AMD announced that its board of directors elected President and COO Dirk Meyer as the company's chief executive officer. Meyer succeeds Hector Ruiz, who will become executive chairman of AMD and chair of the board of directors. As executive chairman, Ruiz will ensure a smooth executive leadership transition; focus on driving the company's asset smart strategy to completion, and assist with high-level government and strategic partner relations.

Meyer, 46, joined AMD in 1995 and made his mark as part of the design team responsible for the original AMD Athlon processor, a breakthrough product for AMD and the industry's first processor to break the 1GHz barrier. From 2001 to 2006, Meyer led the company's microprocessor business, overseeing related R&D, manufacturing, operations, and marketing. His leadership skills during these five years resulted in a doubling of revenue for the microprocessor business and a substantial expansion of AMD's global profile. In 2006, Meyer was appointed president and COO, and in 2007, he was elected to AMD's board of directors.

Ruiz, 62, joined AMD as president and chief operating officer in January 2000 and became AMD's chief executive officer on April 25, 2002. He has served on AMD's board of directors since 2000 and was appointed chairman of the board of directors in 2004. His accomplishments at AMD and contributions to the industry include:

•Expanding AMD beyond the consumer desktop market into the commercial and enterprise market, resulting in AMD technology being used by as much as 90 of the top 100 companies on the Forbes Global 2000 by the year 2007.

•Growing AMD's customer base to include the world's top 10 computer manufacturers and the world's top 10 consumer electronics manufacturers.

•Redefining the future of enterprise computing with the introduction of the AMD Opteron processor, paving the way for the industry-standard x86 architecture to deliver the advantages of 64-bit computing.

•Sharply growing AMD's global presence, with new teams and new design centers in China, India, and other high-growth markets. In 2007, AMD's international sales represented 87 percent of total consolidated revenue, as compared to 66 percent in 2001.

•Focusing the industry on innovating to better meet customer needs. This strategy, commonly referred to as "customer-centric innovation," has become a hallmark of Hector and of AMD, and is a primary point of AMD's competitive differentiation.

•Broadening AMD's platform advantage to include leading-edge graphics and paving the road for the next generation of computing, Accelerated Computing, with the ATI acquisition in late 2006.

•Promoting fair and open competition in the global microprocessor market with AMD filing a landmark antitrust suit against Intel. Since 2005, antitrust regulators around the world have validated claims made by AMD regarding Intel's illegal business practices by launching independent investigations that have thus far uncovered evidence of illegal monopoly maintenance that harms consumer choice.

Lalit /ITvoir Network