AMD names ex-Intel engineer as server group CTO

AMD today disclosed that it has appointed Donald Newell, until recently an Intel Labs director, as vice president and CTO of its server group.

According to Newell's LinkedIn profile, he has been with AMD since June and moved to the chip designer after more than 16 years with its chief rival, Intel. Newell was a senior principal engineer leading Intel's SOC and datacenter networking architecture groups.

Newell has more than 20 patents filed and will lead AMD's server roadmap and platform design programs, the company said this morning. He reports to Rick Bergman, senior vice president and general manager, AMD Products Group.

"Don Newell brings a strong combination of leadership skills, engineering and design expertise, and strategic direction," said Bergman in a statement. "We're fortunate to have Don on board as we prepare for the delivery of the Bulldozer core in our AMD Opteron processors, scheduled for launch in 2011."

With Bulldozer pricing and performance details being held until launch, and AMD loosely stating launch will be "sometime in 2011," analysts have not yet fully weighed in on how the core will impact AMD's market share or competition to Intel. However, AMD's server group appointment announcement this morning follows on a $48 million funding announcement made last week by Smooth-Stone, a start-up with related partners to AMD that is already expected by some to challenge Intel in the server space. The funding, coming from a syndicate of companies including ARM, TI, and ATIC (Advanced Technology Investment Co), will be applied to the final development and market delivery of its planned technology, described by the company as "low power chips that will change the server market and the makeup of datacenters." ATIC has ties to AMD through GlobalFoundries, AMD's manufacturing spin-out in which ATIC has poured billions of dollars.

Newell is well suited for the CTO position. During his 16 years with Intel, Newell led development of both SOC and server platform architecture innovations for areas ranging from cloud computing to hand-held devices. Newell also initiated and drove the I/O Acceleration Technologies (IOAT) from initial research to product intercept, developed a detailed architecture for heterogeneous computing and is credited with delivering the PC industry's first digital TV receiver, AMD said.

Newell has been published in more than 60 peer-reviewed research journals and publications and is a co-author of the IETF RFC2429 that specifies how video is transported over the Internet. Prior to joining Intel, he was a software engineer for first Datanex Software and later Sequent Computers. Newell received a Bachelor of Science degree from the University of Oregon.