HardOCP claims Rick Bergman, AMD Senior VP and GM is fired

[JustMe21]

The smartphone and android tablet markets are saturated with ARM chips and Intel is trying to muscle its way into there as well, so profits will be pretty thin, if at all for AMD if they jump into the fray too. With Brazos and Llano, AMD is addressing the OEM PC market but what they really need is a better mobile solution for laptops. A powerful is chip is great, but so is an extrememly power efficient chip.

 

[BlueBlazer]

I've read elsewhere this was exactly the reason BD is late. AMD was still churning out Llano in their fab time.

Bulldozer was also late for other reasons (newer steppings). And being fabless also means have little or no control over the manufacturing. That said, Rick could have earlier left the company due to Llano issues (before or after Llano's launch). Furthermore AMD's profitability have improved a bit (through its APUs). Is it a coincidence that he leaves on the eve of Bulldozer launch? :hmm:

 

[sm625]

speculation:

AMD board member #1: Why did you put 16MB of cache on the chip but only 16 INT clusters?

Rick: *idunno*

AMD board member #2: Why does a chip nearly twice the size of a 4 core intel chip (minus the gpu) only have 33% more integer execution resources?

Rick: *idunno*

AMD board members #3,4,5: fire that #^&!

 

[BlueBlazer]

 

[cantholdanymore]

You guys are comparing a senior vice president at a major corporation being fired to yourselves or other people you know who've been fired. A senior VP at a major corporation is NEVER fired for non performance. They may retire, take a less stressful position, move to a different division, etc. Think about it, if corporate execs were held accountable for anything, ever, there would be a whole lot less gaming the system.

What does get execs fired is personal conflict. Telling the wrong person "no," chasing the wrong skirt publicly, getting caught taking bribes, getting caught...

Search for Gary Forsee (Sprint) or Carly Fiorina (HP). Not saying that they didn't get huge severance packages but they were given the boot

 

[Phynaz]

speculation:

AMD board member #1: Why did you put 16MB of cache on the chip but only 16 INT clusters?

Rick: *idunno*

AMD board member #2: Why does a chip nearly twice the size of a 4 core intel chip (minus the gpu) only have 33% more integer execution resources?

Rick: *idunno*

AMD board members #3,4,5: fire that #^&!

I guarantee you that not a single board member has ever made a design decision about a chip.

That's not the job of the BOD.

 

[Idontcare]

Search for Gary Forsee (Sprint) or Carly Fiorina (HP). Not saying that they didn't get huge severance packages but they were given the boot

You are talking exec CEO, magnus is talking senior VP.

If you want a more explicit example of a CEO being fired, look no farther than the firing of Carol from Yahoo 2 weeks ago:

To all,
I am very sad to tell you that I’ve just been fired over the phone by Yahoo’s Chairman of the Board. It has been my pleasure to work with all of you and I wish you only the best going forward.
Carol
Sent from my iPad

And its true, to my recollection I can't think of a single Sr VP that was out-right fired for anything in terms of failure to meet professional metrics and targets.

Fired for personality issues, sexual harassment and the like, yes, but not fired for performance failures. They get sent to greener pastures.

 

[drizek]

I'm more worried about this:


hiring an exec from comcast seemingly means they plan to continue to overpromise and underdeliver

They're going to rebrand their CPUs to AMD FXfinity

 

[Genx87]

I'm more worried about this:


hiring an exec from comcast seemingly means they plan to continue to overpromise and underdeliver

Or throttle your performance if you are using the chip too much

 

[blckgrffn]

They're going to rebrand their CPUs to AMD FXfinity

LOL.

Well, I guess I'll be down for the "business class" versions then

Seriously, Comcast Business Class rocks if you don't want/need the uber cable TV options.

About the "firing" - we'll probably never know. I work at a place where a senior VP was escorted out months ago all of a sudden one day. There aren't even any good rumors about it, which means there is probably a threat of or pending litigation.

 

[RussianSensation]

Problem is that "Team" has been nothing but BS'ing us..
Im sure they are BSing the upper management guys.

Here is a good post I read on another forum:

"Not sure if folks understand this, but Bergman was the single most visible and longest-tenured "Radeon guy" from the old ATI who made the transition to AMD. I remember him introducing the Radeon 9700 at its launch [the greatest videocard of all time imo], and he's been leading the GPU folks there ever since. Bergman was behind AMD's move to shorter product cycles and a nice cadence with Brazos, Llano, Zambezi (soon), and Trinity (early 2012). Guys like that don't just leave on a whim, and when they do, it has consequences that go beyond a single person's departure. I'm not sure yet what Read and the board are planning to do with AMD, but it apparently doesn't involve continuing on the trajectory they've established with Radeon GPUs and AMD APUs. If it did, I doubt Bergman would have left."

Not sure how accurate this is, but it looks like he did a lot of good things at AMD. Everyone makes mistakes. It looks like BD's mistake is that the CPU was designed to be competitive in multi-threaded scenarios in the first place when in the year 2011 hardly any programs are threaded beyond 4 threads. As such, the CPU needed much higher clock speeds as usual to compensate for the weaker performance in 1-4 threaded apps when extra cores wouldn't help. That put a lot more pressure on getting the yields and higher clocked speeds out on time.

Essentially, it's always easy to blame someone for current execution mistakes and miss the big picture that Bulldozer as an architectural design decision may have been wrong in the first place. Sure you can blame current poor yields, or inability to get to higher clock speeds with current steppings on Rick or other higher-ups. But these are all "after-the-fact" problems by going with the module design. I think the fundamental decision to go with a 6-8 core CPU vs. a fast 4 core CPU was done YEARS AGO. We'll find out soon enough just how vital that very decision was. Personally, I think it was the biggest mistake the engineering/managerial did at the time. I wish they pursued higher IPC/watt instead. We'll see if AMD got this right come launch day. I still stand firm by my own prediction when BD launches, it will be at least 1 generation ahead of current software trends (although content creation users will rejoice).

There are just too many bad omens all lining up here since Dirk's departure in Jan to possibily dismiss their sum total at this juncture

^ This. A guy like Dirk was extremely passionate about competing against Intel but he was also completely against diverting resources to try to go into the tablet/smartphone space. The Board of D. however wanted exactly the opposite. Those guys just want to make $ for themselves and shareholders. I don't think people understand the gravity of the situation. If the BOD was convinced that the future is not desktop/mobile computing (traditionally desktops/servers and laptops), but mobile devices such as tablets and smartphones, they could force AMD as a firm (by putting puppet mgmt that does what they want) to adopt a new market direction. That direction can just as well be focusing on becoming leaders in tablet/smartphone and APU space and stop worrying about competing with Intel on the high-end altogether. I hope I am wrong on this one. But when you start hearing rumors of an 8-core desktop CPU selling for $200+change, you seriously start to wonder...

 

[RussianSensation]

It was the right decision but AMD has had many setbacks along the way.

Ultimately, yes. But as discussed in other thread (Post #70):

1) AMD timed the purchase wrong, buying ATI when the stock price was high rather than 6-12 months before at ATI's low point;
2) AMD paid a huge premium with 0 competing bids.

 

[Googer]

AMD had NO CHOICE. It was NV or ATI . BUT nv meant a new head of AMD . Funny how things work out and your ass is chewed to shredds over making the wrong choice . But My pocket book loved it .

Wasn't IBM a potential suitor for ATi? And if Nvidia had tried to buy, certainly the Feds would have stepped in and possibly blocked it to prevent a complete monopoly.

 

[bryanW1995]

It's pretty clear by this point that BD's launch was screwed up very badly. That being said, that could be because it didn't work as well as expected, because of yield problems at GF, or both.

The thing to watch (in term's of execution) are now BC's successors and Trinity. If those go off w/out a hitch, then AMD has gotten over this rough patch. Given that we've seen more of Trinity than we have of BD, I think they'll be ok. BD seems to be the project from hell :biggrin:

That's funny, I remember reading similar things about barcelona...looks like with AMD, history repeats itself.

 

[acx]

Now CEO of Synaptics:

http://www.bizjournals.com/sanjose/...tics-hires-rick-bergman-as-ceo.html?ana=yfcpc

 

[Idontcare]

Nice move for Rick! Now we know he wasn't fired for sure, purely an upwards and onwards move on his part.

AMD's loss