AMD marketing and sales chief Henri Richard departs
AMD's Henri Richard is resigning from his position as executive vice president and chief sales and marketing officer, according to report in Hexus.net and confirmed by news.com.
At a press briefing in July, the outspoken, dapper Richard made the case that AMD would will win in its battle with Intel, which includes suing its rival for abuse of monopoly power. He stated that AMD allows OEMs freedom to create more distinctive products than they could working with Intel, and that AMD has no “monopoly tax.”
Richard is known for attributing AMD's past misfortune to Intel: "Since our OEMs are smart people, when the first Opteron came to the market and they could benchmark it, they could tell it was better. So why did it take so long for them to migrate over? I don't mind a good competitor. What I don't like is an unfair competitor," he said during AMD's Technology Analyst Day last month.
On the processor battlefield, AMD hasn't been faring so well of late. It's highly touted 65-nanometer quad-core processor, Barcelona, was six months late in shipping to OEMs, allowing Intel more time to close the gap with its 45-nanometer quad-core Penryn chips.
Richard had been with AMD since 2002. Prior to AMD he was executive vice president of worldwide field operations at WebGain, president of the Computer Products Group at Bell Microproducts and vice president, worldwide sales and support for IBM’s Technology Group.
So far, no word from AMD on Richard's replacement or his reasons for leaving the company...