AMD's female CEO seeks break with past woes

For a glimpse of the turnaround skills Lisa Su will have to put to work as new chief executive of chipmaker Advanced Micro Devices, consider her approach at her previous employer, Freescale Semiconductor.

Su, 44, was pulled into management from her technical job at Freescale in 2008 by Rich Beyer, who had just taken over the troubled chipmaker. He put her in charge of turning around the networking-chip business, where she quickly focused on products for new mobile-phone systems. Her efforts there helped pave the way for Freescale's current growth in networking.

"In the first week, I saw how strong an executive she was," said Beyer, who retired in 2012. "She executed under enormous pressure. We were under attack by a lot of people."

Su is wasting no time applying that same focus to AMD, unveiling plans to cut 710 jobs a week after being named successor to Rory Read. AMD has been an also-ran to Intel for most of its 45-year history, and since 2000 has racked up net losses of US$7 billion.

The company remains dependent on the slumping personal computer market, where it is still fighting Intel, and has been all but pushed out of server chips, where its larger rival has a 98 per cent share. It is also struggling to build up a new business in markets like game-console chips, where Intel does not compete.

AMD said on Thursday it will cut 7 per cent of its workforce as it reported lower third-quarter profit and sales and said revenue in the current period may slump as much as 16 per cent from the prior quarter.