AMD technology officer resigns
Phil Hester, the chief technology officer at Advanced Micro Devices Inc. since 2005, has resigned from his job there Friday "to pursue other opportunities," the company said.Hester, 52, who had headed AMD's effort at integrating graphics and general computer processing on a single powerful chip, had overseen the company's strategic technical direction.
Hester was a longtime high-profile engineering manager at IBM Corp., and his hiring in 2005 was seen as step in AMD's effort to build its technical team.
The company said a new chief technology officer will not be named, and the managers who reported to Hester will report to respective AMD business units.
Mike Uhler was named to succeed Hester in his role as the executive in charge of AMD's accelerated computing project that integrates graphics onto a processor chip.
A company spokesman said Hester's resignation was not related to the 10 percent personnel cutback that the company announced Monday. Those job cuts are expected to start by mid-April and continue through the end of September. AMD employs about 16,800 people worldwide and about 2,700 in Austin.
AMD is working to regain profitability after it struggled to get its leading products introduced on time in 2007.
The company, which lost $3.3 billion in 2007, said Monday that its first quarter revenue will be about $1.5 billion, which was below its original estimate.