Rick Bergman Returns to AMD to Lead Computing & Graphics Business
by Anton Shilov on August 6, 2019 5:00 PM EST
AMD has announced that Rick Bergman had rejoined the company and will lead its Computing and Graphics business. Mr. Bergman’s focus will be high-performance PCs, gaming and semi-custom businesses. The return of the former executive emphasizes importance of gaming for AMD.
Rick Bergman has a long history with GPU companies. In the late nineties he used to work at S3 Graphics and then joined ATI Technologies in 2001, where he served at various positions until 2006, when ATI was bought by AMD. From 2006 to 2011, he led AMD’s products group where he was responsible both for CPUs and GPUs. In 2011, Mr. Bergman joined Synaptics, where he served as CEO until recently and significantly transformed the company.
Among the highlights of Rick Bergman’s career at AMD are the company’s highly-successful Radeon HD 4000 and HD 5000 families of products, the GCN architecture that was used by the company’s GPUs for years, as well as AMD’s ‘Fusion’ program that enabled the company to integrate its GPUs into its CPUs and eventually create high-performance SoCs for Microsoft’s and Sony’s game consoles.
Rick Bergman is the latest addition to AMD’s graphics and gaming team. Last month AMD hired Frank Azor, a former head of Dell’s Alienware division, to head its gaming-related efforts. Meanwhile, Mr. Bergman brings both general management and semiconductor experience.
Related Reading:
- An Interview with AMD’s Forrest Norrod: Naples, Rome, Milan, & Genoa
- All Ryzen: Q&A with AMD CEO Dr. Lisa Su
- CES 2019 Question and Answer Session with AMD CEO, Dr. Lisa Su
Source: AMD
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willis936 - Wednesday, August 7, 2019 - link
That site is tabloids. It's sometimes interesting to see what's out there but all information from there needs to be treated as provisional. Also every other article is a paid promotion of a scam.HStewart - Monday, August 12, 2019 - link
Yes I stated it was not very reliable. And comment section is a disgrace.CiccioB - Wednesday, August 7, 2019 - link
The highly successful??
Nvidia was in the making of the HPC future architecture sacrificing die size and power consumption, and those tiny piece of toys were just cheap enough to get a small piece of the market share. They were also the GPUs that abandoned the "tiny is good" philosophy that was applied just after the use of the failing ATI Terascale architecture that could not scale (oxymoron).
And this was the result in AMD to try to catch up with Nvidia new market dominant position (yeah, good that 400 and 5000 series were "successful"!): bigger, slower, energy hungry architecture. Can't call it a success even though AMD has to discount it for all these years
The "magic" word Fusion that was being reported everywhere for months before they manage to come on the market with an "APU" months later Intel launched their own integrated solution (doing that without spending a single work in marketing trademark, slides and presentation). Is he also responsible for all those buzz words like HSA and constantly betting on different developing frameworks each 6 months while trying to catch up with CUDA? Now we are on ROCm... let's hope Cray is going to give them a good help to create something that lasts at least more than 6 months and is also usable.
And last but not least, is he also responsible for the price discount AMD did to get the console supply? Yeah, this is the right man to bring AMD back to the worst of its years after all this hard work in trying to put it on track with the competitors..
Galamoustan - Wednesday, August 7, 2019 - link
Lisa will not leave. Her work at AMD recently started paying off (starting with Zen architecture). It would be like saying after much effort in foreplay, the erected person will zip up and leave, go somewhere else and start all over again.CiccioB - Thursday, August 8, 2019 - link
That is what the great do: leaving at the apex of the success.Lisa has to prove that all her choices (and also those that are attributed to her but are not her own) will prove good in the distant future. AMD get some advantage oints against Intel due to Intel 10nm troubles, but don't expect this to last forever, and Intel came back could just be like a double punch on the face returning AMD to trail Intel and get just the crumbles it wants to leave to them as they did until Zen + (and plus is needed, though many forget this) Intel 10nm failure.
BTW, look at Keller... he doesn't remain long enough to enjoy the fruits of its work that takes years before being deployed on the market.
Moreover all depends on:
1. wage
2. freedom in decision (and a CEO is not always free, there's a board of directors behind he/she)
If IBM is going to give here more on those, why should she would not choose the new job?
Do not think a CEO is a fanboy...
mode_13h - Friday, August 9, 2019 - link
> That is what the great do: leaving at the apex of the success.You're confusing greatness with the successful. I'd agree that it's what *successful* people do, but there are *great* people who don't shy away from challenges likely to leave them bruised (or worse).
mode_13h - Friday, August 9, 2019 - link
The smartest time to make a move is when everything is looking up.As others have pointed out, Intel will launch their dGPUs and 7 nm server chips in 2020. Also, Nvidia will surely launch their 7 nm GPUs, before long.
As for their partners and big customers, Samsung might have issues with their RDNA. Google Stadia might not catch on, or might lose out to the competition. And then there's the economy, which is headed into recession.
Basically, if AMD's stock is priced for perfection, then the (near) future can only hold bad news for AMD and Dr. Su. She would be smart to leave now, though I think she'll probably stick it out. If she can weather the coming storms, then she'll prove beyond a doubt that she truly deserves all of the praise that has been heaped upon her.
mode_13h - Friday, August 9, 2019 - link
Sorry, I meant Intel's 10 nm server chips.HStewart - Monday, August 12, 2019 - link
I think the main reason she would leave, it because AMD debts are coming up and she wants to get out while they are ahead.