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More heads roll at AMD

Bonuses for the head honchos

Two more executives are being shown the door at chip maker Advanced Micro Devices – but two others will be getting juicy bonuses.

This morning after Wall Street opened, AMD filed an 8K form with the Securities and Exchange Commission that said Robert Rivet left AMD on February 8.

Rivet joined AMD as chief financial officer in September 2000 from Motorola, where he topped out at director of finance for Motorola's semiconductor products area after 24 years at the telco products maker. (That division, which had $8bn in sales and 34,000 employees, was spun out as Freescale Semiconductor.) Rivet was eventually named vice president and chief operations and administrative officer at AMD, where he ran the company's supply chain, human resources, and internal IT operations.

Mike Silverman, senior manager of global communications at the chip maker, told El Reg in an email that Marty Seyer, senior vice president of corporate strategy, is also leaving AMD.

"Both are leaving to pursue new opportunities and are expected to remain through a brief interim period to help ensure seamless transitions," Silverman explained in the email.

Starting yesterday, John Docherty, senior vice president of manufacturing operations, has responsibility for all aspects of product manufacturing at AMD; he will report directly to Thomas Seifert, the company's chief financial officer and interim chief executive officer, stepped into the breach after Dirk Meyer, AMD's president and CEO, was forced to resign on January 10.

El Reg has speculated that one of the main reasons why Meyer was asked to leave is that AMD has lost momentum, market share, revenue growth opportunities, and profits to Intel in the server racket despite putting technically decent Opteron chips into the field without bugs. AMD has had some issues with the 32 nanometer ramp, which has caused delays with PC and notebook chips and has kept AMD from reaching parity with Intel's Xeon processors on the server front. And AMD doesn't really have a product to play in the exploding smartphone and tablet markets, and this is a big problem, too.

"Docherty is playing a key role overseeing the transition to 32 nanometer," Silverman said. Docherty will lead AMD's Global Operations organization. This includes the company's assembly, test, mark and pack (ATMP) operations; its supply chain and global supply management; global logistics; and sales and operations planning.

With Rivet gone, AMD's corporate strategy team will report to Harry Wolin, who is senior vice president, general counsel, and secretary for the chip maker.

In a separate 8K filing with the SEC on February 8, the compensation committee at AMD gave Seifert a $1.05m cash bonus for calendar 2010, payable in March 2011. Emilio Ghilardi, senior vice president and chief sales officer, is getting a bonus of $942,865. AMD said that the bonuses were tied to non-GAAP operating income results for AMD in 2010. On a non-GAAP basis, AMD shifted from a $112m operating loss in 2009 to a $553m operating gain in 2010. ®

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