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    AMD loses its graphics CTO to a yet-unknown suitor

    AMD loses its graphics CTO to a yet-unknown suitor

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    AMD's vice president and CTO of the Graphics Business Unit Eric Demers has stepped down to "pursue other opportunities." The departure comes after laying off of about 12 percent of its workforce last year, as well as senior exits including CEO Dirk Meyer, who was dismissed in 2009, and Products Group GM Rick Bergman, who left last fall.

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    AMD Radeon Graphics logo
    AMD Radeon Graphics logo

    One of AMD's leads on the graphics side of its business has left the company. Eric Demers, the graphics division's CTO and VP, joined ATI in 2000 and has been with AMD ever since it bought out the graphics company. The departure comes after layoffs of about 12 percent of AMD's workforce last year, as well as senior exits including CEO Dirk Meyer, who resigned in January, and Products Group GM Rick Bergman, who left last fall.

    It certainly hasn't been smooth sailing for AMD recently — flat revenue in 2011 has seen the company moving away from its struggling x86 CPU business to focus heavily on mobile and graphics, and we're sure it can't help that the latter's chief is moving on. In a statement AMD says the CTO of the entire corporation, Mark Papermaster, will pick up Demers' slack until a replacement is found. As for Demers, we haven't heard where he'll be going, though PC Perspective reports that he isn't bound for either of the other heavyweights, Intel and Nvidia.

    Update: We're hearing rumors that Demers will actually show up for work at Qualcomm, an interesting choice indeed: the company purchased AMD's mobile graphics division and Imageon media processor back in 2009. You now know it as Qualcomm Adreno, and it's the graphics solution in all Snapdragon-powered tablets and phones.