AMD SVP and General Manager of Computing and Graphics Jim Anderson resigns to become CEO at Lattice Semiconductor

Jim Anderson was the face of many product launches for AMD, such as Threadripper 2. (Source: Tech Report)

Having stayed at the company for over 3 years, Jim Anderson has left AMD and will be replaced by Saeid Moshkelani. Anderson entered AMD before the Ryzen launch in order to help with client sales, and since opportunities to advance in AMD were scant, has decided to depart and become CEO at Lattice Semiconductor.

Matthew Connatser, Published 08/29/2018

In 2015, Jim Anderson joined AMD an SVP and General Manager of Computing and Graphics to push sales of the company's two CPU architectures at the time: the out going architecture Bulldozer and later AMD's newest architecture Zen, which has been phenomenally successful for the company. At the same time, Anderson also worked with the graphics division, which later became RTG, to help launch Fiji, Polaris, and Vega. He was also responsible for coordinating AMD's grand strategy with its CPUs and GPUs.

However, as AMD CEO Lisa Su has been very popular for turning the company around (AMD's stock is now 14x more valuable than it was in 2016), chances to advance upwards within AMD have been nonexistent for the SVP. Anderson decided to move on to Lattice Semiconductors as CEO. In its press release, Lattice Semiconductors had this to say:

Jeff Richardson, Chairman of the Board, said, “On behalf of the Board, we are pleased to announce the appointment of Jim Anderson as Lattice’s new President and Chief Executive Officer. Jim brings a strong combination of business and technical leadership with a deep understanding of our target end markets and customers. The transformation he drove of AMD’s Computing and Graphics business over the past few years is just a recent example of his long track record of creating significant shareholder value. We are excited to bring Jim’s proven leadership to Lattice as we accelerate all aspects of the company in order to capture the enormous opportunity that lies ahead.”

This is the newest in a string of departures from AMD. Raja Koduri, Jim Keller, and Chris Hook are many prominent figures within AMD that left for Intel either earlier this year or the last. Although Anderson's departure is nothing for AMD to be happy about, his position will now be filled by Saeid Moshkelani, who has worked in AMD's semicustom SoC business since 2012. AMD has lived and thrived on SoCs for years, selling custom chips to Microsoft, Sony, Nintendo, and more, including Chinese PC builders. While AMD has shed yet another executive, it does not appear they are short on any talent, at least not yet.