Hector Ruiz actually did something good
before he led AMD to the edge of financial disaster. The ex-Motorola guy
that got AMD on its feet with K8 core an Opterons, and to the edge of the
disaster with first native quad-core K10 Barcelona actually did
something good before he was pushed out of the AMD’s leadership.
Hector was the guy who talked to all the
politicians and managed to secure $1.2 billion in state subsidies. Senators
also mentioned Lou Gerstner, former IBM CEO, as IBM also has
its own Fab in east Fishkill, also in New York State. IBM was thinking about leaving New York State with most of its staff in the mid 90’s, but State Senators managed to convince
them to stay, promising some big investments in the chip industry. Some 15
years later, they put the promises to reality, but they gave the money to
Globalfoundries.
Many are not a big fans of idea that this
high technology is co-owned by United Arab Emirates ATIC investment fund but in real life, these people saved AMD’s
butt big time, as recently AMD has been a great machine for losing money, and
with Intel being stronger than ever, and things are not going to get better
anything soon.
AMD can be happy that Dirk Meyer took over
as a CEO as he at least understands the product but some fear that Dirk lacks
of politician and business experience to lead such a company. Some analysts
believe that Dave Orton, retired CEO of AMD, was a better choice, but since Dave
retired some 2 years ago, this obviously didn’t and won’t happen.
Hector did his part and it might be his
time to slowly retire completely even from the President post he has at
Globalfoundies. He is definitely a wealthy man, one of the great leaders that was
earning millions per quarter even when AMD under his leadership filed hundreds
of millions of losses.
For what it's worth we believe that Hector should become a politician and try to
negotiate peace in the Middle East, as if he would be as half successful as with his
bonus negotiations, this region would see peace really soon.
Published in
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Hector is the key character in making Fab 2 a reality
Political games