Musical chairs
Not content with the departure of Mario Rivas and the promotion of Leslie Sobon, AMD announced a bunch more personnel changes at close of play today, as we predicted earlier.
Randy Allen, fresh from presenting AMD’s new business roadmap as corporate VP and GM for server and workstation, steps up to become senior VP of the computing solutions group, reporting straight into AMD president and COO Dirk Meyer.
Allen is a 24-year AMD veteran and will be the head of AMD’s platforms, a concept it is pushing hard through brands like Spider and Business Class.
A newbie and a relative newbie will be heading up the newly formed central engineering organisation. Chekib Akrout is joining AMD from Freescale (where, coincidentally, marketing boss Henri Richard went when he left last year). He was VP of design technology at Freescale and prior to that he was at IBM, where he worked on the Cell processor among other things.
Jeff VerHeul is corporate VP of design engineering at AMD, having joined three years ago from a 25-year stint at IBM. He has recently led AMD’s microprocessor design engineering organisation, apparently. The two of them will jointly head up the central engineering organisation, whose staff will enjoy the unique benefits of having two bosses instead of one.
AMD also officially confirmed the departure of Mario Rivas, as we predicted earlier, and appreared to do a straight swap with the departure of Michel Cadieux, formerly corporate VP of HR and the promotion of Allen Sockwell to the vacated role.
“We are accelerating AMD’s transformation, reshaping the organization and bolstering our management team to lead in our x86 microprocessor and graphics businesses,” said Meyer.
“Placing experienced leaders in new, more focused roles will enhance our execution and progress towards sustained profitability and long-term success. The creation of a Centralized Engineering organization aligns and focuses AMD’s world-class engineers and intellectual property portfolio on the strong business opportunities in front of us.”
