As the chief technology officer for Advanced Micro Devices, Fred Weber has been responsible for the design of the processors millions of PC enthusiasts favor, including the Athlon XP.
More recently, Weber has helped steward a strategy to give AMD's server business an edge against larger rival Intel. The gist of the effort is to extend PC and server processors, sometimes called x86 chips, to 64 bits, and thus boost the performance of relatively inexpensive servers.
The idea appears to be paying off, helped in no small degree by AMD's decision to let its 64-bit Opteron server chip also run 32-bit software. The company, traditionally thought of as the underdog in the server chip business, has so far inked deals with IBM, Hewlett-Packard and Sun Microsystems, which have all adopted the Opteron chip for their product lines. Weber recently spoke with CNET News.com about the strategy and future of 32- and 64-bit chip design.
Did you have a hard time, convincing (former AMD chief executive) Jerry Sanders that the jump to 64 bits would be necessary?
Not really. You know, Jerry has always been a fierce competitor and a visionary, and he saw the value of this right away. He had seen that Intel was on the wrong path. As soon as it became clear to him that something like this was the right path, he became immediately very passionate about how important it was.
News source: C|Net News.com
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