AMD’s stock fell today by 5.8% due to reports of insider trading involving it’s former CEO, Hector Ruiz. Mr. Ruiz now serves as the chairman of AMD’s spin-off company, GlobalFoundries. This is now putting into question the current state of AMD’s management team and what long term impacts this may on both AMD itself, along with it’s spin-off. For me, this isn’t just about only this most recent calamity for AMD, as it is a bit more about the entire track record they’ve had after the merger with ATi.
Back in their glory days both AMD and ATi were both smaller companies battling against the ‘evil empires’, with Intel and nVIDIA respectively. In the case of AMD vs Intel, Intel was very obsessed with just raw clock rates, pushing upwards of 4.0 GHz on their Pentium 4 chips, while AMD strove to innovate and not set their minds on just clock rates alone. As a result, AMD was able to not only innovate a bit more than Intel, but they also offered a comparable product at a lower price point. As for ATi vs nVIDIA it was a similar story, where ATi innovated while nVIDIA kind of fell into a bit of a rut after the stellar GeForce 4000 series.
Then there was a turning point for all 4 companies: Intel released it’s Core series of processors which since then have arguably proven to be some of the best, nVIDIA got passed it’s 5000 and 6000 series to release a stellar product in the 7000 series, and then finally AMD decided to take over ATi in a merger, resulting in a new “mega” AMD. Ever since then, for one reason or another, I feel this has stagnated both AMD and ATi’s individual progress. Their products have felt just a little less fleshed out due to their design decisions, and it just wasn’t as diverse or as fresh as before. While AMD and ATi were in this ‘limbo’ Intel and nVIDIA kept coming back strong, product after product. Although, ATi did have a great success story recently with it’s 4000 series video card products, which were in fact innovative and strong competitors in the market.
With all this said, I personally don’t feel that AMD is in a good place, or has been for that matter since the take over of ATi. I am not quite sure what organizational changes took place after that merger, but whatever happened it hasn’t been good for the company in a variety of areas, and this latest development only illustrates this point further. I for one was a HUGE fan of both AMD and ATi some years back, and while it saddens me to see the organization in this state I would still love to see AMD and the ATi product lines return to their former glory. Perhaps ATi’s recent success can continue, and AMD as a whole can clean up their act before it’s too late.
Source: Ruiz bombshell: Are AMD, GlobalFoundries affected?
