Scott Herkelman Announces His Departure from AMD

[GFreeman]

Scott Herkelman, Senior Vice President and General Manager of AMD's Graphics Business Unit, has announced that he will be leaving AMD at the end of this year. As noted in his Twitter post, he spent last seven years at AMD, and launches three generations of RDNA graphics architectures. Scott Herkelman is a veteran of the industry, and was General Manager for GeForce at NVIDIA back in the day. After briefly switching to a start-up, he then joined AMD back in 2016 as Vice President and General Manager of Graphics Business Unit, the role he held for seven years while becoming Senior Vice President in 2022.

Scott said farewell to his colleagues in a brief Twitter post, and we are are certainly looking forward to see where he will be going next, as Scott is a PC and a gaming industry fan, through and through. Meanwhile, as spotted by Videocardz.com and according to AMD's own website, Jack Huynh will take over at the Senior Vice President and General Manager of AMD's Graphics Business Unit.

UPDATE: As pointed out by some comments and a couple of readers, Jack Huynh will not replace Scott Herkelman. Jack Huynh replaced Rick Bergman back in April as Senior Vice President and General Manager of AMD's Graphics Business Unit.



Here is his full Twitter post.

"After seven years at AMD and launching three increasingly competitive generations of RDNA graphics architectures, I have decided to leave AMD at the end of this year.

Godspeed @amdradeon

I will miss every single one of you, fighting shoulder to shoulder in the trenches together, the excitement we shared during new product launches, and the joy of being in the arena for this wonderful, vibrant industry.

May you continue to punch above your weight class and one day… beat the final boss."

View at TechPowerUp Main Site | Source

 

[mclaren85]

Is that mean Nvidia GPUs will be more expensive for the next couple of years?

 

[sLowEnd]

Good luck to him in his new endeavours.

 

[Dr. Dro]

Is that mean Nvidia GPUs will be more expensive for the next couple of years?

Why on Earth would Scott leaving AMD mean that Nvidia is hiking their prices?

 

[Denver]

Is that mean Nvidia GPUs will be more expensive for the next couple of years?

Hmm... yes, that is the trend, but it has no relation to the content of the article.

 

[P4-630]

I heared he's going to intel now..

 

[mclaren85]

Why on Earth would Scott leaving AMD mean that Nvidia is hiking their prices?

Less innovation means less competition with Nvidia, so indirectly the prices may hike

 

[Dr. Dro]

Less innovation means less competition with Nvidia, so indirectly the prices may hike

That's a silly concern, AMD has lost that battle a very long time ago. The Radeon division needs fresh leadership.

 

[mclaren85]

That's a silly concern, AMD has lost that battle a very long time ago. The Radeon division needs fresh leadership.

Btw, I still trust Lisa Su.

 

[Denver]

Less innovation means less competition with Nvidia, so indirectly the prices may hike

Scott leaving will have less innovation because what? He will steal all the GPU designs already planned and the army of engineers from AMD? lol

There are many factors that could make the prices continue their upward trend; demand for the AI market pushing down the allocation of production capacity for gaming GPUs, lack of competition for TSMC, ASML's monopoly, manufacturing processes that no longer deliver significant advances in relation to rising costs, political tensions, war... but Scott is not one of those factors.

 

[Chrispy_]

Thank you for calling Twitter Twitter, and not X

 

[HisDivineOrder]

Btw, I still trust Lisa Su.

She doesn't seem to care about making AMD competitive with Nvidia, so in the context of GPU's I don't know why anyone would. Back when AMD wasn't challenging Nvidia's RT performance initially, well, it made sense. It takes time to make a GPU. But three generations have passed. Still, AMD looks like they're the S3 of modern GPU's and not trying to do much to fix that.

They could have boosted that performance if that was the plan and made themselves worthy of being "almost as expensive as" Nvidia, but instead they're just following Nvidia price tends minus $50-100 in the majority of tiers and slightly more raster with incredibly less RT. Like the cheapest Nvidia card often trashes the most expensive AMD card at RT.

Even Intel, poor plucky Intel late to the party and with drivers just out of the oven, knew they had to show up with good RT. Intel is actually killing the driver game compared to AMD, too. It's sad to see how far behind AMD's fallen. If they didn't have consoles and handhelds, their GPU business would be horrendous and nothing they are broadcasting about the next gen inspires any feeling of excitement or enthusiasm.

Lisa's putting GPU's to the side while she got the CPU ship right made sense at the time. Lisa still putting GPU's to the side looks horrible now from the outside looking in. It leaves us at the mercy of Nvidia and don't they know it. Jensen's loving him some Lisa.

 

[Kaotik]

VideoCardz stuff is bogus, Jack Huynh has held that position since Rick Bergman retired in April (https://www.amd.com/en/newsroom/pre...jack-huynh-senior-vice-president-and-gen.html)
Scott Herkelman was SVP & GM of Graphics Business Unit
Jack Huynh is and was SVP & GM of Computing and Graphics Group

 

[ViperXZ]

Great guy, sad to see him go, but that's life. Hopefully his successor will be up to the job

 

[AusWolf]

I never understand the "I will miss you all and the great times" posts coming from someone who's leaving without a plan on where to go next.

Great guy, sad to see him go, but that's life. Hopefully his successor will be up to the job

Agreed.

 

[wolf]

I hope this leads to better launches and better competition from Radeon. Not to lay all the blame at Scott's feet of course, but there have been SO many missed/squandered/bungled opportunities by the Graphics Business Unit over the past few years. So many.

 

[delshay]

He knows it's going to be tough if the rumors are true AMD are pulling out of the high end market.

 

[Hxx]

Less innovation means less competition with Nvidia, so indirectly the prices may hike

like this dude is the only guy at AMD working on GPUs. Those top level roles have little to do with innovation

 

[Soul_]

He was a con man anyways, him and that Frank Azor guy, both of them bringing AMD's GPU reputation down, one generation at a time. Gone are the 7970 and 290x days, or the 9800xt days, my first ATI card..

 

[dj-electric]

I wonder if he is going to join Robert. Intel seem to have big plans for 2024 in the graphics division

 

[nguyen]

Well I guess he "jebaited" himself this time LOL

 

[ZoneDymo]

Good, now get rid of that Alienware muppet and all will be right in the world

 

[Prima.Vera]

like this dude is the only guy at AMD working on GPUs. Those top level roles have little to do with innovation

This so far from the truth, is ridiculous. You have no ideea how a corporation functions and why there is this structure.
The decision making person is x1000 more important, even then the most talented engineer in the company.

Anyways, the rumours are he is going to Intel, so probably he is going to bring some talented force with him.
Hopefully Intel will become much more competitive with him and especially after the scammer Raja left.

 

[Chomiq]

I never understand the "I will miss you all and the great times" posts coming from someone who's leaving without a plan on where to go next.

Once you're at that level you usually have a plan, even if you don't announce it right after.

 

[ZoneDymo]

This so far from the truth, is ridiculous. You have no ideea how a corporation functions and why there is this structure.
The decision making person is x1000 more important, even then the most talented engineer in the company.

Anyways, the rumours are he is going to Intel, so probably he is going to bring some talented force with him.
Hopefully Intel will become much more competitive with him and especially after the scammer Raja left.

Yeah no.