"Placing experienced leaders in new, more focused roles will enhance our execution and progress toward sustained profitability and long-term success," Meyer said. "The creation of a centralized engineering organization aligns and focuses AMD's world-class engineers and intellectual-property portfolio on the strong business opportunities in front of us."

Some In, Some Out

As part of the shuffle, 24-year AMD veteran Randy Allen is changing hats. Allen was most recently responsible for AMD's server and workstation division and previously oversaw microprocessor engineering, including the successful introductions of the AMD Opteron and AMD Athlon 64 processors.

In his new role as senior vice president of the computing solutions group, Allen reports directly to Meyer and is responsible for the development and management of AMD's portfolio of consumer and commercial microprocessor solutions and platforms. Mario Rivas, formerly executive vice president of computing solutions, has left the company to pursue other opportunities, according to AMD.

"AMD is in a precarious situation right now from a business standpoint and it has to take some drastic measures," said Brian Matus, vice president of market research at IC Insights. "I am surprised there haven't been more moves. I think AMD had to take some cost-cutting measures and other measures that put them in a position to restructure the business and possibly even set it up for a potential sale in the future."

New Blood in Central Engineering

Meanwhile, the newly formed central engineering organization will be co-led by Chekib Akrout, who is joining AMD, and Jeff VerHeul, corporate vice president of design engineering at AMD. The central engineering leadership team will direct the development and execution of AMD's technology and product road maps in partnership with AMD's business units and will report directly to Meyer.

Akrout is joining AMD after serving as vice president of design technology at Freescale Semiconductor. Before Freescale, Akrout worked at IBM and managed the development of products including microprocessors, application-specific integrated circuits, and mixed signal devices. He was responsible for IBM's work on the development of the Cell processor, the Xbox 360 processor for Microsoft , and embedded PowerPC cores.

VerHeul joined AMD in August 2005 after a 25-year career with IBM. Most recently, he led AMD's microprocessor design engineering organization.

AMD also promoted Allen Sockwell to senior vice president, human resources, and chief talent officer responsible for developing AMD's leadership assets and employee talent. Michel Cadieux, formerly senior vice president and chief talent officer, left AMD to pursue new opportunities, according to the company.

"If I were those guys who left, I'd be happy to be free from AMD," Matus said. "There's a lot of pressure to keep that whole AMD ship upright and moving right now. Going forward there are going to be a lot of changes necessary and maybe being told you don't fit in with the changes is not necessarily a bad thing."