AMD does another reorg, but nothing bad this time

A little more streamlined org chart with no apparent down side, finally

Dec 28, 2012 by

AMD - logoAMD is going through another reorg, and this time it looks to be good news, or neutral at worst. Another potential benefit is that it looks to be cleaning up a very confused and somewhat fractured org chart.

The first thing we should state is that this is not another mass layoff or canning of projects, both of which have accompanied AMD reorgs of late. This time, it is only a reshuffling of who owns what organizations, and who gets to set future directions for what units. Overall, there is one person that seems to have benefitted, another that seems to have lost out a bit, and the company itself ends up with a little more streamlined management system.

You might recall that AMD has a gaggle of people each responsible for similar tasks in separete organizational silos. Mark Papermaster is technically CTO, but there are a lot of people doing similar things, and what seems to the casual observer to be a fair bit of overlap. That is where the changes are happening, and things can best be described as a reshuffling of who is responsible for what.

The easiest way to describe things is that a bunch of Mark Papermaster’s responsibilities have been moved to Lisa Su. Basically everything but client computing is now hers. We haven’t heard that anything substantial has been given to Papermaster in return, but it may yet happen. This isn’t to say this reorg is a promotion, demotion, or anything up or down, it may just be sideways, we don’t know for sure yet. That said, it does appear to be at least a slap on the wrist for Papermaster and a vote of confidence for Lisa Su.

SemiAccurate also hears, but again hasn’t confirmed that a fair number of the business units, client computing in particular, that were not given to Su will be in short order. If true, this second round of the reorg makes it pretty clear that this whole exercise was a promotion for Su and at least a bit of a rebuke for Papermaster. No titles appear to have been changed, but that may happen if and when the second part of this reorg happens. Time will tell, and from what we hear, not all that much time either.S|A

The following two tabs change content below.
My Twitter profileMy Google+ profileMy LinkedIn profile

Charlie Demerjian

Roving engine of chaos and snide remarks at SemiAccurate
Charlie Demerjian is the founder of Stone Arch Networking Services and SemiAccurate.com. SemiAccurate.com is a technology news site; addressing hardware design, software selection, customization, securing and maintenance, with over one million views per month. He is a technologist and analyst specializing in semiconductors, system and network architecture. As head writer of SemiAccurate.com, he regularly advises writers, analysts, and industry executives on technical matters and long lead industry trends. Charlie is also available through Guidepoint and Mosaic. FullyAccurate