Advanced Micro Devices' Dham resigns
SUNNYVALE, Calif., Nov 12 (Reuters) - Advanced Micro
Devices Inc. said on Wednesday Vinod Dham, one of the
top executives responsible for the company's flagship K6
computer chip, had resigned for "personal reasons."
"The best way to phrase it is, he resigned and the company
accepted it," said Scott Allen, AMD spokesman.
Dham, group vice president of the computation product
group, ran much of the operations related to the K6 -- a chip
introduced earlier this year to take on Intel Corp.
and its Pentium microprocessor.
AMD and investors had pegged the company's recovery to the
K6, a chip that crunches numbers about as fast as Intel's
top-of-the-line offerings but costs each about 25 percent less.
So far, K6 sales have been less than expected and AMD has
reported two quarters of disappointing financial results.
AMD would not specify why Dham resigned. But analysts
speculated he was forced out by Chief Executive Jerry Sanders
because of K6's slow start. For the past week, there had been
speculation Dham would shortly leave the company, analysts
said.
"Basically Vinod has a pretty strong personality, having
been so many years at Intel, and Jerry (Sanders) doesn't have
many strong personalities around him," said David Wu, analyst
at ABN AMRO Chicago Corp.
Dham could not be reached immediately for comment.
Dham was one of the designers of the Pentium at Intel in
the early 1990s. He became one of the principle executives at
Nexgen Inc., a small company that was developing chips
compatible with the Pentium. AMD bought Nexgen two years ago to
speed up the development of its own Pentium-class chips.
AMD introduced the K6 in April in a bid to get a bigger
slice of the $20 billion microprocessor market from Intel. But
so far, K6 sales have been slower than expected because of
production problems and reluctance by big PC makers to alienate
Intel.
AMD's Allen said Rob Herb, vice president of strategic
marketing, and Larry Hollatz, vice president of the Texas
microprocessor unit, would take over Dham's role.
((--Kourosh Karimkhany in Palo Alto, 650 846 5401)) |
