Dave Orton to leave AMD at the end of July

Tuesday 10th July 2007, 02:02:00 PM, written by Rys

AMD has issued a press release announcing that Dave Orton, former CEO of ATI, is leaving the company as one of its executive VPs at the end of this month.

Orton had this to say in the press release: "It is with mixed feelings that I am leaving AMD. I am very optimistic about AMD’s future. I believe strongly in the strategies that brought AMD and ATI together and the talented employees of the ‘new AMD’ who are committed to winning in the market by delivering the best possible solutions for customers."

Adrian Hartog and Rick Bergman will now report to the Office of the CEO in their roles as senior VP and general manager of the Consumer Electronics and Graphics Product Group (GPG) divisions respectively.

It's unclear exactly why Orton is leaving the post of executive VP of the GPG, after his very successful tenure at the head of ATI Technologies, following ATI's acquisition of ArtX. One reason could be money, with too many heads at senior VP level for AMD to feel comfortable with on a salary basis, as the company looks to cut costs. We hope it's not for performance related reasons this soon after the merger, and it'll be interesting to see how analysts and the market react to the news.

You can read AMD's press release on Orton's departure.
Discuss on the forums

Tagging

amd ± orton, leaving, departure, ati, merger


Latest Thread Comments (33 total)
Posted by Geo on Wednesday, 11-Jul-07 12:33:47 UTC
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/LAC.20070711.RORTON11/TPStory/Business

Quote
In the end, Dave Orton was tired of commuting - and they were long commutes.

For seven years, Mr. Orton regularly flew between his Silicon Valley home and Toronto, where he captained ATI Technologies Inc. through constant industry turbulence before it was taken over last year by Advanced Micro Devices for $5.4-billion (U.S.).

His new job was to lead the integration of the two firms, whose computer chip products were complementary but whose cultures weren't as closely aligned, with AMD more corporate and ATI a bit more freewheeling.

Yesterday, with the job of integration complete, Mr. Orton announced his resignation as executive vice-president at AMD. The decision came after concluding he didn't want to keep on commuting from California, as would have been required because AMD management is headquartered in Austin, Tex.

"For me, personally, it's time to call a time out. There's no other hidden agenda in here at all," Mr. Orton, 51, said in interview. "Being a CEO for so many years, I [still] felt like I could adapt and be a good team player [at AMD] but at the same time that team role required me to get back on a plane and effectively work in one site and live in another. That was the part I just said I'm not ready to continue with."
I think I'm willing to accept that until/unless there is a major cutback of core former ATI staff (i.e. outside marketing/sales/pr/finance) in the nearish future, then I'll go with the other likely reason (i.e. he told his people that wouldn't happen, so he took the bullet first).

If you look at their structure, it's not terribly surprising that he's a fifth wheel, and an expensive one at that. But don't forget the merger was largely a cash deal, so I'm not really too worried about the Orton family going hungry any time soon.

Posted by _xxx_ on Wednesday, 11-Jul-07 12:35:27 UTC
When the company f*cks up three releases in a row, heads must roll. All the would-be alternative explanations offered above are nonsense.He led the company, the company didn't do well, he's being nicely offered to leave honorably, end of story.If I was the head of AMD I would have done this right after the purchase (along with the complete higher management team at ATI as well probably). Staff cuts are also a definite must from the business POV.Seems like my unfounded prophetic predictions (right after the takeover) of ATI going out of high-end business soon were right once again.

Posted by Dave Baumann on Wednesday, 11-Jul-07 17:43:52 UTC
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/LAC.20070711.RORTON11/TPStory/Business

Quote
"For me, personally, it's time to call a time out. There's no other hidden agenda in here at all," Mr. Orton, 51, said in interview. "Being a CEO for so many years, I [still] felt like I could adapt and be a good team player [at AMD] but at the same time that team role required me to get back on a plane and effectively work in one site and live in another. That was the part I just said I'm not ready to continue with."

Posted by jimmyjames123 on Wednesday, 11-Jul-07 19:43:29 UTC
Quoting Dave Baumann
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/LAC.20070711.RORTON11/TPStory/Business

That explanation of his doesn't make sense to me. Let's say that ATI was not purchased by AMD, and it was business as usual for ATI. Orton would still be commuting from California to Toronto, which is even more tedious than commuting from California to Texas.

I think Orton saw the writing on the wall, and for some reason he didn't like what he saw with respect to future prospects at AMD, and he excused himself from the company. It was a good excuse, because now he truly can spend all the time in the world with his family in California, and he surely has boatloads (multi millions of dollars) of money too after all those years as CEO and after the cash buyout.

Posted by Speccy on Wednesday, 11-Jul-07 19:58:26 UTC
Quoting jimmyjames123
That explanation of his doesn't make sense to me. Let's say that ATI was not purchased by AMD, and it was business as usual for ATI. Orton would still be commuting from California to Toronto, which is even more tedious than communiting from California to Texas.
And that could be one his personal motivating factors for seeing the deal is done - he get a way out (with, no doubt, some nice wedge in his back pocket).

Posted by Fox5 on Friday, 13-Jul-07 19:14:27 UTC
Quoting 3dilettante
Or an exec who would resist further butchering of ATI needed to be removed...
What butchering of ATI has occurred?

Quote
"Athlon XP was able to keep up with the early stages of Northwood"

made me fall over laughing.
Intel had 3 versions of northwood, A, B, and C, and they didn't launch at 3ghz.
From what I recall, northwood A remained slightly behind AMD, northwood B traded blows with AMD but in the end they essentially equaled out (3200+ matched 3.06ghz in performance), and Northwood C flew away from the athlon xp, for the 6 to 9 months or so until AMD could deliver desktop K8s.

Quote
Why didn't AMD do the same and focus on the market segment which was growing notably faster if they had the best Perf/Watt on the desktop front since the K7, and the K8 was a potential energy saver/PCB real estate saver with the integrated Northbridge and all ?
Poor market insight from the top brass, IMHO.
AMD wanted to go high end with the K8, they resisted dropping prices for quite some time and didn't appear to want to go cheap and mobile. That, and they lacked decent mobile chipsets.

Posted by 3dilettante on Friday, 13-Jul-07 19:30:37 UTC
Quoting Fox5
What butchering of ATI has occurred?
Butchering was too strong a word for what has happened so far.
Not too strong for what I expect if AMD's fortunes do not improve.

Quote
AMD wanted to go high end with the K8, they resisted dropping prices for quite some time and didn't appear to want to go cheap and mobile. That, and they lacked decent mobile chipsets.
It didn't help that K8 was a server processor first and foremost, and AMD's more narrow product mix and weak marketing couldn't match Centrino.

The IMC was a problem for power draw with integrated graphics, since the IMC kept the CPU out of the deeper power states.

Posted by Fox5 on Saturday, 14-Jul-07 07:18:37 UTC
Quoting 3dilettante
Butchering was too strong a word for what has happened so far.
Not too strong for what I expect if AMD's fortunes do not improve.



It didn't help that K8 was a server processor first and foremost, and AMD's more narrow product mix and weak marketing couldn't match Centrino.

The IMC was a problem for power draw with integrated graphics, since the IMC kept the CPU out of the deeper power states.
It did? I thought even the original k8s were able to downclock to 800mhz, and it was a selling point of the opteron line. I could be wrong though.

Posted by Rys on Saturday, 14-Jul-07 17:55:38 UTC
Quoting Fox5
It did? I thought even the original k8s were able to downclock to 800mhz, and it was a selling point of the opteron line. I could be wrong though.
Yes, they could, but that's different to what 3dilettante's talking about with deep power saving. Memory accesses by the IGP stopped the CPU switching parts of itself off and going completely clockless.

Posted by Freak'n Big Panda on Saturday, 14-Jul-07 23:45:19 UTC
Quote
"Athlon XP was able to keep up with the early stages of Northwood"

made me fall over laughing.
Yeah I agree, after Intel first moved to .13nm with northwood the AXPs couldn't keep up at all.

Quote
When the company f*cks up three releases in a row, heads must roll. All the would-be alternative explanations offered above are nonsense.

He led the company, the company didn't do well, he's being nicely offered to leave honorably, end of story.

If I was the head of AMD I would have done this right after the purchase (along with the complete higher management team at ATI as well probably). Staff cuts are also a definite must from the business POV.

Seems like my unfounded prophetic predictions (right after the takeover) of ATI going out of high-end business soon were right once again.
I second this.


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