How the AMD, Intel boards square up

For example, we'd completely forgotten that when Jerry Sanders was still ruling the AMD roost, the codename for its Am386 processor was Longhorn. Good thing codenames can be re-used. Although sometimes chip firms and IT vendors get proprietary about these things too. You can't be too careful.

Intel Inside ends with Jackson talking about Merced, and the "son of Merced" - but as all INQ readers know, a lot's happened since then for both AMD and for Chipzilla.

One thing that's changed quite a bit since 1997, when the book was published is that the boards of directors of AMD and Intel have changed pretty radically. It's worth looking at both AMD and Intel to see the makeup of the people that are guiding the firms in the 21st century.

Intel currently has 11 people on its board of directors. In addition to the well known Craig Barrett, Andy Grove and Paul Ottelini, there's some other folk that make up the decision making body that guides the 80,000 plus company.

Ranged against AMD are ambassador Charlene Barshefsky, D. James Guzy, Jane Shaw from Aerogen, a pharmaceutical company, David Yoffie of the Harvard Business School, and also of Charles Schwab, Sir John Browne, CEO of British Petroleum, Reed Hundt from McKinsey, David Pottruck of private equity firm the Pottruck Group, and John L Thornton - who looks uncannily like IBM's Sam Palmisano, but is the director of global leadership at the Tsinghua University in Beijing. He used to work for Goldman Sachs. He is also on the board of directors of Ford Motor, News Corporation and the Pacific Century Group. Seems like he must have a kingmaking role of some kind.

AMD has 10 people on the board - Hector Ruiz has gone for the triple whammy because he's the chairman of the board, as well as its president and CEO. Michael Barnes retired from Rockwell in 2001 as senior financial officer. Charles Blalack works for Blalack and Co, an investment advisor. Gene Brown is a private investor and consultant, and worked for Hagler Bailly up until 2000.

Bruce Claflin is a familiar name. As well as his 3Com history, he was also general manager of sales and marketing for Digital Equipment Corporation. And he worked for Big Blue as well for 22 years, in a top role as president of the IBM PC company in America. Paulett Eberhart, as well as working for Solectron, worked as the American president of EDS, while David Edmondson is the president of Radio Shack and is also acting as CEO elect.

And then there's Bob Palmer - who as most INQ readers will remember was the chairman and CEO of DEC. He's been on the AMD board for quite a few years now. Leonard Silverman was dean of the School of Engineering at the University of Southern California until 2001 and also serves on the board of Statmon Technologies.

We'd like to be a fly on the wall at both the Intel and AMD board meetings. But unfortunately we don't have a press pass to drill that deep. µ

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Intel board
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