HP's PSG CTO McKinney To Retire At Year's End

"This is not the traditional retirement," McKinney said in a blog post. "I’m not planning on spending my days playing golf or sitting around the house driving my wife crazy. I have far too much passion, energy and ideas to sit on the sidelines."

An HP spokesperson confirmed McKinney's retirement and said Carlos Montalvo, vice president of HP's Innovation Program Office, has been named as the interim CTO for PSG.

As CTO of PSG, McKinney's responsibilities include setting the unit's technical strategy and R&D efforts. He's also the general manager of PSG's gaming business unit, which HP formed in 2006 with its acquisition of VoodooPC.

McKinney, who joined HP in 2003, was previously vice president and CTO of HP's now-defunct Network and Server Provider Business.

McKinney's is the latest in a string of high profile HP executive departures. His boss, Shane Robison, executive vice president and chief strategy and technology officer, is retiring on Tuesday after 11 years with the company. Richard Kerris, former vice president of WebOS worldwide developer relations, left HP last week and is now heading up global developer relations at Nokia.

HP, which shocked the IT industry in August by announcing it was looking at selling or spinning off PSG, last week decided to retain the business unit after concluding that both options were fraught with expensive side effects.

After leaving HP, McKinney said he plans to focus on launching his first book, Beyond The Obvious, and spending more time blogging, podcasting, speaking and teaching his lineup of Killer Innovation Workshops.

"I’m also excited that once again, I will be able to take on board seats, advisory roles and mentoring opportunities since I will no longer have to worry about conflict of interest and other corporate restrictions," McKinney said in the blog post.