



An AMD "lifer" is saying goodbye and is moving on to a new venture outside of the company. AMD veteran Chris Hook , who currently serves as the company's Senior Director of Global Product Marketing is leaving the company that he has called home since 2001.

Hook joined ATI (before the AMD acquisition) in his late 20s and quickly moved up the ranks to help promote the company's wide range of computing and graphics products. He has served in his current role since October 2017, and previously oversaw marketing specific to the Radeon graphics brand (aka Radeon Technologies Group).

In a Facebook post, Hook joked that when he first joined the company, "ATI still had a smoking room, there was only one TV in the office (a small 14” black and white version we crowded into a room to watch 9/11 on), transistor size was still measured in microns, and 320x240 was considered ‘high res’."

Hook goes on to thank his "second family" for all the camaraderie over the years with his fellow employees and the strong relationships that he has made among members of the tech press (including the HotHardware family). "The most rewarding experience I had at AMD was reigniting Radeon over the past couple of years with Radeon Technologies Group, growing its market share from high teens to low thirties, and achieving a record revenue quarter late last year," Hook added. "It was a ton of work, but I’ve never had so much fun, visited so many great places, or worked with such amazing people."



Update, Editor's Note (Dave Altavilla) - 1:05 PM EST - To say Chris Hook's departure from AMD is simply a momentous occasion would be an understatement of epic proportions. Chris Hook has lead the public-facing effort of ATI/AMD-RTG and AMD core marketing for many years, a role in which he excelled in with pure passion and enormous creativity. No doubt he will be sorely missed at AMD (and here at HotHardware), and likewise it will be fascinating to see what happens with Chris in his next adventure in the industry, wherever that may be.



We should mention that Hook says that he will pursue a new venture at an unnamed company at the end of April. While Hook doesn't come right out and say in his Facebook post, we know for certain that he was very close with Raja Koduri during his tenure in the Radeon Technologies Group. If you recall, Koduri served as the head of the Radeon Technologies Group, before taking a sabbatical in mid-September 2017 following the launch of Vega.

However, Koduri landed a few months later at Intel, where he is currently serving as the head of the newly formed Core and Visual Computing Group. The group is tasked with developing high-end discrete graphics solutions, which might include the rumored Arctic Sound GPU family.

It's simply pure speculation on our part that Chris might be joining his old pal Raja at Intel at the end of the month, but it sure does seem like a perfect fit, given the chemistry between the two and the need for Intel to promote its new GPU products once they see the light of day.