AMD Names A Few New CTOs, Sorta

AMD announced the next round of promotions, additions and departures to from its staff. Most notably, we learned that the company has promoted one of its executives to a role what essentially is a CTO in its traditional meaning and replaced its current CTO with a new CTO. Confused ? No worries, the explanation follows below.

Randy Allen, who was in charge of the AMD’s server and workstation business and previously oversaw microprocessor engineering for the company, has been promoted to the role of "senior vice president, Computing Solutions Group". He will be responsible for "broad and growing portfolio of consumer and commercial microprocessor solutions and platforms", something that sounds like the job description of an almost-chief technology officer to us.

However, it is not quite a complete CTO-like role, as there is a newly formed "Central Engineering" organization that is co-led by Chekib Akrout, who is joining AMD from Freescale, and Jeff VerHeul, corporate vice president of design engineering at AMD. The Central Engineering leadership team is described to "direct the development and execution of AMD’s technology and product roadmaps in partnership with AMD’s business units." Akrout, VerHeul and Allen will report to president Dirk Meyer.

And even if AMD did not name a new chief technology officer, the company still got a new CTO, short for "chief talent officer" : The company promoted Allen Sockwell to senior vice president, human resources and CTO to develop "AMD’s leadership assets and employee talent".

Mario Rivas, formerly executive vice president of the Computing Solutions Group and Michel Cadieux, formerly senior vice president and chief talent officer, have left AMD.