AMD Look For New CEO (Again) Dirk Meyer Gone

[AngelfireUk83]

DIRK MEYER, AMD CEO, has been knifed in what has been described as a "mutual agreement" with the company's board of directors.

According to the Wall Street Journal Meyer cleaned out his desk yesterday and AMD announced that it was seeking a new CEO to boost the company's growth. Shares plummeted 4 per cent in after-hours trading.

Chief Financial Officer Thomas Seifert will become interim CEO, effective immediately, as the company looks for a permanent replacement.

Meyer, 49, headed the team that developed one of AMD's most successful chips before becoming CEO in 2008 and his exit has floored many analysts.

Gleacher & Company analyst Doug Freedman told Reuters that the outfit must be suffering from a loss of momentum. Of course that does not explain why they did not see the writing on the wall for Meyer.

AMD insists that there were no financial or performance issues with Meyer, but equally they did not say how long this plan has been in the works.

However deep throats with the AMD board said that Meyer was brilliant at stabilizing Chimpzilla and had turned it around. However now it wanted someone to accelerate the company's growth.

Word on the street is that it was the shift to mobile chips that did it for Meyer and that he did not see the transition to x86 chips quick enough.

Nvidia's new Tegra 2 mobile chip was showcased in several new smartphones and tablet devices at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas and this did not help Meyer.

AMD bought ATI in 2006 for $5.4 billion and has much of the technology to develop chips for mobile computing but it did not optimise it for the tablet market and for lightweight mobile computing. They decided to stay traditional and go after notebooks.

Meyer's claim to fame was that he oversaw AMD as it spun off its manufacturing arm into a separate company. Although that cunning plan was designed by his processor.

He turned AMD around but to be honest they havent really released anything since thats improved for the company.

 

[QuietIce]

I think they parted under good terms. He did what they hired him to do, now they're going a new direction and looking for someone with a different skill set.

 

[AlabamaCajun]

Anyone think it had anything to do with the sand'e brige dump on the market?



*Misspelling to keep search bots off the trail.

 

[QuietIce]

I doubt it - but I guess you never know ...

 

[EarthDog]

To keep search bots off the trail wut?

Yeah I doubt that too. Like QI said, looks to be moving in a different direction, but who really knows.

 

[madhatter256]

AMD, for a while, hasn't really put anything out that made Intel rethink its strategy.

 

[ChanceCoats123]

^^^ Agreed. While I love their products, prices and non-shady business practices, I will admit that they have been playing catch-up for a while now. They need a big time leap forward or intel will just be running away with it. A new CEO might just be the guy to do that.

 

[Dooms101]

I agree, they're been chasing after Intel for sometime. Ever since the first Core series chips (what was that like 2006? Idr...). I thought that Bull Dozer was supposed to be the big change that would put AMD face to face with big blue. I guess they want someone else to insure that happens.

 

[Zerix01]

They mention Tegra 2. Really Nvidia has been talking about Tegra since 2007 and only now are able to get it in cell phones other than a few quickly failed MS phones (the KIN). AMD had enough time to slap a small GPU into a package with a few ARM processors and get it to market faster than Nvidia.

 

[Over_G]

So they let him go because he didn't give into the tablet fad crap?
Tablets aren't conveniently productive,you have to hold it with one hand and type onto the screen with the other.

 

[Zerix01]

My point was more about a mobile platform in general. Tegra will be in phones this year not just tablets. Given the volume of android phone sales just last year alone AMD missed out on some needed revenue.

Edit: not saying that is a good reason to get rid of a CEO but they could have gotten ahead of a competitor if they paid attention to the mobile market.

 

[kayson]

So they let him go because he didn't give into the tablet fad crap?
Tablets aren't conveniently productive,you have to hold it with one hand and type onto the screen with the other.

I'm half with you on this one. Just because Apple released a successful tablet and all the other companies are copying it doesn't make it a worthwhile market to enter. That being said, from AMD's standpoint, a cpu designed for tablets could also have applications in other low power products like netbooks or smartphones. I think it went a little deeper than just the tablet thing though. And it doesn't seem like it was a very pretty situation. From what I understand he was sort of forced out.

 

[YoshiMon]

I thought this was a decent writeup about the 'sins' that Dirk committed that lead to his removal: http://www.brightsideofnews.com/news/2011/1/10/coup-at-amd-dirk-meyer-pushed-out.aspx

While with the Apple PR machine going at full blast, both of their own accord and the reality distortion effect that it generates within the industry, tablets sure do have a lot of buzz. However I think it's much more about the overall mobile market that includes a lot of very growth orientated products that AMD has nothing really to show for. And if I have read right it was because of Dirk who wanted AMD to focus and sold off their SOC type tech.

 

[aries2110]

Here's hoping AMD release an iPad competitor that runs on Windows now

 

[AngelfireUk83]

AMD's mobile just needs a kickstart up the a** I have found it hard to even find a decent AMD CPU/Chipset laptop in my local Computer shop there's mainly INTEL lappys.

I've just wanted to see one and test it out etc but can never find a decent one for around £500 I've resorted to looking on the net still looking in fact.

 

[ScorpiDragon]

My main grips are as follows:

1/ Finding an AMD powered laptop is really hard, as I need one with 17" screen.
2/ AMD pulled out of the high-end PC/budget server market, whereas Intel remained in that market. How about an Opteron FX CPU (BD powered) for the overclockers on the C32 socket
3/ AMD totally ignored the tablet market and that has finally taken off.

 

[QuietIce]

AMD's mobile just needs a kickstart up the a** I have found it hard to even find a decent AMD CPU/Chipset laptop in my local Computer shop there's mainly INTEL lappys.

I've just wanted to see one and test it out etc but can never find a decent one for around £500 I've resorted to looking on the net still looking in fact.

I think AMD realized that, which is why they concintrated on and released Bobcat first instead of BUlldozer. If you look at the power figures for Bobcat it's WAY ahead of the compitition.