It has been a banner year for AMD, having reasserted itself as a power player in the CPU market with its third generation Ryzen processors, and seemingly establishing solid footing in the GPU space with Navi. AMD now finds itself in a relatively good spot. If AMD CEO Dr. Lisa had plans to leave the company in search of a new challenge, now would be as good of a time as any. In response to a fresh rumor indicating she would do exactly that, however, Dr. Lisa Su took to Twitter and quickly set the record straight.
Just for the record, zero truth to this rumor. I love @amd and the best is yet to come!August 6, 2019
"Just for the record, there is zero truth to this rumor. I love AMD and the best is yet to come!," Dr. Su wrote.
She was responding to an article this morning by Usman Pirzada at WCCFTech, a site that often posts rumors and leaks. In the article, Pirzada points out that he has broken stories on several key executive movements, including Raja Koduri, the former head of AMD's graphics division who now heads Intel's efforts in discrete GPUs, and Frank Azor, the Alienware co-founder who recently departed Dell and joined AMD, among others.
"The sources involved with this story have a significant overlap with these previous ones, so my certainty level is high enough to move forward with this," Pirzada wrote.
What made the rumor interesting, and perhaps somewhat plausible initially, is AMD on Monday announced it had hired Rick Bergman to join the company as executive vice president of computing and graphics. Bergman most recently served as president and CEO of Synaptics, but prior to that, he spent a decade in senior executive roles at AMD and ATI. In a sense, he is returning home.
According to Pirzada, Bergman would be favored to take over as CEO after Dr. Su left. Dr. Su, meanwhile, would accept a number two role at IBM, and eventually replace Ginni Rometty as CEO.
"She has been in talks with them for a while now and all the indications are that they have gone well," Pirzada wrote.
Whether or not there actually were any discussions, it seems Dr. Su is more than content at AMD, and committed to navigating the company into new rounds of processor and GPU launches. One of those will come tomorrow, with the launch of AMD's Epyc "Rome" processors, which are based on Zen 2 and built on a 7-nanometer manufacturing process.
Further down the road, AMD is expected to launch higher-end Navi GPUs with ray tracing support. Details are still light at the moment, but we know that both Sony's PlayStation 5 and Microsoft's next Xbox console (Project Scarlett) will both feature a custom Navi GPU with support for ray tracing.
