AMD appoints Motorola man president

The ties between AMD and Motorola were strengthened yesterday when Intel's arch-rival in the x86 arena appointed the ex-head of Motorola's Semiconductor Products Sector, Hector de J Ruiz, to the posts of president and COO. At the same time, the company named 'the DJ' as the man to replace AMD chairman and CEO Jerry 'Colonel' Sanders when he leaves the company at the end of next year. "Hector and I are going to work closely together and it is my intent that he become the ultimate successor to take over for me... when my contract is over at the end of 2001," Sanders told Reuters. In the short term, Ruiz replaces Atiq Raza, who quit last July after AMD posted its biggest ever quarterly loss. AMD went on to report a profitable fourth quarter, possibly by following Raza's advice and cutting costs. One of Raza's proposed cost-cutting measures is believed to have been the sale of AMD's new Dresden, Germany fab, a plan that may have led to his falling out with Sanders. The Dresden fab is, of course, designed to produce CPUs based on Motorola's copper interconnect technology, which AMD licensed back in 1998 in exchange for licensing its own Flash memory technology to Motorola. Motorola, meanwhile, named Fred Tucker as Ruiz' replacement. Tucker was formerly an executive VP and deputy to the office of CEO. ®