AMD's Eric Demers is Leaving the Company
by Anand Lal Shimpi on February 14, 2012 1:24 PM ESTI just found out that AMD's Eric Demers (Corporate VP & CTO, Graphics Division) is leaving the company at the end of this week. He's not going to Intel or NVIDIA but I suspect that someone of Eric's talents will remain in the industry. I just had dinner with Eric a couple of weeks ago and he seemed very positive on AMD's roadmap going forward. Given how important the GPU is becoming in this ever expanding industry, someone like Eric is in very high demand.
We now have an official statement from AMD:
Eric Demers, AMD Corporate Vice President and CTO, Graphics Business Unit, has decided leave AMD to pursue other opportunities.
AMD Chief Technology Officer Mark Papermaster will assume interim responsibility for the Graphics Business Unit CTO role until a replacement is found.
AMD remains fully committed to our critical graphics IP development and discrete GPU products. We have a tremendous depth of talent in our organization, a game plan that is resonating with our customers and our team, and we are continuing to bring graphics-performance-leading products to market. We will attract the right technology leader for this role.
We thank Eric for his contributions to the business and wish him well in his future endeavors.
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Anonymous Blowhard - Tuesday, February 14, 2012 - link
Though I am left wondering where the (implied profanity) he's going if not to Intel/NVIDIA.Bitboys maybe? ;)
Kristian Vättö - Tuesday, February 14, 2012 - link
There is for example Imagination Technologies and ARM to name a couple of options.asmoma - Tuesday, February 14, 2012 - link
ARM's graphics division is in Trondheim, Norway. Pretty far away from sunny California.Malih - Wednesday, February 15, 2012 - link
could be philanthropy?CeriseCogburn - Saturday, March 10, 2012 - link
The smarty smirk on his face tells it all... the can job with the save face issue... just another loser whacked because of so many years of sucksville.What we do is give them all a pretty line of love and tell them how valuable they are... it helps justify the insane robber baron salaries and stock grabs when working for anf fleeigh the burning titanic ship over it's impending graveyard - that's the smirking chimp look over-compensation as well.
Thanks for the destruction, the assets losses, and the gigantic debts.... good bye smirking chump.
See, reality is is not pretty so candy coating is required for the mentally disturbed who for some reason believe in too big and important so failure "is never" present, no matter what.
jjj - Tuesday, February 14, 2012 - link
Even if the 7xxx series turns out to not be competitive,AMD GPU's did pretty well in the last few years ,at least in desktop, so this is starting to stink.Mygaffer - Tuesday, February 14, 2012 - link
The more smoke Nvidia blows about "being surprised" about the HD7*** series performance not being what they thought, planted leaks about how awesome even their mid-range products will be, etc., make me think all the more that Nvidia is worried they don't have competitive products on the market and that they won't for a long time, just like Fermi vs. HD5***.Don't buy that hype.
Anyway, this is a very talented man and big loss for AMD's graphics division to be sure. He was one of the key people responsible for bringing AMD/ATI back into competition with the HD4*** series.
CeriseCogburn - Saturday, March 10, 2012 - link
" Nvidia doesn't have competitive products on the market" < the biggest hype everThanks for a 10/10 on the hypocrisy scale.
arjuna1 - Tuesday, February 14, 2012 - link
The 7xxx is competitive enough, the rest is nvidia's way of competing with propaganda. The real problem is that fast GPU upgrading is no longer a necessity, PC games have always been the driving factor behind the rush forward but even since consoles started getting PC GPUs this is no longer the case.Right now, almost literally, you don't need a 7970 or a 680 gtx for anything unless you want to game on a multiscreen set up. Not everyone has 1900x1200 screens so a 6950/580 is more than enough to run current DX11 games.
PC games will catch up in terms of technology when the next generation of consoles is released, did you see Epic hyping the Unreal 4 engine? That's because the next generation of consoles is coming up.
Only then we will see true DX11 games and the advent of the next DX, perhaps tied to Win 8...
jjj - Wednesday, February 15, 2012 - link
It is amusing that you guys don't even acknowledge the possibility of a product not being competitive and actually, I never even mentioned Nvidia,AMD's prev gen beats it's new cards in price/perf (for now at least).and even with big price cuts they are not all that exciting for a new architecture and a process shrink.