AMD hires Lenovo exec Rory Read as new chief executive

New boss faces challenging times ahead for the chip firm

Chipmaker AMD has appointed Rory Read as its new president and chief executive, following the departure of Dirk Meyer at the start of this year.

Read joins AMD from PC maker Lenovo, where he served as president and chief operating officer. Prior to that, he held a number of management positions at IBM.

"I'm very pleased to be joining AMD at this important time in its history. AMD is a true innovator and is uniquely positioned to lead the industry forward, delivering the next big thing within the PC ecosystem and beyond," Read said in a statement issued by the firm.

Meyer, who occupied the post of chief executive since 2008, resigned in a mutual agreement with AMD's board of directors. Reports at the time hinted of differences of opinion between the two parties over the future direction of the company.

The appointment comes as AMD faces challenging times. The company is seeking broader industry acceptance of its Fusion processor chips, launched early this year, which integrate a CPU and GPU onto the same piece of silicon.

In the meantime, rival Intel has been going from strength to strength with its latest generation of Core processors.

However, many industry commentators have already begun criticising the choice of an executive from the PC industry, when future growth looks increasingly likely to come from mobile devices, tablets and other new form factors.

AMD faces competition here not only from Intel, but from ARM, which has decades of experience in designing processors for battery-powered mobile kit.