Green smoke above Texas vatican as AMD chooses new CEO

It's done. AMD has lined up its new CEO and the massed ranks of Phenom followers must now wait patiently in Texan Vatican square for the lucky winner to be revealed.

Ideally, the chip giant would not have been without a CEO for even a day, but – as it turned out – early front runners were not keen to take on the role. But why not?

Well, within the industry, you have several layers of employee. At the low end, you can live out your life without anyone noticing who you are or what you do. Sudden changes of direction or a series of mistakes is neither here no there. No one really cares.

Once you start working for a major corporation, you suddenly become aware that love above the shadows comes with its own scrutinies. You can be a bad director and probably carry on drawing a salary.

You might even get away with being a marginal VP.

But once you take on the top spot, a company's fortunes become intrinsically linked with yours. You are the face of that company – with ultimate responsibility for all failures and successes.

AMD is such a high profile job that many weaker executives regard it as a poison chalice. What if you are not as smart as you think you are?  What happens if you steer a course and it becomes all to apparent that the final destination is oblivion?

In that instance, men with suspect egos should duck their heads down and make do with VP-hood. Only those with full-on cojones of steel should apply.

From what we're hearing out of South America, that seems to be the case at AMD. The new CEO is chomping at the bit, raring to go and has loads of experience in the PC World (global market, not local PC superstore).

KitGuru says: With the huge sea-change at HP, Apple's constant re-direction of the market, the launch of Fusion and Bulldozer – this is the perfect moment for a serious CEO to emerge, stamp their authority on the market and create a serious alternative to Intel in the system space. Failure might be met with derision, but let's not under estimate the difficulty of being a $6.5Bn company in a land of $50Bn giants. Anyone care to hazard a guess as to the winner ?

Comment below or in the KitGuru forums.

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