DR. Lisa Su Named President and CEO After Rory Read Resigns

Rory Read became the President and Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) in 2011 and helped run the company during some very tough years as the worldwide economy has was slowly recovering and the PC market was drastically changing. Rory Read replaced Dirk Meyer as CEO in 2011. Prior to joining AMD, Read served as president and chief operating officer of Lenovo Group, Ltd for a period of five years. He previously spent 23 years at IBM serving in various global leadership roles. His tenure at the top position of AMD came to an end tonight when it was announced that he would be stepping down and that Dr. Lisa Su would be his successor. Read will support the transition in an advisory role, remaining with the company through the end of 2014.

Read said, I am grateful to have had the opportunity to lead such a talented team and proud of what we have accomplished during such an important chapter in the companys history. Together, we have established the right strategy to enable AMD to continue to grow and transform. I am confident that Lisa is the right leader to drive AMD forward.

Mr. Read, 52, had several major successes during his three year stint at AMD. One of the largest was getting both Microsoft and Sony to use AMD processors in their next-generation videogame consoles. Just recently it was announced that AMD would be licensing ARM processor technology to build processors for the server space and likely other products in the years to come. He also slashed operational expenditures by 30% upon joining AMD. Those moves have kept AMD alive, but the road has been rocky for AMD this year. Shares are down 15.25% for the year to date and fell another 6.4% after the market closed today.

Dr. Su, 44, becomes the first female CEO for AMD since the company was formed in the 1980s. She’ll now be in charge of ensuring that AMD is headed in the right direction. It also means that she is now leading the charge to get the AMD K12 processors (the first microarchitecture based on the ARMv8-A instruction set) out the door in 2016 along with the Zen (x86) cores that will debut at the same time.

Commenting on her appointment, Dr. Su said, I am deeply honored to have this opportunity to lead AMD during this important time of transformation. Our world-class technology assets combined with the incredible talent and passion of the AMD team provide us with a unique opportunity to shape the future of computing. I look forward to expanding on the strong foundation we have built under Rorys leadership as we develop industry-leading technologies and products for a diverse set of markets to drive sustainable and profitable growth.

You can watch Dr. Lisa Su sit down and talk about her background with John Taylor, Corporate Vice President, Global Communications of AMD.

We wish Dr. Lisa Su the best of luck and we can’t wait to see how AMD looks in 18-24 months from now!