David E. Orton (born 1955) is an American engineering executive and the CEO of GEO Semiconductor Inc. Orton earned a BS in mathematics and economics at

Wake Forest University Wake Forest University is a private research university in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. Founded in 1834, the university received its name from its original location in Wake Forest, north of Raleigh, North Carolina. The Reynolda Campus, the un ...

, and a MS in electrical engineering from

Duke University Duke University is a private research university in Durham, North Carolina. Founded by Methodists and Quakers in the present-day city of Trinity in 1838, the school moved to Durham in 1892. In 1924, tobacco and electric power industrialist James ...

. He worked in the graphics and semiconductor industry as an engineer at

Bell Laboratories Nokia Bell Labs, originally named Bell Telephone Laboratories (1925–1984), then AT&T Bell Laboratories (1984–1996) and Bell Labs Innovations (1996–2007), is an American industrial research and scientific development company owned by mult ...

in 1979 to 1983 and then

General Electric General Electric Company (GE) is an American multinational conglomerate founded in 1892, and incorporated in New York state and headquartered in Boston. The company operated in sectors including healthcare, aviation, power, renewable energ ...

through December 1988. He joined

Silicon Graphics Silicon Graphics, Inc. (stylized as SiliconGraphics before 1999, later rebranded SGI, historically known as Silicon Graphics Computer Systems or SGCS) was an American high-performance computing manufacturer, producing computer hardware and soft ...

(SGI) in 1990, and was senior vice president of visual computing and advanced systems through 1999. In 1996 SGI bought

Cray Research Cray Inc., a subsidiary of Hewlett Packard Enterprise, is an American supercomputer manufacturer headquartered in Seattle, Washington. It also manufactures systems for data storage and analytics. Several Cray supercomputer systems are listed i ...

and Orton had to deal with merging the companies' overlapping technologies. Orton joined ATI Technologies as a result of an acquisition of

ArtX ArtX was a company formed in 1997 by a group of twenty former Silicon Graphics, Inc. engineers, who had worked on the Nintendo 64's graphics chip. The company was focused on delivering a PC graphics chip that was both high performance and cost eff ...

in April 2000, where he was president and CEO. ATI posted losses after the dot-com bubble collapsed, although losses were reduced by June 2001. He was named CEO of ATI in March 2004. Though ATI's principal location was in Markham, Ontario, Canada, Orton spent a portion of his time in California where he resided. After the announced merger of Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) with ATI on July 24, 2006, as ATI Technologies became a subsidiary of AMD, Orton became an executive vice-president of AMD, reporting to AMD

CEO A chief executive officer (CEO), also known as a central executive officer (CEO), chief administrator officer (CAO) or just chief executive (CE), is one of a number of corporate executives charged with the management of an organization especially ...

Hector Ruiz and

COO COO or coo may refer to: Business * Certificate of origin, used in international trade * Chief operating officer or chief operations officer, high-ranking corporate official * Concept of operations, used in Systems Engineering Management Process ...

Dirk Meyer Derrick R. "Dirk" Meyer (born November 24, 1961) is a former Chief Executive Officer of Advanced Micro Devices, serving in the position from July 18, 2008 to January 10, 2011. Education He received a bachelor's degree in computer engineering ...

. On July 10, 2007, AMD announced the resignation of Orton as executive vice president. One trade journalist rated Orton as the top of the "CEOs that went in 2007". From 2007 to 2009, he served as CEO of the startup DSM Solutions. On July 15, 2009, Orton became the CEO of

Aptina Aptina Imaging Corporation was a company that sold CMOS imaging products. Their CMOS sensors were used in Nikon V1 (10.1 MP, CX format, 16.9x17.9 mm), Nikon J1, Nikon V2. By 2009 year Aptina had a 16% share of the CMOS image sensors mark ...

, a privately held image sensor company located in San Jose, California. He left Aptina in September 2012. He served on the board of directors of SuVolta.

References

External links

Photograph of David E. Orton
Living people ATI Technologies AMD people Silicon Graphics people American technology chief executives Duke University Pratt School of Engineering alumni Wake Forest University alumni 1955 births {{US-CEO-stub