In a relatively rare headhunting raid, AMD has hired Donald Newell, one of Intel's own, to run its server chip roadmap and platform design programs as CTO of its server unit.

Newell was previously senior principle engineer heading the System-on-Chip (SoC) and datacenter networking architecture groups at Intel Labs. At Intel for 16 years, he holds more than 20 patents.

In his new job, Newell will be responsible for the concept and definition of AMD's long-term server roadmap and lead multiple worldwide teams. He reports to Rick Bergman, general manager of AMD's Products Group, who said in a canned statement that "We're fortunate to have Don on board as we prepare for the delivery of the Bulldozer core in our AMD Opteron processors, scheduled for launch in 2011." Bulldozer is AMD's next-generation microarchitecture, its first major redesign since 2003 that features eight-16 cores.

At Intel Newell initiated and drove the I/O Acceleration Technologies (IOAT) from initial research to product intercept, developed a detailed architecture for heterogeneous computing (which is what AMD calls moving GPU function into CPUs) and was responsible for delivering the PC industry's first Digital TV receiver.