and about having a safe, financially stable and respectable business.
"Marketing" is not just about convincing clients that they want your product. It's also about learning what they need and what they're willing to pay for.
And AMD is behind competition on all of these things.
And you know how focusing on engineering, while putting less work into things like marketing and finance, ends?
It ends with having a fine product that they don't know how to sell. Or something that no one wants to buy. It ends with a stock value that has more to do with tweets than AMD financial situation.
And, ultimately, it usually ends with changes.
Because you know how we call organizations that concentrate on making good product and ignore business matters and high-level management? We call them "subsidiaries". :)Yeah, it feels pretty weird seeing people knowing and caring so much about AMD management. Do these people also care as much who's a sales or product manager at their favourite shoe maker? Or food chain?
I follow a few computer-related forums online and comparing how much people know about AMD CEO and a computer itself, I'd rather just see them read about "semiconductor" on wikipedia.
Which takes us to an interesting issue.
@W1zzard - after TPU gave us all this wonderful content about cryptocurrencies, AMD's corporate structure, Intel's financial statements and so on, is there a possibility of seeing some articles about engineering? Or programming?
It seems, and I'm sure many of us concur, that TPU ambitions reach far beyond overclocking and fps. As the cryptocurrency idea didn't really catch on - why not try a different one? :)