I think the BOD set the direction and RR was chosen to execute it. Shareholders get to vote their opinion of the BOD's performance daily with their pocketbooks and annually with their proxies.
I wonder what could we expect with regard to Intel stock price movement if AMD were to announce something as significant as their exit from the x86 business? I'm not expecting any such announcement but I'm wondering just the same.
Going ARM would be a terrible mistake for AMD which means the BOD probably brought RR in to do exactly that.
So wouldn't you think AMD would be shopping x86 around then? I mean otherwise they'd be split into at least 4 major design activities. X86 server, x86 lowpower, graqphics and ARM. That's insane.