The Spirit of AMD, by best-selling author Jeffrey L. Rodengen, is a compelling account of the people and events that have shaped a leader in the semi-conductor industry, and includes a foreword by Robert Palmer, chairman, president and CEO of Digital Equipment Corporation
For a leading-edge, high-technology company, Advanced Micro Devices stated purpose is deceptively simple: We empower people everywhere to lead more productive lives.
A global supplier of integrated circuits for the personal and networked computer and semiconductor industries, AMD is anything but simple. Nevertheless, people matter at AMD. For almost 30 years, AMD has led the industry in establishing incentives and policies that have made it a leader within an often harsh competitive environment.
From the beginning, the companys chief founder, Chairman and CEO Jerry Sanders, was determined to build an organization that embodied the ideals in which he believed and fought for his entire life: that employees are at the core of success; rewarding merit brings out the best in people; and that loyalty is earned through fair treatment.
Like many of the pioneers of Silicon Valley, Sanders worked at Fairchild Semiconductor, where he excelled in the freewheeling environment. But a new management came into place that didnt tolerate dissent and Sanders soon left the company.
In 1969, while pondering his next move at a rented beach house in Malibu, he was asked by other Fairchild expatriates to lead a new semiconductor venture. Here was his chance to put ideas into action. Recalling his own experiences when hard work and accomplishments went unnoticed, Sanders established one of the first bonus incentive systems in the semiconductor industry. When AMD prospered, its employees prospered with it.
By 1998, AMD had become the fifth-largest U.S. merchant-supplier of integrated circuits, with 12,000 employees worldwide and revenues of more than $2.4 billion.
AUTHOR, COLUMNIST, HISTORIAN
Jeff was born in Minneapolis, MN, and grew up in the Land of 10,000 Lakes, accounting for an early interest in boating. After a brief tenure as the Assistant Director of the Naval and Underseas Museum in Newport, RI, Jeff migrated to Southern California, beginning a remarkable 15-year career as a writer, producer and director in Hollywood. Attending six colleges and universities along the way, Jeff earned degrees in psychology and post-graduate degrees in engineering. Having written, produced or directed nearly 30 films, network television specials (six for Arnold Schwarzenegger), Las Vegas revues and Broadway productions, Jeff moved to Florida in the early 1980s to write about the evolution of American technology and industry.
He became the editor of Southern Star magazine, then Florida's largest circulation magazine. To reach an even broader audience, Jeff began to syndicate his business, technology and industrial history columns, ultimately reaching nearly two million readers a month. His specialties include advanced technology, American industrial history, contemporary business strategies, corporate biography, corporate ethics and principles of business leadership.
Author of hundreds of technical and general interest articles, he is the author of 23 books on American technology and industry. Among his best-selling works are: The Legend of Chris Craft, Evinrude-Johnson and The Legend of OMC; Iron Fist: The Lives of Carl Kiekhaefer, which reached 14th on national best-seller lists in the highly competitive business book category, and Serving The Silent Service: The Legend of Electric Boat, which chronicles the evolution of the Electric Boat Division of General Dynamics, from their earliest electric launches to today's nuclear submarine fleet. During one busy week, he signed over 8,500 volumes of his best-seller in three cities in four days.
