AMD Creates Radeon Technologies Group To Consolidate Graphics Divisions

Under fierce competition, AMD has decided to up its game when it comes to graphics by creating the Radeon Technologies Group; it’s focus, ‘immersive computing’. As part of the company’s restructuring, this is the first time since the acquisition of ATI back in 2006, that AMD has allowed independence in its graphics arm.

Heading up the new group will be long-time AMD executive, Raja Koduri, who spent a brief tenure at Apple where he helped introduce the Retina display. Koduri rejoined AMD back in 2013 and was instrumental in developing AMD’s latest technical achievement, HBM, and the interposer that resides within the newly released Fiji-based graphics cards; the Fury, Fury X and Fury Nano.

This restructuring is not just symbolic, the formation of Radeon, and by extension, ATI, is a real consolidation of assets within the company, as well as introducing accountability under a single leader. Up until now, there were many graphics divisions within AMD, each specializing is different segments and markets; desktop and discrete graphics, APUs, embedded, and so forth. Each would have its own department leads, each division being held accountable under different leaders. This all stops now.

Raja will be responsible for all things graphics at AMD, including development, marketing and public relations, across all departments (discrete, APU, console). For the immediate future, it is likely that nothing will change – however, next year we will likely see a different side to AMD and its strategies moving forward. While the Fiji launch has just begun, it’s the new-generation FinFET-based GPUs coming out next year that will likely show how the new Radeon Graphics group will handle operations moving forward.

Long term is a future around emerging technologies, Virtual and Augmented Reality (VR and AR). AMD already has a head’s up on DX12 due to Mantle and Vulcan, and it’s a safe bet that it’s in a strong position with VR too, due to its LiquidVR initiative. In terms of architecture, we will have to wait, as its expedition into HBM and FinFET won’t show any real gain until the second generation (although HBM looks to be a good strategy moving forward).

At this point, it kind of goes without saying that an overbearing question now looms over AMD – Will it split? Transferring the graphics business over to a single entity is arguably the first step in spinning off the division into a new company. Perhaps AMD will reshuffle as per Google with Alphabet, creating separate businesses with a new parent company. Pure speculation at this point, but it’s something to keep an eye out for in the future.