AMD's Ruiz: A Soft-Spoken But Determined Leader - Page 2

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Weber credits Sanders with giving the engineers enough leeway to think big and embark on the "x86 everywhere" strategy that led to development of the Opteron when Intel was trying to lead the industry in another direction with its Itanium processor.

"But Hector was the right guy to leverage all that and manage the operation," Weber said. "He took on a very hard job in a large company with the founder still there, and he did a great job in making it happen."

The Opteron proved to be a fabulous success, getting AMD back in the game to carve out a roughly 20 percent share of the lucrative server market. But AMD's resurgence did not go unnoticed by Intel, which cranked up its considerable R&D and marketing resources to grab back some of that share in 2007 and keep a lid on AMD's growth.

AMD was hurt further by delays in its most recent quad-core Opteron processor, code-named Barcelona, which shipped at least six months later than originally planned.

But the Barcelona launch also represented a turning point for AMD that showed how far the company had come under Ruiz from the first Opteron's debut. Back then "our customers were hiding behind the curtain," at the launch, afraid of ticking off Intel, Ruiz told a small group of reporters ahead of a Barcelona marketing event. "There's no such thing today."

Now it's about execution and competing against the very energized and formidable Intel. Ruiz's very capable No. 2 is Dirk Meyer, AMD's president and chief operating officer.

Meyer is considered the likely eventual successor to Ruiz, which were he to gain the post would bring a very different style of leadership to the chip company.

"Dirk is more of an extrovert and a detail guy," Allen said. "There's nothing in the x86 world he hasn't seen. Hector sees more of the big picture."

Former CTO Weber thinks Ruiz's tendency to keep a relatively low profile "can be a little bit problematic. I think you do need a strong presence to guide some of the efforts they're involved in. But Hector and Dirk are a good combination. Dirk is hugely respected in the engineering community."

One of those efforts is AMD's controversial $5 billion purchase of graphics chipmaker ATI. The jury is still out on whether the 2006 purchase was a smart move, but it shows Ruiz has an ambitious agenda.

"We had to do it because so many executives were asking us to offer a platform solution and chipsets," Allen said.

AMD had never done a deal anywhere near the magnitude of buying ATI, but Allen said any skeptics within the company probably didn't argue against it because it was outside the status quo. "Suggesting something can't be done because there's no precedent for it is a mistake," Allen said. "It's like serving up your head on a platter to Ruiz."

Margaret Lewis, AMD's director of commercial solutions, said Ruiz sets a tone at the company that goes beyond the latest chip advance or how to beat Intel. "With Hector it's not about technology for technology's sake," she said.

"He has a bigger vision that is more about pioneering new things than us versus them."