AMD Pushing the AMD+AMD Strategy with Executive Promotions
by Ian Cutress on January 25, 2019 9:00 AM EST
Today AMD is announcing some realignment of its executive team along with some promotions. The idea behind the changes boils down to AMD wanting to focus its efforts on bringing the CPU and GPU strategy together, for future AMD+AMD combinations. The goal is that users should want to pair Ryzen with Radeon, or EPYC with Instinct, and by aligning the hierarchy behind that goal, it should be easier to manage and achieve.
There are several big announcements in AMD’s team today:
Darren Grasby, the long standing SVP of Global Computing and Graphics Sales will now become SVP and Chief Sales Officer, covering both consumer and enterprise, as well as becoming the President of AMD EMEA (Europe, Middle East, Africa). Darren has been at AMD over twelve years, and has been instrumental in the last couple of years for driving the adoption of Ryzen and Radeon as well as the sales message behind the product portfolio. His remit now covers all of AMD’s enterprise products, as well as the embedded products.
Dr. Sandeep Chennakeshu has been hired from his role as President of Blackberry Technology Solutions to become Executive Vice President of the Computing and Graphics group. Under this role he will manage the strategy, business, and engineering for AMD’s PC, graphics, and semi-custom product lines. Dr. Chennakeshu’s history includes time at Freescale (while Dr. Lisa Su was there), as well as President at Ericsson Mobile Platforms and CTO of Sony Ericsson.
Mark Papermaster, current SVP and CTO of AMD, is promoted to Executive Vice President. This is in recognition of his expanding role within AMD.
Forrest Norrod, SVP and GM of AMD’s Datacenter and Embedded Solutions Group, will now be in control of and have responsibility for both the EPYC and Radeon Instinct product lines.
The idea here is that AMD is going to push prioritize a synergy between Ryzen + Radeon or EPYC + Instinct across the company, leveraging on the success of partnering both sets of products together. In order to do this, it requires upper management to know what both sides are thinking, which is why we are seeing key employees now taking strategy and business roles covering both CPU and GPU product lines.
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Spunjji - Tuesday, January 29, 2019 - link
By your own admission your experience is irrelevant to any discussion of products released in the last 10 years. Your continued insistence that AMD drivers remain worse thereby tells us that you have an axe to grind. The claim that you have heard "nothing but bad things" tells us nothing - I mean, that will happen if you only pay attention to bad things.The facts contradict your statements, but don't let that get in the way of poisoning a thread.
Boxie - Friday, January 25, 2019 - link
For the last several years I have had AMD cards under both Windows and Linux. Both have been pretty solid (even if I have had to wait for the Linux side of things).Any fears that the current drivers are not up to scratch are unfounded.
Tewt - Friday, January 25, 2019 - link
That has been my experience from a 5850 to 7850 to a 470. My 1080p experience has been plenty good for the past years for half the cost of any competing Nvidia model.And as far as another commenter's opinion, I don't see that AMD was "far" behind Nvidia when it comes to mid-range products. And unlike many Nvidia fans on these types of articles, I don't need to bash the competition to appreciate the other company still makes good products. Nvidia makes good products and there is no denying it. AMD gives me the experience I want at the price point I'm willing to pay. That's it.
El_Rizzo - Saturday, January 26, 2019 - link
Actually, right now, AMD has probably the best driver stack EVER under linux. On windows they are not that far either.WinterCharm - Friday, January 25, 2019 - link
Lucky for you, in the last 3-4 years, AMD drivers have been *better* than Nvidia drivers.Alexvrb - Saturday, January 26, 2019 - link
Their drivers have been fine for a long time and the OP likely had other major issues if his 9700 equipped system was "crashing daily". I mean seriously that's excessive, I never had that many problems with ANY graphics driver and I've used all the major chip vendors over the years (including long-dead names). The X2 is a dual-GPU setup, drivers have been an issue for those kinds of setups even on Nvidia and they spent a LOT of resources in those years on dual-GPU. The Fury MAXX was *ALSO* dual-GPU, and it's ancient history.They both slip up and release bad drivers here and there but typically if you have major / constant issues there's something more than just "teh dirvers lol". Even Intel hasn't been that bad.
LordanSS - Sunday, January 27, 2019 - link
I have cards from both companies, and lately nVidia's drivers give me more headaches than AMD's.AMD drivers have been quite stable for several generations now.
Spunjji - Tuesday, January 29, 2019 - link
Reasons to think that things have improved with ATi/AMD drivers in the past decade:1) The objective evidence that they have improved.
2) the testimony of people who have actually used the products in the past 10 years, rather than the ramblings of the OP who admitted that they haven't / seems to have "accidentally" cherry-picked the same products everyone does when they mount an argument about AMD drivers being bad.
jeremyshaw - Friday, January 25, 2019 - link
I was a pretty dyed in the wool ATi (and later AMD) fan for a long while. The "[competitor]'s driver superiority is an old myth, Radeon drivers have gotten much better and have been completely rewritten since [XX]" has been said since 2008 at least. Back then, I didn't know any better, so I believed it and was even guilty of spreading it, too.By the time I made the fateful leap to a GeForce (eew) product, people were still talking about how Radeon drivers have gotten much better. The bulk of my primary experience (which started with a Rage XL and ended with CF HD5870s) has indicated otherwise.
I still buy a Radeon product every once in a while to keep me appraused of it's current status (and to avoid situations where I spread fake news, like my old claims about "Radeon drivers catching up to Green Team"). Most recently, I bought an E485 Ryzen thinkpad, which has been a joke in driver support (and thus feature support - I couldn't even get the Radeon control panel to start without regediting). Even basic things like YT playback of videos (after standby-wake cycle) are still an issue. AMD has no excuse on this, the whole CPU, GPU, and SB (all one SoC) are AMD, top to bottom.
I'll have to see if this latest "Radeon drivers have gotten better" claim finally comes to fruition in Feb 2019, when AMD finally takes ownership of their driver release schedule for laptops, and finally does what Intel and especially Nvidia have done for almost 10 years.
CKing123 - Friday, January 25, 2019 - link
This is something that AMD *did* offer for all their Bulldozer-based APUs, but for some reason, they decided to not do this for Ryzen Mobile. At least with all the pushback they received, they had to relent.