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Advanced Micro Devices named Dirk Meyer, formerly head of its Microprocessor Solutions Sector, as its president and chief operating officer on Jan. 23.
The announcement came on the heels of a successful fourth quarter for AMD, which saw the company gain market-share while its revenue jumped 45 percent. At the same time AMDs archenemy Intel missed expectations for its fourth quarter revenue and admitted to losing market-share to AMD.
AMDs outlook continues to be buoyed by advantages in performance and energy efficiency, according to industry experts. Although Intel has also drawn an aggressive new chip roadmap, hitting later this year, which is designed to close that gap. Intel executives have also said the new chips will allow it to gain back its lost share.
Meyers promotion rewards the 11-year AMD veteran, who has played a key role in the development of chips such as Athlon 64 and Opteron chips. Meyer will run AMD along with Hector Ruiz, the companys chairman and CEO. Ruiz relinquished the title of president, allowing Meyer to step into the role.
Meyers “leadership, operational skills and business acumen have positioned the company for long-term, sustainable growth, and Im very pleased that AMD now will benefit from those skills on an even grander scale,” Ruiz said in a statement.
One of the newly appointed presidents goals is likely to be gaining more of a presence in the business PC space, an area the company has been targeting by using its Opteron server chips as a wedge, Meyer said in a recent interview with eWEEK.
The 44-year-old Meyer has held numerous roles in engineering and management since he came to AMD in 1995 from Digital Equipment Corp. At Digital, he worked on the Alpha processor.
In related news, AMD cut prices on several of its processors on Jan. 23. The chip maker nipped prices on its dual-core Athlon 64 X2 chips for desktop PCs, as well as its Turion 64, mobile Athlon 64 and mobile Sempron chips for notebooks.
AMDs entry-level dual-core chip, the Athlon 64 X2 3800+, now sells for close to $300. The chip maker dropped the list price on the 3800+ processor from $328 to $301. Its Athlon 64 X2 4200+, 4400+, 4600+ and 4800+ processors, which had ranged from $408 to $803, were lowered to between $362 and $643, an AMD representative said.
The companys most significant mobile processor price cuts, meanwhile, came on its Turion 64 line. The company lowered its Turion model ML-37 to less than $200. It is now offering the ML-37 for $184, down from $220. Its ML-40, ML-42 and ML-44 chips, which offer successively more performance, simultaneously dropped in price from between $263 and $525 to between $220 and $354, AMD said.
Given that AMD lists prices for chips sold in 1,000-unit lots, street prices on individual chips will vary from AMDs list and are likely to be higher.