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Hardware AMD's CEO Steps Down
Brandon Hill (Blog) - July 17, 2008 5:59 PM
Print E-mail del.icio.us 74 comment(s) - last by Parker75.. on Jul 22 at 6:13 PM

Former AMD CEO, Hector Ruiz  (Source: Impress Watch)
AMD CEO Hector Ruiz will be replaced by Dirk Meyer

AMD has seen its share of ups and downs over the years, but the company has had it especially hard ever since its acquisition of ATI Technologies in 2006. Since then, the company has experienced numerous quarters of losses, announced job cuts, and has watched as top executives abandoned the chip giant.

Most recently, AMD announced that it would take another $880 million USD charge due to the poor performance of ATI's Consumer electronics division.

Today, AMD CEO Hector Ruiz stepped down from his position with the company. Ruiz joined the company in January 2000 and became CEO in April 2002. Ruiz will be replaced by the current Number 2 in charge, Dirk Meyer. Ruiz will stay on as the executive chairman of AMD's Board of Directors.

The future looks uncertain as the man who has become the face of AMD moves on to greener pastures. Meyer will have to find a way to get AMD back on a track to profitability and get its first 45nm processors out the door to combat Intel.

Ruiz's departure comes at a time when AMD is trying to fight off a surging Intel. Intel just recently announced a 25 percent increase in quarterly profits at the same time AMD was reporting losses. Intel also this week launched its Centrino 2 platform which aims to take much of the air out of AMD's Puma platform.

AMD, however, has obtained better success on the graphics front with its new Radeon HD 4850 and 4870 graphics cards which are the current "bang for the buck" kings. AMD garnered so much praise from reviewers and consumers alike that NVIDIA responded with price cuts to its recently introduced GeForce GTX 260 and GTX 280 graphics cards.

AMD may also have a little bit of help on its side in the form of an official FTC investigation into Intel's business behavior. But the fact remains, whatever the outcome of the FTC investigation, AMD still has to deliver a competitive product to stay alive in this cutthroat industry.

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And people say politics is shallow?
By Justin Case on 7/17/2008 11:53:42 PM , Rating: 5
AMD ran into some problems (mainly by tring to grow too quickly - something that almost destroyed Apple a few years ago), but overall Ruiz's strategy was correct. It was just a bit too ambitious, and relied on everyhing running perfectly (which it never does).

I think his departure is more of a political or marketing move than anything else, but the economy is as shallow as politics, these days, and people tend to focus on the bottom line and ignore long-term strategy.

Acquiring ATI was a big short-term risk, but not aquiring ATI would have been long-term suicide. I was never a big fan of Ruiz, but that move showed some balls and some vision, and I respected him a lot more after it.

Dirk Meyer is (was) a great engineer, but designing chips and running companies are two very different things. I'm sure that under his watch AMD will deliver a lot of interesting and innovative technology (as it has these past few years, much more so than Intel), but I doubt this will make a big difference in terms of its profitability.

Then again, simply not paying Ruiz's salary and bonuses will probably halve AMD's expenses... ^_^




RE: And people say politics is shallow?
By dklayn on 7/18/2008 12:29:01 AM , Rating: 5
Don't be too quick to claim Meyer's engineering roots will hamper his ability to run AMD. Every one of Intel's CEOs up until Paul Otellini was an engineer, and they all did well running the company and building Intel into a household brand. Paul's big wins were reorganizing the company as a platform company, demanding an efficiency review and laying off a number of people / moving people around / selling off or spinning off into subsidiaries non-core business units, and winning Apple as a customer. These are all great wins, and more business than engineering, but they would be impossible if Intel wasn't a large, well-known brand with well performing products.

There is no chance AMD could build the brand Intel has at the consumer level on marketing and business sense alone. The computer market is too mature for that these days. AMD needs now, more than ever, to rely on heavy innovation and distinguish themselves from Intel technologically -- in some category, not necessarily high-performance. Only once AMD has claimed a significant reputation of being best-in-class in some area can you then expect to gain much out of business sense and marketing power.

Honestly, it's a great time for an engineering minded person to be running AMD. That's what they need right now. No frills, no BS, but a quality product that makes them relevant.


RE: And people say politics is shallow?
By rudolphna on 7/18/08, Rating: 0
RE: And people say politics is shallow?
By ICE1966 on 7/18/08, Rating: 0
By Justin Case on 7/18/2008 3:17:06 AM , Rating: 5
quote:
I think hector leaving will have a positive impact on AMD.


My point exactly. People don't care what Meyer will change (my guess is he won't change much, because Ruiz's strategy was basically correct, despite a few mistakes here and there, namely not releasing a 2+2 chip and abandoning S940 / S939 too soon). This is about blaming the losses on someone.

It's like when people care more about punishing the criminal than helping the victim.


RE: And people say politics is shallow?
By Justin Case on 7/18/2008 3:36:54 AM , Rating: 2
I'm not saying being an engineer will make him a bad manager. I'm just saying it won't necessarily make him a good one, or a better one than Ruiz (who wasn't as bad as some people think).

quote:
AMD needs now, more than ever, to rely on heavy innovation and distinguish themselves from Intel technologically -- in some category, not necessarily high-performance. Only once AMD has claimed a significant reputation of being best-in-class in some area can you then expect to gain much out of business sense and marketing power.


Are you describing the situation now or before the release of the K8?

Like I said above, I think AMD has already been outdoing Intel in terms of technological innovation for a long time (since the Athlon MP). The only major design leap coming from Intel in the last few years was the Pentium-M, and how it redefined power management. The rest was just refinement or adding more cache or copying AMD's ideas.

AMD could be doing a little better today (in terms of market share and profitability) if it hadn't bought ATI. But it would be dead (or bought by IBM / Samsung / whoever) in two years.

quote:
Honestly, it's a great time for an engineering minded person to be running AMD.


For consumers, especially consumers that aren't too easily deceived by marketing, it's always a good time to have technology-driven people ahead of companies. But it's not necessarily good for that company's bottom line.

During the P4 days, Intel was basically run by its marketing department, it was putting out some of the ugliest CPUs in history, and it still made huge profits.

Why? Because consumers are stupid, because AMD lacked critical mass (despite a vastly superior product), and because OEMs and their shareholders care more about short-term profits than long-term growth and sustainability (let alone innovation).

But now AMD has the best GPUs out there (and the margins on those are better than on CPUs), they have some margin to deal with nVidia's counter-attack, if and when it comes (with a little bit of work they could probably manufacture GPUs in-house at 45nm, increasing performance and profit margins), and they have a couple of interesting things up their sleeves (Fusion, Torrenza, Bulldozer).

They also have a huge debt, but at least now they are approaching the critical mass necessary to make marketing pay off. Of course, that requires a marketing department with a clue, which still isn't clear they have (ATI's wasn't all the great, either)...


RE: And people say politics is shallow?
By KinEnriquez on 7/18/2008 4:06:25 AM , Rating: 5
quote:
Why? Because consumers are stupid, because AMD lacked critical mass (despite a vastly superior product), and because OEMs and their shareholders care more about short-term profits than long-term growth and sustainability (let alone innovation).


You forgot Intel behaved like a monopolist, bribing OEMs not to carry AMD's procs


By Justin Case on 7/18/2008 1:27:40 PM , Rating: 2
That's a bit like what Pratchett wrote about kings being assassinated: it's so common it counts as "natural causes". All big companies abuse their position, and that was sort of what I meant by AMD not having "critical mass" -- OEMs couldn't survive without Intel, so they are forced to play along.

Then all Intel has to do is finance the campaigns of a few senators, and any lawsuit against them (in the US, at least) magically gets converted into a deal to supply CPUs to schools -- usually to schools that were about to buy AMD CPUs. Microsoft does the same thing.

Especially with the cheap dollar, I think AMD should focus on gaining market share in Europe and Japan, where Intel's influence isn't as strong and where trade laws still do (occasionally) get applied.


RE: And people say politics is shallow?
By William Gaatjes on 7/18/2008 5:35:28 AM , Rating: 5
Marketing is everything. With the proper marketing you can sell a can of beans for 50 dollars.

Look at history : Back in the days there was the amiga. Vastly superiour to anything in it's price range at that time. But the lack of marketing the amiga to the public is what brought the amiga down. And that is just plain sad.

But i have to disagree that Intel has no technological innovations. They just concentrate more on making technologies that are manufacturable in large quantities for the masses. Although the P4 was not as good as it looked it had some great innovations inside it. Some of these innovations found their way into the current core and penryn cpu's, giving these cpu's the edge they need.

I would not be suprised if in the near future Intel would become the first cpu manufacturer with comsumer cpu's and comsumer chipset's and comsumer gpu's with on die optical interconnects.

But if i could just hope i wish intel embraced hypertransport as an interconnect and not PCI express.
Hypertransport has much lower latencies. And it would make more of a standard interconnect too. Truly benificial for us customers.

If AMD starts to learn how important marketing is, things will start to chance. They have great products as does Intel.


By William Gaatjes on 7/18/2008 6:04:08 AM , Rating: 1
And i might add i am not a fanboy, but Intel has the best recipe for making fast transistors with high drain source currents and low gate source voltages in bulk silicon.
And since the introduction of their high k hafnium gates they have very low leakage currents as well.
The enigneering labs of Intel are something else. They know that bulk silicon very well. That is a big part of the engineering strength of Intel, their physics knowledge.


RE: And people say politics is shallow?
By Spivonious on 7/18/2008 9:10:23 AM , Rating: 3
For a case of failed marketing, just look at Vista. It's a great OS but Microsoft doesn't market it. Hopefully they can change some opinions when their new ad campaign gets started.

For a case of successful marketing, look at Apple. They have succeeded in causing the average person to believe that Vista sucks and that cool people have Macs.


RE: And people say politics is shallow?
By William Gaatjes on 7/18/2008 9:23:26 AM , Rating: 2
I agree.

I believe that the kernel of vista is a huge step forward towards the "ancient" kernel in xp. Finally a nt kernel that actually uses the hardware the modern cpu has to offer.

But the way microsoft bloated vista with useless features gave it all away. To the common people with little computer knowledge it is no use to explain that the kernel is really improved. There are killer apps for drawing their attention.

Vista has no killer apps, only promises.
And vista has so much drm in it's new driver model that it is actually slower while it should really be faster.

I think the basic features a kernel from an OS must have are really improved and would make vista faster then xp. But they through it all away.

And microsoft did market it. microsoft even forced it upon people who rather buy xp. Did you forget the : WOOOO !

I guess the beans in that can where already rotten. :)


RE: And people say politics is shallow?
By William Gaatjes on 7/18/2008 9:28:58 AM , Rating: 2
I happen to own an ipod classic and i am very happy with it.

With Apple you get that the software/hardware that you buy actually does to the full extent of it capabilities what Apple promises it would do. You don't get that aftertaste
as when using Microsoft. Apple looks at the details and that is what makes them different and succesfull.


RE: And people say politics is shallow?
By William Gaatjes on 7/18/2008 9:35:54 AM , Rating: 2
Look at the mighty mouse. It has no buttons, only touch sensitive spots on its case where buttons would be with an ordinary mouse. Now you would think that it is nothing special. Give it to a woman and the first thing she says is :heey that is a lot easier to clean. :)
It may be a stupid example but it is 1 real life example why people would buy a mighty mouse. :)

And i have to agree it is easier to clean. I only wish i could buy a mighty mouse in black/siler or black /mettalic blue. :)


RE: And people say politics is shallow?
By maven81 on 7/18/2008 12:31:18 PM , Rating: 2
If the best thing you can say about a mouse is that it's easier to clean...
Never mind that it's ergonomics are horrible, and there are far more comfortable mice out there, or that the built in trackball is a joke, or that the lack of physical buttons makes it harder to use, not easier...
There's a reason PC manufacturers don't make mice like these, it's an example of style over substance.
Just like my macbook pro... it may be thin... but it gets hot as hell. Do you think someone like HP couldn't make a laptop that thin? Of course they can... but I think their engineers understand the trade offs of such a design.


By William Gaatjes on 7/18/2008 2:57:10 PM , Rating: 2
I don't actually own one. I just toyed with it and feels ok.
I don't have any problem not feeling a "click ". As long as it's fast i am ok with it.

I stick with my logitech G1 optical mouse since i am a lefty and it is a comfortable mouse. But if i buy ever a new mouse i might actually consider that mighty mouse. That X,Y, scrollbal looks interesting and it has a middle mouse button function. And a squeeze button on the sides.

Since it is suited for us lefty's too, i am interested but only if they sort out that chording issue. Since pressing LMB and RMB at the same time is pretty common under windows.