14 DAY TRIAL // As executives and other important figures from the various IT players migrate from one company to the other, depending on who needs or no longer requires their expertise, certain figures sometimes land in unexpected positions, and AMD just announced that it and that Donald Newell, formerly of Intel, just signed a contract.
While at Intel, Donald Newell led the division responsible for SoC (System-on-Chip) and Server platform architecture innovations.
Before that, he was a software engineer for Datanex Software and, later, for Sequent Computers.
As such, he is well versed in research into cloud computing and even supervised the I/O Acceleration Technologies from its beginning stages.
What's more, he enabled the appearance of the first Digital TV receiver and published, along with his team, papers on Cache QoS and network protocol processing, among other things.
All in all, Newell has 16 years of experience with Intel and will now be tasked with leading the server roadmap and platform design programs at AMD.
"Don Newell brings a strong combination of leadership skills, engineering and design expertise, and strategic direction," said Rick Bergman, senior vice president and general manager, AMD Products Group.
"We're fortunate to have Don on board as we prepare for the delivery of the 'Bulldozer' core in our AMD Opteron processors, scheduled for launch in 2011," he added.
This move is obviously meant to help the Sunnyvale, California-based company regain its footing in the server market, now that its position is getting rather weak.
During the second quarter of 2010, Intel controlled no less than 93.5% of this market segment, which basically means that AMD needs to make some improvements in this area.
What remains to be seen is whether the 'Valencia' and 'Interlagos' platforms will help the outfit gain some ground. They will be armed with 6 to 16 cores and are set to debut next year.