Report: AMD Offered CEO Job To Hurd, Others

According to a report in Bloomberg News Wednesday, AMD was spurned by Oracle Co-President Mark Hurd, as well as EMC's Chief Operating Officer Pat Gelsinger and Carlyle Group Managing Director Greg Summe. AMD's chief executive seat has been empty since former CEO Dirk Meyer resigned in January.

The chip maker is clearly looking to get a big name as its next CEO, but two of the candidates were long shots. Hurd is seen as a likely successor to current Oracle CEO Larry Ellison. Gelsinger is next in line to EMC chief executive Joe Tucci, who told CRN in an interview earlier this year that he planned to step down sometime in the next few years.

Gelsinger, a longtime Intel executive with decades of experience in the chip industry, joined EMC in 2009 in large part because Gelsinger aspired to be a CEO and saw an opportunity to succeed Tucci at the storage giant.

While AMD has launched its new Fusion APUs (Accelerated Processing Units) to much fanfare this year and has seen growth in its graphics technology business, the company is still struggling to gain ground on Intel in the CPU market.

Meyer resigned from AMD a week after CES 2011 after reaching an impasse with the board of directors over the direction of the company. According to reports, AMD's board was concerned that the company had failed to gain CPU market share under Meyer's watch and also lacked a presence in the tablet market.