In an unexpected announcement, AMD said yesterday that Hector Ruiz relinquishes the company's president title and that Dirk Meyer, former president and chief operating officer of AMD's Microprocessor Solutions Sector (MSS) business, is the new president and chief operating officer of AMD.

This doesn't mean that Hector Ruiz is giving up AMD as he remains chief executive officer and chairman of the board.

Here's what the two AMD high officials had to say about this upper-management switch.

Hector Ruiz: "Dirk has played an essential role in AMD's rise to the position of technology and innovation leader in the microprocessor industry. He has made amazing progress with our microprocessor business, making it the envy of our industry. His leadership, operational skills and business acumen have positioned the company for long-term, sustainable growth, and I'm very pleased that AMD now will benefit from those skills on an even grander scale."

Dirk Meyer: "I'm honored and excited to assume this new leadership role at AMD. During my time at AMD, we've overcome many hurdles to become a driving force in the microprocessor industry. Still, more challenges and opportunities are ahead of us, and I plan to help AMD capitalize on those opportunities to change the competitive dynamics of the microprocessor industry and continue our sustained growth. My new position also gives Hector more bandwidth to focus on leading the company as CEO."

In other words, Dirk Meyer will now become actively involved in the decision making related to day-to-day operations, while Hector Ruiz is likely to become a sort of a CPU Steve Jobs, as Overclockers.com suggested.

It's worth mentioning that Dirk Meyer has played an important role in AMD's technological evolution and has had important contributions to the company's CPU architectures, so this decision could give AMD a necessary boost in the ongoing struggle with Intel.