Intel secures more AMD staff, ex-Radeon marketing lead

[BiG StroOnZ]

Quote

 

 

Team Blue acquires another important piece of Team Red in its Odyssey for graphics domination. Intel has been slowly building out the Justice League of GPU marketing teams leading into its future graphics card launches, with yet another member of Team Red joining Team Blue.

I can exclusively report that Heather Lennon, who built the awesome AMD social and community strategy for the company over 10 years has now joined the ranks of Intel. Heather build up the Team Red community and won herself PR Week honors for Campaign of the Year, as well as Top 30 Under 30 from PR News in 2014.

Lennon secured a huge 40 awards for marketing and digital marketing for AMD before leading their North American marketing for AMD's own Best Buy account which handled both Radeon and Ryzen products for the company. Heather will join Intel as the new Senior Manager, Digital Marketing for Graphics. She will be joined by Mark Taylor who is an ex-NVIDIA staffer who led the Technical marketing for NVIDIA's Tesla and DGX platforms, with Taylor joining the new Intel Graphics Marketing team to lead marketing and GTM strategies for data center graphics.   Heather and Mark are two new sources of energy for Intel's non-stop acquisition of talent, after countless acquisitions including the recent ex-NVIDIA staffer Tom Peterson. We also have ex-AMD staffers like ex-RTG chief architect Raja Koduri and marketing boss Chris Hook, as well as other industry figures like Chris Pirillo, Ryan Shrout (of PC Perspective) and others.

 

Source: https://www.tweaktown.com/news/65500/intel-secures-more-amd-staff-ex-radeon-marketing-lead/index.html

 

This is starting to get real interesting, really quick. It makes me believe, more everyday, that Intel isn't just trying to make a standard, lax entrance into the dGPU space, but instead trying to stick it to NVIDIA - sooner, rather than later. With this team that they are building, it seems promising with what they will be able to accomplish; bringing hope to consumers that we no longer will have to rely solely on AMD to keep NVIDIA in check. I'm really excited to see if Intel continues building and expanding this roster of theirs.

[Stefan Payne]

Oh dear, not good.

They should concentrate on nVidia staff

[xAcid9]

14 minutes ago, Stefan Payne said:

Oh dear, not good.

They should concentrate on nVidia staff

Overprice as usual i guess. 

[hobobobo]

Poor Navi

[soldier_ph]

2 hours ago, VegetableStu said:

"hey Raja, welcome to Intel. I know it's kind of a blank slate for the both of us, so let us know what you need to start working on our next GPU project"

".... I might have a few in mind, although..."

"go on."

 

*HIRES ENTIRE RADEON GROUP*

Wow lol, this reminds me of that one scene in SpongeBob where Plankton hires SpongeBob as a Cook and asks him what all he needs to feel like home...

[RejZoR]

Maybe this is exactly what AMD needs too. They'll get bunch of new people, possibly with better sense for marketing, better engineers that are maybe super competent, but didn't yet have the chance to show their potential etc. What Intel might get is just bunch of bad old habits... Just looking at it from different perspective...

[bradwiggo]

Maybe this is the return of Larrabee? 

[cj09beira]

21 minutes ago, RejZoR said:

Maybe this is exactly what AMD needs too. They'll get bunch of new people, possibly with better sense for marketing, better engineers that are maybe super competent, but didn't yet have the chance to show their potential etc. What Intel might get is just bunch of bad old habits... Just looking at it from different perspective...

problem is talent in this area is really really scarce and experience is really important, so its really hard to replace people 

[Tenelia]

Again from a strategic perspective, I want to ask what's the value of hiring those people? If they were superstars as claimed by the marketing and PR, then why didn't they do better at AMD? So... Is that a wise decision or just petty catfights?

[CTR640]

2 minutes ago, Tenelia said:

Again from a strategic perspective, I want to ask what's the value of hiring those people? If they were superstars as claimed by the marketing and PR, then why didn't they do better at AMD? So... Is that a wise decision or just petty catfights?

Exactly my thoughts. AMD's marketing were laughable so why would Intel take over more AMD staff. Intel's marketing is far better than AMD so probably petty catfights.

[jiyeon]

2 hours ago, Pascal... said:

Wow lol, this reminds me of that one scene in SpongeBob where Plankton hires SpongeBob as a Cook and asks him what all he needs to feel like home...

This kitchen's team's not the same without youuuuuuuuu!

[79wjd]

20 minutes ago, Tenelia said:

Again from a strategic perspective, I want to ask what's the value of hiring those people? If they were superstars as claimed by the marketing and PR, then why didn't they do better at AMD? So... Is that a wise decision or just petty catfights?

 

16 minutes ago, CTR640 said:

Exactly my thoughts. AMD's marketing were laughable so why would Intel take over more AMD staff. Intel's marketing is far better than AMD so probably petty catfights.

There are lots of potential benefits in hiring experienced people when you can provide a different environment to the one they potentially didn't thrive in -- including money to support them.

[Arika]

26 minutes ago, Tenelia said:

I want to ask what's the value of hiring those people? If they were superstars as claimed by the marketing and PR, then why didn't they do better at AMD? So

Money most likely, AMD has to split their budget between their CPU and GPU division, they have pushed really hard into the CPU space and their GPUs are just lagging behind because it's not their focus.

[pas008]

17 minutes ago, Arika S said:

Money most likely, AMD has to split their budget between their CPU and GPU division, they have pushed really hard into the CPU space and their GPUs are just lagging behind because it's not their focus.

atm they arent really lagging behind but yes maybe their focus does seem shifted away from keeping up in the future

[dtaflorida]

3 hours ago, hobobobo said:

Poor Navi

 

It's just a marketing lead tho, shouldn't affect anything more than fan engagement and over-selling what the hardware can do. 

[hobobobo]

9 minutes ago, dtaflorida said:

 

It's just a marketing lead tho, shouldn't affect anything more than fan engagement and over-selling what the hardware can do. 

Just a dumb "poor volta" joke))

[Trik'Stari]

6 hours ago, VegetableStu said:

"hey Raja, welcome to Intel. I know it's kind of a blank slate for the both of us, so let us know what you need to start working on our next GPU project"

".... I might have a few in mind, although..."

"go on."

 

*HIRES ENTIRE RADEON GROUP*

Then proceeds to release one disappointing product after another, as is his trademark.

 

Seriously, why would Intel hire these people? They didn't do a great job considering that radeon hasn't dominated in a long time, and has been releasing disappointing refresh products for a while now that were just refresh after refresh.

 

People can shout "but price to performnce!" all they want, but that's clearly not what the market is interested in for graphics cards. That's why Nvidia is dominant in at least the Steam Hardware Survey.

 

Then if you look at Ryzen, it looks like if you actually release something new that performs as good or better than the competitor, for a lower price, then people will buy it. Which is why Ryzen has been kicking Intel's ass in the CPU arena lately.

[vanished]

Hmmm

No?  Just me then?  Well alright but I still think this means they plan for good Linux support

[Dissitesuxba11s]

1 minute ago, Ryan_Vickers said:

Well alright but I still think this means they plan for good Linux support 

Maybe that is why they picked AMD staff and not NVIDIA ones.

[dDave64]

3 hours ago, cj09beira said:

problem is talent in this area is really really scarce and experience is really important, so its really hard to replace people 

This was my thought as well. It's not as if there are a ton of people out there doing this, this is a very difficult field to get into and if you weren't already working for Nvidia or AMD then you were playing for a minor league team at best in comparison.

 

One thing to wonder about Intel's graphics cards. Will they manufacture them themselves or will they create a reference design and let other companies make Intel cards? I kind of see potential for Intel to become Apple and do everything themselves. I also think we may be looking at a scenario where Intel designs their CPUs to offer special performance upgrades when using an Intel graphics card and lock everyone else out.

 

All this makes me wonder if Nvidia will enter to CPU business. 

 

I've typically been an Intel guy but depending on how they play this, I may switch over to AMD. I really prefer open compatibility because I think strong competition keeps the computer market healthy and keeps costs down. Intel entering the graphics space in a major way could be good or bad for all of us, only time will tell.

[S w a t s o n]

I thought they took Chris Hook already? This seems like an AMD social media person

[cj09beira]

42 minutes ago, dDave64 said:

This was my thought as well. It's not as if there are a ton of people out there doing this, this is a very difficult field to get into and if you weren't already working for Nvidia or AMD then you were playing for a minor league team at best in comparison.

 

One thing to wonder about Intel's graphics cards. Will they manufacture them themselves or will they create a reference design and let other companies make Intel cards? I kind of see potential for Intel to become Apple and do everything themselves. I also think we may be looking at a scenario where Intel designs their CPUs to offer special performance upgrades when using an Intel graphics card and lock everyone else out.

 

All this makes me wonder if Nvidia will enter to CPU business. 

 

I've typically been an Intel guy but depending on how they play this, I may switch over to AMD. I really prefer open compatibility because I think strong competition keeps the computer market healthy and keeps costs down. Intel entering the graphics space in a major way could be good or bad for all of us, only time will tell.

what you will probably see is nvidea recommending amd's cpus (they already did this last year i think), about intel making the whole card themselves, i would hope so, that way they will fail more spectacularly, anyway there is no such thing as making the cards yourself, reference designs are still manufactured by the AIBs, the only difference is the number of them manufacturing it, (probably just one), for example if i am not mistaken all reference designs from amd are manufactured by sapphire 

[cj09beira]

2 hours ago, Tenelia said:

Again from a strategic perspective, I want to ask what's the value of hiring those people? If they were superstars as claimed by the marketing and PR, then why didn't they do better at AMD? So... Is that a wise decision or just petty catfights?

well intel does have much more money so people working there probably have much better funds to work with, that alone will make a huge difference 

[Drak3]

3 minutes ago, cj09beira said:

if i am not mistaken all reference designs from amd are manufactured by sapphire

You'd be wrong. MSI and XFX are definitely also manufacturers of reference designs.

[dtaflorida]

3 hours ago, hobobobo said:

Just a dumb "poor volta" joke))

Oh i don't know that joke. What happened to Navi?