AMD's Eric Demers is Leaving the Company
by Anand Lal Shimpi on February 14, 2012 1:24 PM ESTI just found out that AMD's Eric Demers (Corporate VP & CTO, Graphics Division) is leaving the company at the end of this week. He's not going to Intel or NVIDIA but I suspect that someone of Eric's talents will remain in the industry. I just had dinner with Eric a couple of weeks ago and he seemed very positive on AMD's roadmap going forward. Given how important the GPU is becoming in this ever expanding industry, someone like Eric is in very high demand.
We now have an official statement from AMD:
Eric Demers, AMD Corporate Vice President and CTO, Graphics Business Unit, has decided leave AMD to pursue other opportunities.
AMD Chief Technology Officer Mark Papermaster will assume interim responsibility for the Graphics Business Unit CTO role until a replacement is found.
AMD remains fully committed to our critical graphics IP development and discrete GPU products. We have a tremendous depth of talent in our organization, a game plan that is resonating with our customers and our team, and we are continuing to bring graphics-performance-leading products to market. We will attract the right technology leader for this role.
We thank Eric for his contributions to the business and wish him well in his future endeavors.
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CeriseCogburn - Saturday, March 10, 2012 - link
Exactly. Ryan explained how amd did an awesome job dried up 6xxx right when launching 7xxx, a fine move according to the person who is always looking out for the dollar interests of the welching scrooge underclass horde of amd gamefans....(yes that last half was ironic sarc, duh !)No problem, as our present and posted right here amd lovers tell us, nvidia has no competing products.
So, with no competing against itself and no competing products amd is now officially a worldwide monopoly according to all it's own fans and reviewers, numerous and brilliant as they are.
I guess they all should go on the free amd island vacation this year, instead of just the "media reviewers".
jwcalla - Tuesday, February 14, 2012 - link
Congratulations to him. Hopefully he can land a spot in a company with a bright future.frozentundra123456 - Tuesday, February 14, 2012 - link
Wow read that last full paragraph. AMD sure loves big words and marketing speak. Nothing wrong with that I guess, just seems that their products dont always measure up.But in the graphics division they do, so it is sad to see a leader of this department leaving the company. Wonder if he really did leave because of a better opportunity of if he was forced out or just didnt like the climate at AMD.
danrien - Friday, February 17, 2012 - link
meh, they know desperate sounding marketing speak ("We will attract the right technology leader for this role."). poor AMD, they had a good run, but it seems like they will be swept to the wayside. seems to be a management problem more than anything.CeriseCogburn - Saturday, March 10, 2012 - link
Heard about their new style ?see www.verdetrol.com
try this
http://forums.legitreviews.com/about39669.html
and this
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedd...
--
Is it juvenile perversion, or old age and death at the door ? You decide.
Beenthere - Tuesday, February 14, 2012 - link
Let's hope Mr. Read and company are making good decisions. AMD probably needs to step it up in the graphics area if what Nvidia is spewing is true with Kepler. In addition AMD needs to get some of the enterprise GPU $$$ which requires a different GPU strategy.The best to Eric. He'll be fine I'm sure.
chizow - Tuesday, February 14, 2012 - link
Looks like new CEO Rory Reed continues to clean house at AMD, but I thought the GPU guys were immune as one of the more successful business units within AMD. Marketing guys got a big cut, deserved. Anyone that had a hand in Bulldozer got cut, again deserved. But the GPU guys getting let go doesn't make as much sense.I'd be interested to see a follow-up fluff piece on the RV770 Story to find out what's going on with AMD graphics. It seems they're having a real identity crisis when it comes to GPU strategy in recent history as AMD GPU designs continue to get bigger, hotter and more compute-oriented while getting away from the "small die" strategy that made RV770 everyone's GPU sweetheart. Some of the recent, major cuts in the GPU division seem to confirm this.
You should do a roll call Anand and see how many people mentioned in this article are left at AMD: http://www.anandtech.com/show/2679
Malih - Wednesday, February 15, 2012 - link
About 10 years from now, someone will come out and say something about things happening at AMD 2011-2012, maybe make a movie out of it.T2k - Wednesday, February 15, 2012 - link
...for letting go or even chasing away EVERY SINGLE KEY PERSON:EVP of AMD/ex-CEO of ATI Orton left in mid-2007...
CEO Dirk Meyer, father of Athloon etc, was fired on the spot on a cold Monday morning in January 2011 because these idiots thought AMD should have been in the mobile phone market (like if they had a chance against Qualcomm and ARM-stuff) ...
Soon (Fall 2011) Rick Bergman, head of Products Group, another ex-ATI, was quitting over Read, the new CEO...
Nigel Dessau, marketing chief stepped down in December..
Last nail in the coffin: now these idiots let even Eric Demers go...
I mean a month after they fired Meyer I can see why they fired/pushed out his VP & COO/CIO/whatnot Rivet, along SVP Strategy head Seyer...
...but now everything is headed by Papermaster, a guy who took the SVP & CTO of AMD as his 4th job within 4 years at 4 companies (pre-AMD was Cisco, Apple and IBM, in reverse order, all since 2008) and keep hiring his ex-IBM buddies.
Of course, he was hired by CEO Rory Read who is a 20+ years IBM veteran (FWIW he only spent 5 years at Lenovo following the sale of IBM's Thinkpad etc division and you can look at the quality of Thinkpads since they became Lenovo, that should tell you about a thing or two eg quality.)
IBM.
Seriously.
Just look at how f'n successful IBM is on the CPU market , huh? Not only that but they are really HUUUGE on the GPU stuff!
Fuckin' idiots.
Time to sell.
hcforde - Wednesday, February 29, 2012 - link
IBM is also going through a big layoff cycle, just recently announced. SO..........more IBMers in AMD's future?An Incompetent person will hire a more incompetent person to ensure that their position is not threatened. This backfires in publicly held organizations after a while though.
Problem with AMD is that their GPU division does not have a workable S3D solution for games. This is a value added offering that will tend to decrease sales over time as the option for S3D is not unified in the AMD structure. I know that not everyone uses S3D, but the option should be there by now. I currently have 2-2GB ASUS 5870 Eyefinity6 cards in my gaming machine. I most likely will be buying a new generation card this spring or summer. Because there is no in-house S3D option I am (after all these years and generations of AMD video cards) having to look at Nvidia.
With no unified AMD S3D offering, monitor makers are not going to invest so that is why we see only one monitor maker specific for S3D for AMD and that is Samsung. Good brand, good product, but no competitive brands. Yes DDD and Tridef are there but they work with either AMD or Nvidia.
A few post ago someone mentioned a good point I have been talking about in other forums. The new fast video cards are almost a mute point because most games are now ports from consoles. They are mostly writing games for the lowest common denominator. Power is only really needed for multiple monitor gaming AND S3D. S3D is not a fad so lets not go there. AMD has seemingly been offering "incomplete market" products in both the CPU and GPU side. The CPU's just cannot seem to push intel, and the GPU's are fast, but an incomplete offering.
I want to support AMD/ATI because I want there to be a company that can offer competition. However, I also want a complete product offering.