AMD has issued an official press release that one of the key guys that drove Radeon graphics to very competitive levels in last few years is leaving AMD.

AMD officially said that ”Eric Demers, AMD Corporate Vice President and CTO, Graphics Business Unit, has decided leave AMD to pursue other opportunities."

Our sources are telling us that Demmers was not happy with AMD’s new direction where discrete graphics became less relevant. AMD has revealed at its last financial conference that it will still chase the Fusion dream, renaming it to HAS or (Heterogeneous Systems Architecture). We understand that fusion HAS is more important to Rory Read than graphics and Eric didn’t like the shift.
 
Another key guy, Carrell Killebrew, Director, Products Group at Advanced Micro Devices, left AMD in December. He was Eric’s wingman, a chap who had a lot to do with AMD’s first DirectX 11 cards and Evergreen series. Let’s not forget that he helped create Eyefinity.

We like the fact that Rory wants to change AMD and make something new, but from our point of view, he lost some key soldiers in the process, but this is just our opinion. Nvidia needs strong competition, as once Nvidia starts winning it tends to become super arrogant.

Furthermore AMD said in the statement that current CTP Mark Papermaster will assume interim responsibility for Graphics business unit CTP until they find the replacement. AMD also claims that it “remains fully committed to our critical graphics IP development and discrete GPU products.” 

“We have a tremendous depth of talent in our organization, a game plan that is resonating with our customers and our team, and we are continuing to bring graphics-performance-leading products to market.  We will attract the right technology leader for this role,” claims AMD.