Another AMD executive departure has fueled speculation Tuesday. Graphics division CTO Eric Demers is known to be exiting the chip designer as of February 17. Former Apple executive and current primary CTO Mark Papermaster would temporarily take over during his absence.
Apple has quietly signaled a new emphasis on graphics by hiring an influential graphics chipset designer from AMD. The former CTO for the company's ATI graphics product group, Bob Drebin, has indicated on his LinkedIn profile that he is now a Senior Director for an unnamed group within Apple. What products he covers are unknown, though in addition to leading GPU engineering at ATI since 2000, he also spent significant time developing products at Silicon Graphics and, during a 2-year span at ArtX, helped create the "Flipper" GPU that formed the heart of the Nintendo GameCube.
