Dham loss adds to AMD troubles

Chip giant alerts Wall Street to further financial slide as K6 supremo announces move to Nexgen.

Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) suffered a blow when chip veteran Vinodmo announces move to Nexgen. Dham quit unexpectedly in the wake of the vendor suffering poor financial results.

Dham supervised the introduction of the Pentium platform at Intel before he was poached from the chip giant to join Nexgen, which was subsequently acquired by AMD for $800 million. Dham masterminded the return of AMD to the technology fold with the introduction of its K6 processor.

Dham was also responsible for the introduction of 3D chip technology at AMD, with two versions to be rolled out next year.

But AMD has turned in bad financial results in recent months and has warned Wall Street that the next quarter will also show the company in the red.

Dham's departure leaves marketing supremo Rob Herb and AMD vice president Larry Hollatz with his responsibilities in the meantime. The vendor refused to comment further on the departure.

Joe D'Elia, senior semiconductor analyst at Dataquest UK, said Dham's loss would not necessarily affect AMD's position. He said: 'One person leaving should not really impact the company but the question is, when someone like that goes, who is going to follow? It's that kind of impact that's more the issue.'

The departure comes as AMD has put its money where its mouth is and invested an undisclosed sum in games company Digital Anvil. The deal means AMD will produce K6 3D and 3D Plus platforms next year.

Two weeks ago, at the Microprocessor Forum in San Jose, AMD CEO Jerry Sanders outlined his processor roadmap for 1998. He claimed that many games companies were interested in the chip vendor's 3D technologies.

In the same field, National Semiconductor, which bought AMD and arch-rival Cyrix earlier this year, bought graphics hardware and software startup Future Integrated Systems of Milpitas, California.