Beer is proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy - Benjamin Franklin
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AMD hopes to replicate Lenovo's rise to power with CEO
CHIP DESIGNER AMD has made a prudent choice in whisking Rory Read away from Lenovo to take the helm at one of the most high profile component companies in the business.
AMD's hunt for a new CEO was becoming a bad joke. Whenever hacks would meet with AMD executives the first question would be who has most recently turned down the CEO job, hardly something to instill confidence in a firm that is still Intel's biggest competitor in the x86 chip market and dukes it out with both Nvidia and Intel in the graphics market.
AMD suffered the embarrassment of having the names of some of the candidates it had approached made public. The report included industry veterans such as Pat Gelsinger, who for the majority of his career was one of Intel's most public senior figures. Gelsinger's public rejection of the job was a hammer blow to the desirability of the CEO position at AMD. Talk at the time wondered who would want to take up a position that has been rejected by so many others.
Finally AMD managed to find someone and that someone certainly has the credentials to command respect. Read's tenure at Lenovo as COO was during a time when the Chinese company broke out of the shadow of IBM.
After IBM sold its PC business to Lenovo it seemed that the Chinese system builder was doing little to move beyond what it had acquired from IBM, bringing out more good but hardly innovative Thinkpads. Since 2008 the firm has brought in lower priced models, tried its hand at innovative tablet designs and still managed to keep the legendary IBM quality going. All of this resulted in Lenovo shooting up the market share charts.
Read's history runs longer than just Lenovo. He spent the majority of his career at IBM and that sort of pedigree helps when you are trying to woo investors. Investors aside, Read has to sort out AMD's recently lacklustre execution strategy. A case in point is Bulldozer - where is it?
Tags: Amd
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Regarding the indescrete past AMD candidates. Lets only hope that behavior taints them and follows them throughout their carreer. When someone asks you to dance you either join with alacrity or you politely decline. To do otherwise marks you as a CAD.
AMD has been around rather to Intel's annoyance and they have innovated. AMD is far more respected by overseas consumers just for that reason. Also the price performance ratio does tip in AMD's favor and being the the market is right now the developing world sales look very good for AMD. When I was in Manila, Filippines I would take a look and see what was being sold. While both Intel and AMD machines where offered. AMD machines where being SOLD, the sales people where actively selling AMD. Because they were cheaper and offered the same features. The differences in the benchmark does not translate to anything remotely noticeable on the screen.
The smart phone market is all RISC and there are just too many players making chips. Hell Intel is keeping clear.
But the biggest reason to stay away from the smart phone market is simply to build a clear performance ceiling with x86 at the tablet level. Maybe x86 will get small enough and efficient enough to compete in the smart phone market, but the big question is why spend the money and effort to simply be another player in a very big pond.
Smartphones are a very limited market, they can only go so fast, the video quality doesn't need to be very good, and the battery is the greatest limiting factor.
Intel and AMD are about high performance big iron. ARM RISC chips are literally, when compared to Zeon or Bulldozer, a fart in a whirlwind.
AMD certainly does not have bad economics as they have survived over 35 years despite the naysayers and they are the #2 CPU producer in the world. If Buffet is willing to dump $5 Billion into BOA then he's certainly willing to invest in companies with serious management issues and poor economics.
"When a management with reputation for excellence tackles a company known for poor underlying economics, its the reputation of the company that remains intact" - Warren Buffet.
And Rory Read's reputation appears to be slightly above mediocrity, forget excellence.
I agree that Read has the credentials and he may well be a better choice than some of the folks who turned down the CEO position. I think AMD is in the best situation they have ever been despite the competition from InHell.
Consumers are lusting for Bulldozer and Trinity. OEMs have snapped up all available AMD APUs to the tune of 12 million units so far - well ahead of AMDs sales projections.
It looks to me that AMD has quietly laid the ground work for major market gains with full industry support that they have not enjoyed in the past. While the playing field will never be level as long as InHell is able to buy sales, AMD is sure to gain considerable market share over the next few years and that's good for everyone except InHell.
only one 'zine used name: R.P.REED, yet REED, like RED'r or even, Eye Reader, might be IT Secret Key inside Door. REED is old timely tone effector. when Channels where small, like 4.
on Thinq Pad, Grabbed some from U of Minn lab across hall & Never worked. Not never worked right, Just never worked, even with charging dock. So put 'Em back & Msr. Grady asked why iThinq wanted 'Em back.
Thats' 2000-2003 Lab Where Vaporized Gold Pin, Made Entirely Defective Pre Barton Core & then Forced Russians Ho Jobs to Write SP2 for Xp to fix IT. Strangely entire idea worked. To vaporize Gold pin takes over 80,000 volts, so no wonder entire machine went defective, usb plug lite on fire, even though form of bake lite. All thanks to c/rum liam Defective front switch. Ist order of day, Get rid of that mfg, entirely. permanently & forever. Cost Boco Ratan Assembler business, know consultant in that area. Rough Tough Biz.
drashek MidEvil Overload. REED ALL About IT intheINQ....