AMD restructures operations as VP, CTO resigns

After announcing lower revenues for the start of 2008 and a 10 percent reduction of its workforce earlier this week, chip maker AMD on Friday said its senior vice president and chief technology officer, Phil Hester, has resigned. AMD said Hester's post will not be filled, and the company stresses the resignation is not related to its job cuts. The resignation comes at a difficult time for the chip maker, as it faces strong competition from Intel and is suffering delays in the release of its primarily newer versions of its Phenom and Opteron quad-core processors.

Instead of replacing Hester, AMD will distribute his responsibilities among five chief technology officers for each of its segments, including those charged with server chips and graphics chips. Starting Monday, the individual CTOs will report to business unit leaders, with the exception being the accelerated computing chip arm, which well report directly to AMD President and COO Dirk Meyer.

Also known as the Fusion project, the accelerated computing strategy was introduced by Hester. It involves special-purpose circuitry integrated into chips along with general-purpose microprocessors, and will continue development without him. The first such chip, named Swift, is to make its debut in 2009. [via The Wall Street Journal]

Filed under: computers, industry
Other story tags: AMD, Phenom