Posted on Tuesday, November 07 2017 @ 23:11 CET by Thomas De Maesschalck
Now we hear that Raja Koduri will not be returning to AMD in December. He just spend his last day at the office and wrote a goodbye e-mail to his team. Not a lot of reasons are provided but Raja claims that 40 days of reflection learned him that it was time to say goodbye to RTG and AMD.
In the e-mail, Raja writes he's very proud of the work of the RTG and he says he's confident AMD is moving firmly in the right direction. He wishes everyone the best but offers no clues about what he will do next, other than a cryptic sentence about pursuing his passion "beyond hardware" and explore driving "broader solutions". The real question is probably is he leaving voluntarily, or was he pushed out of the company?
As you may remember, HardOCP wrote an article last year about bad blood between Raja Koduri and Lisa Su as the former wanted to break away the RTG from AMD. We're not sure how much of that is true but HardOCP was pretty accurate about the often-mocked Intel CPU with AMD graphics that was revealed yesterday.
Anyway, here's the memo in full, courtesy of Hexus:
'To my AMD family,Oversight of the Radeon Technologies Group will remain CEO Lisa Su's duty until the company has found a successor to Raja.
Forty is a significant number in history. It is a number representing transition, testing and change. I have just spent forty days away from the office going through such a transition. It was an important time with my family, and it also offered me a rare space for reflection. During this time I have come to the extremely difficult conclusion that it is time for me to leave RTG and AMD.
I have no question in my mind that RTG, and AMD, are marching firmly in the right direction as high-performance computing becomes ever-more-important in every aspect of our lives. I believe wholeheartedly in what we are doing with Vega, Navi and beyond, and I am incredibly proud of how far we have come and where we are going. The whole industry has stood up and taken notice of what we are doing. As I think about how computing will evolve, I feel more and more that I want to pursue my passion beyond hardware and explore driving broader solutions.
I want to thank Lisa and the AET for enabling me to pursue my passion during the last four years at AMD, and especially the last two years with RTG. Lisa has my utmost respect for exhibiting the courage to enable me with RTG, for believing in me and for going out of her way to support me. I would also like to call out Mark Papermaster who brought me into AMD, for his huge passion for technology and for his relentless support through many difficult phases. And of course, I want to thank each and every one of my direct staff and my indirect staff who have worked so hard with me to build what we have now got. I am very proud of the strong leaders we have and I'm fully confident that they can execute on the compelling roadmap ahead.
I will continue to be an ardent fan and user of AMD technologies for both personal and professional use.
As I mentioned, leaving AMD and RTG has been an extremely difficult decision for me. But I felt it is the right one for me personally at this point. Time will tell. I will be following with great interest the progress you will make over the next several years.
On a final note, I have asked a lot of you in the last two years. You've always delivered. You've made me successful both personally and professionally, for which I thank you all from the bottom of my heart. I have these final requests from you as I leave:
. Stay focused on the roadmap!
. Deliver on your commitments!
. Continue the culture of Passion, Persistence and Play!
. Make AMD proud!
. Make me proud!
Yours,
Raja
