Walter Jeremiah Sanders III (born September 12, 1936) is an American businessman and engineer who was a co-founder and long-time CEO of the American semiconductor manufacturer Advanced Micro Devices (AMD), serving in the position from 1969 to 2002.

Early life and education

Jerry Sanders III grew up in the South Side of Chicago, Illinois, raised by his paternal grandparents. He was once attacked and beaten by a street gang leaving him so covered in blood He attended the University of Illinois Urbana–Champaign on an academic scholarship from the Pullman railroad car company. At Fairchild, Sanders quickly rose from lower sales positions up to a succession of management positions in marketing, making him a likely candidate for one of the company's top vice presidencies. He shared the success of the company with the employees, usually coincident with sales-oriented growth targets.

Sanders at AMD famously remarked that in the semiconductor industry "real men have fabs". Originally intended as a jibe against competitors, Sanders's remarks have been largely disproven in the years since. From 1969 to 2009, AMD fabricated its own processors but it later sold off its foundry division as GlobalFoundries in 2009. AMD is now fabless and outsources its fabrication to GlobalFoundries and TSMC.

He steered the company through hard times as well. In 1974, a particularly bad recession almost broke the company. Through a period of stagflation in 1979, he refused to lay off AMD employees and instead took a leaf from the Japanese rather than engaging in the same rampant layoffs that had occurred at Fairchild earlier.

By 1979, Intel needed a second source to produce its 8088 processor for IBM PCs so it turned to AMD. In 1982, Sanders was responsible for a renegotiated licensing deal that would enable AMD to copy Intel's processor microcode to make its own x86 processors, a deal that eventually made the company the only real competitor to Intel.

In 2000, Sanders recruited Héctor Ruiz, at the time the president of Motorola's Semiconductor Products Sector, to serve as AMD's president and CEO, and to become the heir apparent to lead the company upon Sanders' retirement. He stayed with the company as chairman after Ruiz succeeded him as CEO in 2002.

References

  • The Fairchild Chronicles
  • Interview with Jerry Sanders at his alma mater
  • Massive source of links and reviews regarding Jerry Sanders
  • Profile of Jerry Sanders
  • AMD "Jerry Sanders" Creative Design Competition