Rivas resigns, Allen takes over AMD PC group

Advanced Micro Devices Inc. has appointed Randy Allen head of its core PC group, as computing groups head Mario Rivas has left the company. A former Philips Semiconductor executive, Rivas was hired by Phil Hester, AMD's former chief technology officer who left the company earlier this year.

AMD also created a new central engineering group, co-led by another AMD veteran and a new hire from Freescale Semiconductor. Chekib Akrout, former VP of design technology at Freescale Semiconductor, will lead the new group along with Jeff VerHeul, former corporate VP of design engineering at AMD.

"Placing experienced leaders in new, more focused roles will enhance our execution and progress towards sustained profitability and long-term success," said Dirk Meyer, AMD president and chief operating officer in a prepared statement. "The creation of a central engineering organization aligns and focuses AMD's world-class engineers and intellectual property portfolio on the strong business opportunities in front of us."

AMD has been under intense financial pressure following several quarters of losses. The company also saw shipments of a key server processor delayed at a time when archrival Intel Corp. is gaining momentum in its product delivery and market uptake.

Rivas publically accepted blame for delays getting out AMD's quad-core Barcelona chip. He had worked as the general manager for wireless chips under AMD CEO Hector Ruiz when both men were at Motorola's semiconductor group.

Randy Allen, a 24-year AMD veteran most recently responsible for AMD's server group, will take over the PC group from Rivas, reporting to Dirk Meyer. Previously Allen managed AMD's processor engineering group at the time it rolled out the first Opteron and Athlon chips.

Before joining Freescale, Akrout, the co-head of AMD's new engineering group, worked at IBM where he worked on the Cell processor, the Xbox 360 processor for Microsoft and embedded PowerPC cores. VerHeul joined AMD in August 2005 after a 25-year career with IBM.

- Rick Merritt
EE Times