With just a few weeks to go before its quad-core Opteron processor comes to the market, Advanced Micro Devices chief marketing and sales officer is leaving the company.
Henri Richard, who has been with the Sunnyvale, Calif., chip maker for five years and has been one of the companys most notable spokesmen, announced that he will leave the company in September.
In a statement released Aug. 22, AMD CEO and Chairman Hector Ruiz said that Richard helped the company grow its sales and marketing division at a time when it challenged Intels dominance of the market with products such as its Opteron processor.
“Henris primary goal at AMD has been to construct a world-class global sales and marketing organization focused on enduring relationships with major PC and server OEMs around the world. He delivered on that goal,” Ruiz said in the statement. “AMD is fully focused on leveraging the momentum we established during the last five years to achieve even greater levels of success ahead.”
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When Richard leaves, the sales and marketing department will report directly to Ruiz.
Richard leaves the company as its preparing to bring its quad-core processor—Barcelona—to market in September. The company has a press event scheduled for Sept. 10.
Since announcing that it will begin shipping the processor to its partners, AMD has been subject to some criticism that the chip is coming to market later than expected and that its initial clock speed—2.0GHz—is lower than expected. AMD executives have said that after the initial launch, it will quickly move to ramp up the clock speed and offer different models.
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Richards departure also comes at a time when the company is facing increasing pressure from a resurgent Intel, which has been shipping a number of different quad-core processors since November.
AMD has also been beset by several financial quarters where the company has been forced to report a loss.
In a statement, Richard said he wanted to leave the PC industry after 20 years in the business. In the same statement, AMD wrote that “Richard departs AMD of his own accord and on completely amicable terms.”
Richards department is the companys second high-profile loss in just a few months. Earlier this year, David Orton, an executive vice president, left after playing a key role in the merger of ATI and AMD. Orton led ATI as its CEO when AMD acquired it for $5.4 billion in October.
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