AMD Taps Former Extreme Networks VP To Head Server Unit

Gopalakrishnan, whose official title is corporate vice president and general manager of server business at AMD, will be responsible for overseeing the end-to-end development and execution of the company’s global server solutions. He will report to Senior Vice President and General Manager of AMD’s Global Business Unit Dr. Lisa Su.

According to Su, Gopalakrishnan will play a heavy role in broadening the Sunnyvale, Calif.-based company’s server-specific Opteron series of processors, along with its server fabric technology, which it acquired through a $334 million deal to purchase of microserver vendor SeaMicro in February.

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“Today’s data center operators and enterprises need to reduce cost and power consumption while increasing performance, and AMD has been working hard to meet these needs with our AMD Opteron processor family and SeaMicro fabric technology,” said Dr. Su in a statement. “Under Suresh’s leadership, we will accelerate our disruptive server strategy by leveraging our broad IP portfolio to deliver superior products designed to offer the world’s best performance-per-dollar and power efficiency.”

During his time at Extreme Networks, Gopalakrishnan also served as vice president of marketing and product management, as well as general manager of multiple business units. In addition to spearheading the development of Ethernet switching systems for the enterprise, data center and carrier markets, AMD said Gopalakrishnan has a "strong semiconductor background," having worked to develop CPUs, workstation chipsets, and processors for digital signage throughout his career.

Dr. Gopalakrishnan has also held leadership roles at Riverstone Networks, ZSP Corporation, Sun Microsystems and HP. According to AMD, Gopalakrishnan’s appointment will not directly impact the role of corporate vice president and general manager of its Data Center Server Solutions business Andrew Feldman, who will remain in his role and also report to Su.

AMD has placed a growing emphasis on its server business over the last few months, particularly bolstering its low-power, cloud-based solutions. In March, the chip maker launched its new Opteron 3200 series of chips designed for use in one-socket, web-hosting servers, while industry analysts also viewed its SeaMicro acquisition as a move to generate new low-power server offerings for cloud-based storage solutions.

This story was originally published on June 22.