Lisa Su takes command of AMD RTG as Raja Koduri takes personal leave until December

Two weeks ago we learned that AMD Radeon Technologies Group boss Raja Koduri took about two weeks off after the launch of the Radeon RX Vega to enjoy a "well-deserved vacation". The timing was a bit weird and now things get stranger as news emerges that Koduri is taking a sabbatical from AMD. The exact reasons for his personal leave are unknown but PC Perspective claims he's expected to return in December.

In the interim, AMD CEO Lisa Su will be taking over control of the Radeon Technologies Group. While there's a lot of speculation that Koduri may have been pushed out due to the botched Vega launch, there's no official information at this moment to confirm that spin.

In a message to his team, Koduri claims he's taking this sabbatical to spend time with his family. He explains September 25th will be his final day until his return in December. He also hints there will be a change to his job responsibilities, his message below indicates he will spend less time on operational oversight to shift his focus more to architecting and realizing this vision:

RTG Team,

You haven’t heard from me collectively in a while – a symptom not only of the whirlwind of launching Vega, but simply of the huge number of demands on my time since the formation of RTG. Looking back over this short period, it is an impressive view. We have delivered 6 straight quarters of double-digit growth in graphics, culminating in the launch of Vega and being back in high-performance. What we have done with Vega is unparalleled. We entered the high-end gaming, professional workstation and machine intelligence markets with Vega in a very short period of time. The demand for Vega (and Polaris!) is fantastic, and overall momentum for our graphics is strong.

Incredibly, we as AMD also managed to spectacularly re-enter the high-performance CPU segments this year. We are all exceptionally proud of Ryzen, Epyc and Threadripper. The computing world is not the same anymore and the whole world is cheering for AMD. Congratulations and thanks to those of you in RTG who helped see these products through. The market for high-performance computing is on an explosive growth trajectory driven by machine intelligence, visual cloud, blockchain and other exciting new workloads. Our vision of immersive and instinctive computing is within grasp. As we enter 2018, I will be shifting my focus more toward architecting and realizing this vision and rebalancing my operational responsibilities.

At the beginning of the year I warned that Vega would be hard. At the time, some folks didn’t believe me. Now many of you understand what I said. Vega was indeed hard on many, and my sincere heartfelt thanks to all of you who endured the Vega journey with me. Vega was personally hard on me as well and I used up a lot of family credits during this journey. I have decided to take a time-off in Q4 to spend time with my family. I have been contemplating this for a while now and there was never a good time to do this. Lisa and I agreed that Q4 is better than 2018, before the next wave of product excitement. Lisa will be acting as the leader of RTG during by absence. My sincere thanks to Lisa and rest of AET for supporting me in this decision and agreeing to take on additional workload during my absence.

I am looking to start my time-off on Sept 25th and return in December.

Thank you, all of you, for your unwavering focus, dedication and support over these past months, and for helping us to build something incredible. We are not done yet, and keep the momentum going!

Regards, Raja