AMD and ATI officially merge
AMD AND ATI are now one, officially. Word from 1,200 miles south of the Inq's US offices is that there will be a sweeping reorg to be announced later today, and the two organizations will be merged.
When we broke the story a few years ago, people laughed. Heck, we laughed at ourselves, too.
Three years later, no one is laughing, and the reasons for doing so are finally playing out.
Today, the two companies are officially one, not separate divisions. The reorganisation will result in 4.1 major divisions, with the 0.1 being finance. The other four are sales, marketing, technical marketing and a combined CPU and GPU division. That last one is the real change, as the first 3.1 will be more or less the same as they were.
This brings up the question of who runs what. CPUs were under CPG, Computational Products Group, and GPUs were under GPG, Graphics Products Group. Randy Allen ran CPG, Rick Bergman ran GPG, together making up the very short list of people who might end up with the combined entity, lets call it CGPG.
In a few hours, Rick Bergman will be announced as running the CGPG unit, and Randy Allen will be leaving AMD.
You could look at this as a takeover of AMD by ATI, and given that Bergman was responsible for the technical unFSCKing of ATI recently, it is a very good thing. The other way of looking at it is that Randy was in charge of the Barcelona debacle, and under Dirk's tenure, people are held accountable.
We haven't heard which viewpoint is the correct one, both may be partially correct, but we will refrain from making any base and tasteless jokes about slipping a dirk in.
In any event, this will hopefully bring an even more technocratic approach to the AMD CPU design, a process that is well underway already. With stronger, more aggressive and technically capable management, things could be looking up at DAAMIT HQ.
The official announcement should go out this evening or tomorrow morning at the latest, but either way, it is a new day at AMD. µ
Update: AMD officials and unofficials all say that Randy Allen had nothing to do with Barcelona. He was in the server division at the time and not responsible for that level of engineering.
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Either this article is just posted or no one seems to be interested in bashin' lil' Charlie save for the NV related articles.
Hot diggity damn! nvidia be damned to hell !
uhm...
no one ?
ah cmon
Let's not forget the the inevitable, and unrelated comment that 'ATI drivers suck' from the NV cultists that haven't used an ATI card in years (if at all)
...For Charlie to make a Dirk Digger joke.
Not today, I guess.
Unless AMD start to produce a line of retro-styled, hand-knitted colonial cardigans, Rick will struggle to develop any kind of market. No one we know in Toronto or Santa Clara thinks he can do the job.
Was that good for you?
sales, marketing, technical marketing? wtf?
i think they completley forgot about "somewhat-technical marketing" team as well - will get very useful when there will be a need for some marketing which is not technical to employ the technical marketing team but not completely non-technical to employ the plain marketing team.
just don't forget to leave a basement corner for the engineers...
Meyer organized the company around these four operating teams. The rest of Meyer’s direct reports remain unchanged.
* A products group led by Rick Bergman, 45: This new group is responsible for delivering all of AMD’s platforms and products and aligning the graphics and microprocessor product development groups into a single unified organization. Jeff VerHeul, 50, will head the Processor Solutions Engineering team, to deliver AMD’s platform silicon and improve time-to-market and innovation for near-term roadmaps.
* An Advanced Technology Group, led by Chekib Akrout, 51: This new group will focus on developing AMD’s future technology innovation.
* A marketing group, led by Nigel Dessau, 44: The singular marketing group will drive cohesive and consistent external messaging across all of AMD’s products and platforms.
* A customer group, led by Emilio Ghilardi, 51: The sales organization is responsible for expanding AMD’s customer relationships globally.
Charlie please, there is no way Randy was responsible for the Barcelona debacle, neither was his predecessor. If Dirk wanted to punish the responsible individual Dirk only need to look at a mirror.
What happens to Randy then ??
Isn't he one of the good guys?
"Randy Allen ran CPG, Rick Bergman ran GPG, together making up the very short list of people who might end up with the combined entity, lets call it CGPG.
......In a few hours, Rick Bergman will be announced as running the CGPG unit, and Randy Allen will be leaving AMD. ......
You could look at this as a takeover of AMD by ATI."
Shouldnt this mean ATI (guy) taking over AMD (guy).
How does this affect The Foundry Company (the daughter company leaving AMD and taking the fabs with it)?
I had endless problems with the newer ATI drivers on my now ancient X800XL. Many games would not even run. Switched to third party drivers. No more problems.
Thank you Omegadrive. Up yours ATI for screwing over users of older hardware.
You very likely haven't updated your drivers in years! Omega drivers haven't been updated for almost one year now while the ATI drivers constantly improved.
ATI drivers used to suck and they are not yet perfect but they are getting closer with each release.
I hate to read about two marketing departments and combining two engineering departments. What that suggests is that marketing is more important than technology...
Marketing is more important than engineering. Just look at Nvidia as a prime example - rebadge one product over and over and why would anyone need much room for tech engineers?
Let us be clear. Bacelona disaster was Dirk Meyer micromanaging Mario Rivas. Rivas took the fall for Meyer's failures. Yes, Meyer who was awarded for his skills with the position of CEO.
Randy Allen was in no way responsible.