AMD Pushing the AMD+AMD Strategy with Executive Promotions
by Ian Cutress on January 25, 2019 9:00 AM EST
Today AMD is announcing some realignment of its executive team along with some promotions. The idea behind the changes boils down to AMD wanting to focus its efforts on bringing the CPU and GPU strategy together, for future AMD+AMD combinations. The goal is that users should want to pair Ryzen with Radeon, or EPYC with Instinct, and by aligning the hierarchy behind that goal, it should be easier to manage and achieve.
There are several big announcements in AMD’s team today:
Darren Grasby, the long standing SVP of Global Computing and Graphics Sales will now become SVP and Chief Sales Officer, covering both consumer and enterprise, as well as becoming the President of AMD EMEA (Europe, Middle East, Africa). Darren has been at AMD over twelve years, and has been instrumental in the last couple of years for driving the adoption of Ryzen and Radeon as well as the sales message behind the product portfolio. His remit now covers all of AMD’s enterprise products, as well as the embedded products.
Dr. Sandeep Chennakeshu has been hired from his role as President of Blackberry Technology Solutions to become Executive Vice President of the Computing and Graphics group. Under this role he will manage the strategy, business, and engineering for AMD’s PC, graphics, and semi-custom product lines. Dr. Chennakeshu’s history includes time at Freescale (while Dr. Lisa Su was there), as well as President at Ericsson Mobile Platforms and CTO of Sony Ericsson.
Mark Papermaster, current SVP and CTO of AMD, is promoted to Executive Vice President. This is in recognition of his expanding role within AMD.
Forrest Norrod, SVP and GM of AMD’s Datacenter and Embedded Solutions Group, will now be in control of and have responsibility for both the EPYC and Radeon Instinct product lines.
The idea here is that AMD is going to push prioritize a synergy between Ryzen + Radeon or EPYC + Instinct across the company, leveraging on the success of partnering both sets of products together. In order to do this, it requires upper management to know what both sides are thinking, which is why we are seeing key employees now taking strategy and business roles covering both CPU and GPU product lines.
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Targon - Friday, January 25, 2019 - link
What has been going on with Ryzen mobile video drivers has been horrible, and was caused by AMD leaving driver releases to the OEMs who make the laptops, even though AMD is providing updated drivers to those OEMs. I heard something recently that indicates that AMD will be putting the Ryzen mobile video drivers up for direct download to address this problem(really, that OEMs suck when it comes to driver updates, and should never be trusted when it comes to driver updates).For desktop parts, AMD driver quality IS good, and it is rare that people need to go back to older drivers for 3-5 months due to problems with new drivers the way NVIDIA users end up being forced to do at times.
dgingeri - Sunday, January 27, 2019 - link
Sorry, but I've never had to do that with my nvidia cards. I've always kept up to date with the latest drivers and never had any issues with them.0ldman79 - Monday, January 28, 2019 - link
You are quite fortunate.I've been using both brands since the late 90s, Nvidia peaks about a year or so after a new card comes out then the old hardware starts to decline. Occasionally they peak while the card is still on the market.
ATI has always been a bit odd about their drivers, but I've got the HD 5670 and 5750, never had so much as a hiccup out of either of those.
No rule is fixed in IT. Every decade or so the companies flip. They're just run by people and people change, move on, get new jobs, etc...
StevoLincolnite - Sunday, January 27, 2019 - link
I have the E585 notebook and don't need to use regedit for the Radeon control panel.If you are having issues, that's a lenovo issue.
However, AMD is taking mobile drivers into it's own hands, making it's own responsibility now, so driver issues for Mobile will be a thing of the past.
Murloc - Friday, January 25, 2019 - link
I recently bought ryzen and I cannot say that their drivers work flawlessly. They just don't. I even got a bluescreen because of the video drivers once. Never happened with nvidia.Mowmow - Saturday, January 26, 2019 - link
what does ryzen have to do with video drivers?0ldman79 - Monday, January 28, 2019 - link
Ryzen APU I assume, integrated video.There are no Ryzen drivers that the user sees anyway.
dgingeri - Sunday, January 27, 2019 - link
They may have been rewritten, but the philosophy of driver support hasn't changed. Obviously, it is not the drivers themselves, but the leadership of the group that writes them.Dijky - Friday, January 25, 2019 - link
Do you base all your purchase decisions on information from 12+ years ago?Before you jump in and get a Core 2, you should wait for Phenom benchmarks!
jeremyshaw - Friday, January 25, 2019 - link
You should compare Core 2 and Phenom benchmarks against each other, since if you are considering either one in this age, you are probably looking at dirt cheap computers from a decade ago.