SUNNYVALE, Calif. — Jan. 10, 2011 — AMD (NYSE: AMD) today announced that its Board of Directors has appointed Senior Vice President and CFO Thomas Seifert, 47, as interim CEO following the resignation of Dirk Meyer, 49, as president, CEO and a director of the company effective immediately.
A CEO Search Committee has been formed to begin the search for a new CEO. The Committee is led by Bruce Claflin, Chairman of AMD’s Board of Directors, who has been named Executive Chairman of the Board as he assumes additional oversight responsibilities during the transition period. Seifert will maintain his current responsibilities as CFO and has asked not to be considered for the permanent CEO position.
“Dirk became CEO during difficult times. He successfully stabilized AMD while simultaneously concluding strategic initiatives including the launch of GLOBALFOUNDRIES, the successful settlement of our litigation with Intel and delivering Fusion APUs to the market,” said Claflin.
”However, the Board believes we have the opportunity to create increased shareholder value over time. This will require the company to have significant growth, establish market leadership and generate superior financial returns. We believe a change in leadership at this time will accelerate the company’s ability to accomplish these objectives.”
Seifert joined AMD in 2009, and has more than 20 years of general management, global operations and financial management expertise. Immediately prior to joining AMD, Seifert served as COO and CFO of Qimonda AG, where he led the formation and subsequent IPO of the company. At Infineon AG, Seifert served as senior vice president and general manager in its Wireless Business Group.
In commenting on Seifert, Claflin said, “During his tenure at AMD, Thomas helped strengthen the company’s balance sheet while demonstrating strong leadership and winning the respect of his peers. His operations and finance experience make him an excellent choice to guide the company as interim CEO.”
“AMD enters 2011 with considerable product and financial momentum. Our roadmap for the year, including our “Llano” APU and 32nm “Bulldozer” based processors remain on track,” said Seifert. “I believe we have significant opportunities to cement our leadership positions in several key market segments based on the strength of our upcoming products.”
AMD Announces Certain Preliminary Fourth Quarter 2010 Results
AMD is announcing certain preliminary results for the fourth quarter 2010. Fourth quarter revenue increased 2 percent sequentially to approximately $1.65 billion and gross margin was approximately 45 percent. In addition, the company reaffirms its 2011 annual financial guidance as disclosed at its Financial Analyst Day last November.
AMD plans to release its final results for the fourth quarter after market close on Thursday, January 20, 2011, with a conference call at 2 p.m. PT/5 p.m. ET to provide additional details.
Can you name them?
SB has integrated graphics which will affect AMD's low-end discreet GPU sales.
SB is much faster than anything AMD currently makes, sometimes by an order of magnitude. This domination is going to continue at least until Bulldozer comes out, and by most accounts, even afterward.
Wait...so the acting CEO for AMD is a guy whose resume boasts accomplishments involving Infineon and Qimonda? Does AMD go out of its way to collect execs who generate corporate carnage in their wake?
Heh, also the fact that Nvidia got more money from their settlement than AMD did has to be seen as a giant FAIL for AMD. My thinking, too, is that with the growing focus on mobile stuff, and AMD having a great product there, the board probably sees 2011 as a make-or-break year, and they want someone with a bit more "vision" (pun intended).
I have to take issue with this comment. Who is Robert and when did he say it was weak?
ATI is not a separate entity anymore. It would be like if Intel was being sold, and the condition of the sale stated that Intel's graphics tech would not be part of the deal.
Good luck with that.
Easily? But that doesn't change the fact that trying to separate the CPU and GPU is basically impossible at this point, for both AMD and Intel. And to do so would be crippling to both.Intel could easily be broken into piecies. Hardware development . Software development. Compiler development . Fabs , Ect. Ect . Ect . Ect
I agree with extra. AMD failed to make money, hence the rushed replacement.
Actually, I think moving to Core 2 was Otellini's idea. Barret stuck to relying on process technology strength for far too long. The Pentium 4 died when his CEO job ended.
Wait...so the acting CEO for AMD is a guy whose resume boasts accomplishments involving Infineon and Qimonda? Does AMD go out of its way to collect execs who generate corporate carnage in their wake?
Wait...so the acting CEO for AMD is a guy whose resume boasts accomplishments involving Infineon and Qimonda? Does AMD go out of its way to collect execs who generate corporate carnage in their wake?
I guess they prefer reckless, loud-mouth CEOs to someone who seemed to be low-key, and can designed a good cpu for them.
I didn't hear much from Meyer during his reign compared to the constant BS from Ruiz and Sanders talking about how great they were while bleeding the company dry and leaving it to Meyers to clean up.
Ouch. Nvidia working with Intel for on die gpu.
"Intel and NVIDIA have announced a six-year, $1.5 billion dollar technology cross-licensing deal that marks the end of a long patent dispute between the two chipmakers. On a conference call this afternoon, NVIDIA representatives described the agreement as a way to extend each company's access to the other's technology. "
Mind sharing where SB is an order of magnitude faster than an AMD X6 1100T?
In almost all benchmarks. It's pretty sad when amd's 260 dollar flagship gets slapped around by Intel's "Mainstream" 229 dollar Quad core
http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/288?vs=203
i see exactly one bench where AMD is behind by an order of magnitude
Intel could easily be broken into piecies. Hardware development . Software development. Compiler development . Fabs , Ect. Ect . Ect . Ect
He is a good friend . About 2 weeks ago . I said this in another topic the other day . Today wasn't the first time.
Four tries, all in a row. Wrong each time. Three letters in total, so not that hard to get right.
Fermi would be so badass on Intel's 32nm Process
Correction: NVIDIA wrote in to tell us that our original headline was not accurate. An NVIDIA spokesperson said, "Licensing a technology is different than incorporating an entire processor. The settlement provides Intel with access to our IP and patents, such as Sandy Bridge which already uses NVIDIA technology. The license enables Intel to extend that model for the next 6 years."
Also, I deleted the following text from the article: "On the Intel side, NVIDIA CEO Jen-Hsuan confirmed that Intel could use the licensing agreement to produce a Sandy Bridge successor with an on-die GPU based on NVIDIA technology." It looks like NVIDIA's stance is that there's already NVIDIA IP in the Sandy Bridge IGP, because Sandy Bridge's GPU infringes on NVIDIA patents. This wrinkle wasn't at all clear from the announcement or the call—at least, it wasn't clear to me.
Does it really matter the percentage behind? The problem is it's behind at all with two extra cores.
Handheld and Tablet market isn't as important to AMD because they are not in the dominant position of the market they are in right now. So a delay in getting such chips might not be such a bad thing.
What kind of a source is that???
If you say "My friend Robert...who has connections...etc"
Otherwise it's just bullshit hearsay and meant to stoke the fires dude!
Bad week in the x86 land.
Handheld and Tablet market isn't as important to AMD because they are not in the dominant position of the market they are in right now. So a delay in getting such chips might not be such a bad thing.
It looks like the Brazos platform is at least semi-successful, and its impossible for them to lose all of the laptop and desktop market even if Bulldozer and Llano under-delivers. Their ASPs are already so low, so transitioning to Brazos is less painful. Can't really be worse off than they are now can they?
Nemesis-ian.