14 DAY TRIAL // The past three years have been pretty interesting for AMD, as the company went through quite a few changes of direction, and lots of layoffs, but it seemed to stay afloat and even gain some ground on AMD and NVIDIA. All in all, Rory P. Read seemed to be doing what he promised to do as CEO.
However, in a shocking turn of events, the man has stepped down from his post. No grace period, no preparation month for AMD to take its time in finding a replacement, no nothing.
Granted, the company seems to already have a replacement in mind, specifically chief operating officer Dr. Lisa Su, but that doesn't make the move seem any less like blunt trauma to the head.
Rory Read's work at Advanced Micro Devices
Read took the post of company president and chief executive officer back in August 2011, after months during which AMD kept looking for a viable replacement for Dirk Meyer.
Read took the reins in a time when AMD wasn't doing too well, still suffering from the aftershock of the Bulldozer disappointment (8-core CPUs with too little performance and too much power draw, basically) and having lots of leaks among the staff, though the second part was never openly elaborated on much.
He had to somehow reform the company, clean up house and change direction enough that AMD's products were no longer just foils for Intel’s.
And as we said back on September 30, AMD set off to free itself from Intel and more or less succeeded in the endeavor.
By all accounts, Read seems to have done an at least decent job of delivering on his promises. And yet, now he's stepping down effective immediately, with no sort of prior warning.
AMD didn't really say why this was happening, only that it was part of the transition plan. But Read is also leaving the board of directors, so it makes us wonder if that's all there is too it. At least his replacement seems to be up for the task.
COO Dr. Lisa Su is now CEO
She will take up both the CEO position and Read's post as president of the board of directors. She was a member of the technical staff at Texas Instruments, then she held various engineering and business leadership positions at IBM (she was there for 13 years), after which she worked for Freescale (from 2007).
She joined AMD in January 2012, as senior VP and general manager of the company's global business unit, and then became chief operating officer this June. Allegedly, that was to prepare her to take the post of CEO, the fifth since the company's creation.