AMD Names Former Dell Exec As CIO

Advanced Micro Devices has appointed former Dell executive Ahmed Mahmoud as chief information officer. Mahmoud, who was VP of IT at Dell before joining AMD, will be responsible for managing AMD's global technology infrastructure, the company said. "Ahmed's success using IT as a competitive differentiator to scale the business will help AMD tremendously as we expand our own infrastructure to best meet internal needs and better serve a growing customer base," Dirk Meyer, president and chief operating officer for AMD, said in a statement released Tuesday. Mahmoud joins the company after more than a dozen years with Dell, where he led a series of efforts across its data warehousing, online storefront, manufacturing, supply chain, and corporate computing operations. Before Dell, Mahmoud held a variety of IT jobs at Eastman Kodak. As CIO, he will report directly to AMD chief executive Hector Ruiz. AMD did not disclose whether Mahmoud would be assuming the responsibilities of any current executives. Following a period of taking market share from Intel, AMD has struggled to reach profitability for more than a year, due to competition from its larger rival and charges related to the 2006 $5.4 billion acquisition of graphics chip maker ATI Technologies. Despite reporting a $1.77 billion loss in their latest quarterly report, company executives have said they are confident AMD would return to profitability in the second half of the year, driven primarily from new products, including the introduction of the company's first next-generation 45-nanometer microprocessors. Intel has been shipping such products since late last year. The manufacturing process used in building the chips shrinks the size of the transistors to 45 nm, which means more transistors on each processor and therefore more power at the same level of energy consumption.