Intel Rival AMD Undergoing Leadership Transition

Out will be Jerry Sanders, the longtime CEO of Advanced Micro Devices, and in will be his hand-picked successor, Hector Ruiz, a former Motorola chip executive who has been running the day-to-day operations at AMD for more than a year.

Sanders made the decision to retire from the CEO post last year, with Ruiz officially taking the reins at AMD's next annual meeting. With the move, the Sunnyvale, Calif.-based company's leadership will change from Sanders' sometimes flamboyant style and take-no-prisoners critique of Intel to Ruiz's low-key, yeomanlike management approach.

Ruiz, 56, joined AMD as COO in 2000 after 20 years at Motorola, where he rose to become president of the company's Semiconductor Products Sector. Ruiz was not available for comment.

The leadership transition comes as AMD continues to fight pricing pressure from industry giant Intel. AMD also is readying its next-generation, 64-bit "Hammer" family of processors, aimed at competing in the high-end space with RISC systems and Intel's Itanium.

As a result, some solution providers are concerned about potential changes CEO-to-be Ruiz might bring.

"Anytime there is a management shift, [the question is will they maintain their aggressive posture or become a finance-driven company?" said Jeff Campbell, vice president of business development at Private Label PC, a City of Industry, Calif.-based solution provider and white-box maker. "That is the initial perception people may have of Hector Ruiz."

Private Label PC has a robust business with AMD, Campbell noted. "I like working with them. We did over $50 million last year with AMD, our first year with them," he said. "And we want to continue using AMD."

Despite Sanders' history of rhetoric, some solution providers said AMD hasn't been as operationally or technically aggressive as it should be.

"Frankly, I've sort of been amazed at AMD," said John Boghosian, proprietor of JWB and Associates, an Atlanta-based systems builder. "One the one hand, they claim to have a superior processor over Intel, yet I think they've lacked aggression in the marketplace. I wouldn't consider them aggressive."

AMD has fallen short in areas such as support technology,specifically, it does not offer motherboards integrated with its processors like Intel, said Boghosian. "So maybe the change in leadership will be a breath of fresh air," he added.