AMD President, AI Strategy Leader Victor Peng To Retire

Victor Peng’s retirement was announced as AMD seeks to challenge Nvidia’s dominance in AI chips for data centers with an expanded road map of Instinct processors.

AMD announced on Monday that President Victor Peng, who has been leading the chip designer’s company-wide AI strategy, will retire next month.

Peng (pictured) joined AMD in 2022 when the Santa Clara, Calif.-based company acquired Xilinx, the programmable chip designer he led as president and CEO for four years. Prior to working at Xilinx for 14 years, he served as a silicon engineering executive at AMD, which he joined through the acquisition of his previous employer, GPU designer ATI Technologies.

[Related: Forrest Norrod On How AMD Is Fighting Nvidia With ‘Significant’ AI Investments]

The company said Peng will remain on AMD’s executive team as an advisor and aid with the leadership transition until he retires on Aug. 30.

As a result of Peng’s retirement, AMD is moving responsibilities for its Instinct data center accelerator chip business under Vamsi Boppana, a Xilinx veteran who leads AI software and ecosystem development as well as AI hardware road maps as senior vice president of the company’s Artificial Intelligence Group.

AMD said Boppana and Salil Raje, the head of AMD’s Adaptive and Embedded Computing Group that formerly operated as Xilinx, will now report to the company’s CEO, Lisa Su.

In a statement, Su, who is also AMD’s chair, said “Peng played an important role successfully integrating and scaling our embedded business and leading our cross-company AI strategy.”

“Under his leadership, AMD became the industry’s [No. 1] provider of FPGA and adaptive computing solutions,” she said in a statement. “On behalf of the AMD board, executive leadership team and the thousands of employees who have worked with him, I want to thank Victor for his outstanding leadership and wish him the best in his retirement.”

Peng’s retirement was announced as AMD seeks to challenge Nvidia’s dominance in AI chips for data centers with an expanded road map of Instinct processors that include the recently launched MI300 and the MI325, which launches later this year.