In a further shock to the system that is AMD, Phil Hester (pictured), AMD CTO since 2005 has departed the company to “pursue other opportunities.” The news was leaked by AMD to certain mainstream newspapers but the company did not make an official announcement. 

Hester’s move marks the third senior executive departure from the company since Dave Orton’s resignation in July 2007 and Henri Richard’s departure and subsequent move to Freescale in September 2007. It also follows several other non-executive departures from AMD in the past few weeks.

It seems Hester’s post as CTO will not be filled, as each of AMD’s business units has its own CTO. Hester was responsible for creating CTOs at the divisional level. He was the main contributing factor to the current technology strategy, which has several new product launches in the pipeline. However, the spate of criticism surrounding the launch of the Barcelona server processor saw the company cut prices to compete with Intel – a move that may have hurt the industry’s confidence in AMD.

Phil Hester joined AMD in 2005 from Newisys, a computer company of which he was co-founder. Prior to Newisys, Hester spent 23 years working with IBM.

By Síle Mc Mahon