After going months without a CEO, AMD has hired former Lenovo chief operating officer and president Rory Read as its new chief executive officer and president. Tom Seifert, who was the company’s interim leader, will be replaced by Read, and will adopt the role of chief financial officer.

Long wait

The hiring of new AMD CEO Rory Read comes months after Dirk Meyer resigned from the post in January of this year, upon the board’s decision that the processor maker could be a more profitable firm. In this, they assumed that it would be better able to compete with Intel, too, forcing Meyer’s hand to leave and the company’s pursuit of new leadership.

Exciting times

Speaking on the hire, new AMD CEO Rory Read said: ‘I’m very pleased to be joining AMD at this important time in its history.’ He continued, saying: ‘I’m excited to be joining AMD’s employees as we write the next chapter not just for the company, but for the industry and consumers around the world.’

Why the hire?

Bruce Claflin, Chairman of AMD’s Board of Directors, said: ‘Rory is a proven leader with an impressive record of driving profitable growth.’ He added that ‘He is ideally suited to accelerate AMD’s evolution into the world’s leading semiconductor design company. As President and COO of Lenovo he helped take the company into dynamic new markets while growing market share and expanding profitability.’

Having spent 28 years in the computer industry – 23 at IBM and then 5 years at Lenovo – new AMD CEO Rory Read knows a thing or two about the information technology and computing industry.

About time

Given AMD has been without a formal chief executive officer for the almost eight months, it’s about time the company formalise its executive structure. Good luck Rory Read – the computing world, and Intel especially, will be watching your every move with keen interest.

AMD has just appointed a new CEO, former Lenovo president and COO Rory Read. And while the board is convinced his 28 years of IT industry experience will help the firm be more profitable and competitive, especially against long-term nemesis Intel, it’s in the mobile devices space where he will face most of his challenges. And, as the likes of ARM and Qualcomm’s meteoric rise have shown, it isn’t the established big players with decades of industry experience who are guaranteed victory.

The troubles

AMD’s biggest problem is it has virtually no presence in the mobile devices industry, at both tablet and smartphone level. As such, one of new AMD CEO Rory Read’s more immediate tasks will be pushing the firm’s fairly successful Fusion PC chips onto tablet devices.

As immediate as the mobile devices push is – with market share and industry fortunes changing dramatically in just a quarter – Read will have to spend some time familiarising himself with his new business before he can start making any material, strategic decision. In the conference call announcing his appointment, he said that he would spend the first one hundred days on the job learning about AMD’s business, finding out where growth opportunities lie, and forging beneficial partnerships.

It’s beyond Intel, now

Still, the big question in the industry is whether new AMD CEO Rory Read will help his company make the transition to mobile devices so that his firm remains the number two chip maker in the world, or if ARM-based competitors like NVIDIA, who have a lot of traction on smartphones and tablets, will surpass them.

The change, if it will happen, will not be immediate, though. ‘AMD needs Android solutions to gain any traction, but there just doesn’t seem to be much interest to put Android on AMD-based tablets at this point,’ said Jim McGregor, chief technology strategist at In-Stat. If this doesn’t change under Read’s leadership, irrespective of how much AMD grows on traditional PCs, they will decline overall in the race to be the number one chip manufacturer in the world.

It’s rare anything worth note happens in the otherwise straightforward micro-processing chip industry. Outside of ARM’s fascinating battle with Intel, and the occasional new hardware release, these companies rarely make the news for anything that isn’t work-related. Well, AMD has bucked this trend, with news coming out of the company that their CEO’s unexpected departure has sparked an executive exodus at the company.

Two top players leave

Reuters reports that two top executives were leaving AMD on the heels of the board’s ‘unexpected removal of the chipmaker’s CEO last month.’ Bob Rivet, who is the Chief Operating and Administrative Officer, and Marty Seyer, who is the Senior Vice President of Corporate Strategy, are stepping down. They will remain with the company briefly to assist with transitions, reported an AMD email, but this is a major blow however you look at it.

Fragile leadership

These two departures, coupled with the abrupt departure of Dirk Meyer, the former AMD CEO, will leave the company in something of a leadership vacuum. Meyer’s departure was as a result of the board being concerned that Advanced Micro Devices did not have a clear mobile devices strategy, but it looks like it’s sparked something of a chain reaction.

Undermining yourself

The same Reuters report reiterates the former AMD CEO Meyer’s words to analysts on not pursuing mobile until the market developed more, even though the iPad was clearly showing plenty of momentum. As such, they would remain focused on CPUs for PCs and servers, a space where they would remain competing with the significantly more powerful Intel.

Incidentally, Intel itself is making a play for the mobile market, but it’s facing very stiff competition from ARM Holdings, the current leader in mobile devices processing technology. It’s incredible the widespread effect the fast emerging mobile market is having on the entire PC industry.

It’s true that the fiercest competitors can sometimes put their differences aside to pursue common goals. Well, in the world of computing, there are no fiercer rivalries than Intel and AMD’s long-standing battle for the processor market, but the two nemeses have put their differences aside in the interest of killing the VGA port and instead adopting HDMI and DisplayPort. In addition to these chip giants, computer manufacturers Lenovo, Dell, LG and Samsung have vowed to do away with the technology, too.

This technology is so old!

In a joint press release (via Ars Technica), Intel and AMD said that: ‘DisplayPort and HDMI allow for slimmer laptop designs, and support higher resolutions with deeper color than VGA—a technology which is more than 20 years old.’ The rivals-turned-friends-for-a-minute continued, saying: ‘Additionally, as laptops get smaller and their embedded flat panel resolutions increase for more immersive experiences, the power advantages, bidirectional communications and design efficiency benefits of DisplayPort make it a superior choice over LVDS, the previous standard for LCD panel inputs.’

Timeframe

Intel have committed to doing away with LVDS come 2013, while the VGA port will go the way of the Dodo in 2015. AMD has indicated it plans to follow similar timelines for its product, spelling the death of the VGA port.

It’s a good thing ultimately

Ultimately, it’s a good thing to see the industry collectively move to phase out inferior technology for newer standards. DisplayPort and HDMI are both superior to VGA, so to see this type of collective action from the notoriously competitive PC sector is encouraging.

Signs that the VGA port is beginning to fizzle are already evident, with increasingly more top end laptops shipping with HDMI and displays not supporting VGA at all. It’s just a simple case of moving with the times, folks.

AMD, who acquired GPU manufacturer ATI for $5.4 billion (£3.48 billion) in 2006, has announced it will retire the ATI brand name from all of its graphics cards. The big question, of course, is whether this will help sales of the chips, and whether there will be a halo effect for the AMD brand in general.

What next?

Upon retiring the ATI brand, the Radeon graphics chips (and all other ATI, urm, AMD GPUs) will be preceded by the AMD brand. What will remain, however, is the red branding – so GPUs will be red and CPUs will be green. So now you will have AMD graphics, and the AMD Radeon, and so on, but no longer will you see the letters ATI anywhere.

AMD-free branding

AMD graphics has also announced that there will be instances where you don’t even see their name on the branding. In other words, you’d just have the graphics series name on the branding, with the same consistent red look and feel – a la Radeon graphics. It’s a very strange move, with the company saying it’s intended for OEMs who want the change to be transitional, instead of instant. But this is weird to us, in that surely AMD would want the firepower of their AMD name on the stickers that litter laptops nowadays. It just seems too conservative if AMD, as a whole, really wants to have a swing at Intel and Nvidia both.

The thinking behind the decision

Photo: ீ ๑ Adam / Flickr

During a conference call, TechRadar had a chat with John Volkmann, who is AMD’s vice president of Strategic Communications. He told the publication that: ‘we’ve looked very hard at is the role of the ATI brand. We [previously] chose not to change for very good reasons.’ Clearly their tune has changed, with Volkmann hypothesising whether they now have ‘permission to do that’ before adding that AMD’s ‘partners and our customers also have a role to play’.

AMD graphics is long overdue, with ATI becoming more and more obscure as the years have ticked on. But why is AMD being so conservative about getting their name out there? Considering Radeon graphics are widely thought the best on the planet, Surely OEMs won’t pull support just because you might see the words AMD graphics right next to Intel processors? Or do we not understand the politics of it all? Strange, indeed.

Intel’s new flagship processor, aimed at heavy duty rigs, is bursting at the seams with capabilities. The Intel Core i7 chip series that replaced the Intel Core 2 as Intel’s flagship processor has recently got a major upgrade that has resulted in one of the world’s most expensive and highest spec processors on the planet.

All that power

The Intel Core i7 supports six hyper-threaded cores and up to twelve threads for exceptionally fast processing. The newly released Intel Core i7-980X is set to replace the beastly Intel Core i7-975 XE at the exact same price point. So, essentially, you are getting two extra cores for free. The i7-980X has the exact same base speed at 3.33GHz, with support DDR3-1066 across three channels and 12MB L3 cache across all six cores. The importance of that much cache is that tasks that are performed often will be readily accessible for reuse without the need to use core processing capacity.

The criticism

Photo: Intel

While all are in agreement this is easily the fastest consumer processor Intel has released, the added advantage of two cores will not result in a massive speed boost immediately. What is required is for software that takes advantage of this six-core system to be developed for the full benefits to be reaped.

The audience

This rig is aimed squarely at gamers. At a starting price of around £799, rigs built by gamer-specific companies like Alienware with the Intel i7-980X built-in are set to cost a lot of money, with the Alienware Area-51 ALX rig being the first Alienware platform earmarked for such release.

AMD’s response

While Intel solidifies its lead in the processor market with the Intel Core i7, AMD, the company’s biggest competitor, is forced to play catch-up. It’s unexpected that this processor, with its low volume high price model, will make a dent in AMD’s business, but it does put the company under pressure to make good and turn their recent fortunes around.

As far as the technical specifications of Toshiba Satellite L450D-11W (PSLY5E-01301LEN) are concerned, users will get a processor of AMD Athlon 64 X2 QL-64, 4,096 MB RAM and 320 GB hard disk memory. 15.6 Inch display of the laptop ensures high brightness. And more importantly, the notebook offers Microsoft Windows 7 home premium operating system.

In addition, Toshiba Satellite L450D-11W boasts wireless-LAN, Modem, LAN 10/100 networking systems. Apart from a 1.3 megapixel webcam, you will also enjoy its video outputs comprising HDMI, VGA, D-Sub (HD-15) and others. Last but not least; with the Toshiba Satellite L450D-11W (PSLY5E-01301LEN), you will also get two USB 2.0 connection ports. If you need to carry a notebook to your office everyday, then Toshiba Satellite L450D-11W (PSLY5E-01301LEN) will be an added advantage for you. This system is only 2.6 kg. So, carrying it won’t be a problem at all.

The Acer Aspire Timeline 1810 (LX.PJ402.009) has a very sleek and stylish design and comes in classy colours like red, black, white, etc. It has a total weight of around 1.4 kg which makes it suitable to carry anywhere without any difficulty. The 11.6 inch TFT screen of the Acer Aspire Timeline 1810 (LX.PJ402.009) comes with LED lighting and has an HD ready resolution perfectly suitable for watching movies and playing 3D video games. It provides an impressive battery life of 8 hours thus enabling you to work easily in the case of a power cut. The video outputs provided in the Acer Aspire Timeline 1810 (LX.PJ402.009) include HDMI, VGA D-Sub (HD-15) and it also contains 3 USB ports for attaching more and more peripherals and devices. The integrated security system included in the Acer Aspire Timeline 1810 (LX.PJ402.009) is Kensington lock support.

The networking features are provided by the ultra-fast 802.11a/b/g/n wifi connectivity provided in the Timeline netbook and it also contains a 0.3 Megapixel camera for allowing video chat with friends and business associates.

The hard drive included in the Acer notebook has a memory capacity of 320 GB which provides enough space for your music files and documents.  The Acer Aspire 7540 (LX.PJD02.002) has a display screen of 17.3 inches which has an HD resolution, anti-reflective surface and LED backlighting , together they contribute in making the Acer Aspire 7540 (LX.PJD02.002) a perfect notebook for regular computing needs and entertainment purposes. Additionally, with the ATI Mobility Radeon HD4570 graphics card and the dedicated graphics memory of 512 MB, you are transported to whole new level of computer gaming. The notebook’s multimedia capabilities are further enhanced by the built-in speakers and Dolby Surround Sound feature included in it.

Some other features of this brilliant piece of notebook include four USB ports, Ethernet and modem ports, built-in 802.11 b/g wireless LAN technology, HDMI and VGA external display options, 5-in-1 media card reader and a DVD Rewriter.

The Toshiba Satellite L350D-213 (PSLE4E-004001EN) is equipped with an AMD Athlon 64 X2 QL-64 processor which offers swift functionality. It provides a clock speed of 2100 MHz. This notebook is fitted with 3072 MB of RAM and it supports till 8 GB. You can easily store all sorts of audio, video various other files as the Toshiba Satellite L350D-213 (PSLE4E-004001EN) laptop is fitted with 250 GB of hard disk space. The large 17 inch display gives the device a very attractive and sophisticated look. The display resolution is around 1440 X 900. You can play all sorts of high resolution PC games on this laptop as it is installed with and ATI Mobility Radeon HD3200 graphics card. This laptop supports networking through Wireless-LAN, Modem and LAN 10/100.

You can easily connect 3 different USB devices with this Toshiba laptop as it is fixed with 3 X USB 2.0 ports. The in built web cam enables you to video chat without connecting an external device. The Kensington Lock Support makes the product pretty safe to use.