AMD Celebrates Success Of Global Consumer Advisory Board With Addition Of New Asian Member

Board continues to impact and drive discussions to make technology more relevant to end users around the world

SUNNYVALE, CA -- 11/24/2003 -- AMD (NYSE: AMD) today announced the addition of a new Asian member to its Global Consumer Advisory Board (GCAB), Professor Guangnan Ni, of Beijing, China. Professor Ni is a well-known computer technologist, member of the Chinese Academy of Engineering (CAE), and currently works as a professor at the Institute of Computing Technology, Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS). Professor Ni joins the GCAB’s 13 highly regarded consumer and small business experts, academics, journalists and technology futurists, who seek to identify and resolve challenges facing home and small business technology adoption worldwide. Currently, GCAB members are from ten countries, representing Asia, Europe and North and South America.

“Technology can offer individuals and small businesses tremendous opportunities, but only if it is easy to understand and use,” said new GCAB member Professor Ni. “I have a genuine passion for technology, and look forward to working with this respected international group. Together I believe we can provide important insights on bringing more relevant technology choices to consumers, especially in emerging markets such as China.”

“We are honored to have such a highly respected expert as Professor Ni join the GCAB,” said Patrick Moorhead, AMD’s vice president, corporate marketing and chairman of the GCAB. “With his extensive background and expertise with the Chinese consumer technology experience, Professor Ni’s participation helps the GCAB be an even stronger advocate for technology end users around the globe. I’m confident Professor Ni’s contributions will help the GCAB’s work have an even greater impact in the industry.”

The expansion in the GCAB’s membership follows the Board’s recent release of two ground-breaking research reports investigating the gap between technology innovation and its adoption among end users—a concept called the “Technology Gap” by GCAB members.

The first report, coined the “GCAB Technology Terminology and Complexity Study,” successfully exposes the effects of technology complexity and literacy on technology adoption. According to the study, too many potential buyers don’t understand the language of the technology industry, and are delaying their purchases because products and terminology are too complex.

Members of the media from all over the world are joining in the discussion about technology literacy, citing the GCAB study’s results and comments from GCAB members in articles for major media outlets, such as the BBC (United Kingdon), Computerwelt Online (Germany), The Globe and Mail (Canada), The Hindu (India), Investor’s Business Daily (U.S.) and Nikkei BizTech (Japan).

The GCAB’s most recent report, entitled “Charting & Bridging Digital Divides,” is the first study of its kind to compare and synthesize research about the digital divide in eight countries conducted over the past ten years. The report contends that while the digital divide is narrowing in the U.S. and in other countries, specific aspects of the digital divide are widening or are stalled in many countries. Specifically, there are “gender divides” in Germany and Italy, and there is a substantial “age divide” in South Korea. And while many consider the U.S. a global technology leader, the GCAB’s report found that the U.S. significantly lags behind other developed countries in several important aspects of Internet access and use. For example, Japan leads the world in mobile Internet access and South Korea dominates in broadband connections. The GCAB is honored that a version of the report is expected to be published in 2004 as a chapter in the forthcoming book Transforming Enterprise to be published by MIT Press. A version of the report is also expected to be published as a chapter entitled “The Digital Divide and Social Inequality” in the forthcoming Blackwell Companion to Social Inequalities. In addition, the report is expected to form the basis of an article entitled “Worldwide Internet Diffusion and the Digital Divide” that will appear in the Encyclopedia of Human-Computer Interaction to be published by Berkshire Reference Works in 2004.

About Professor Guangnan Ni
Professor Ni is a well-known computer technologist, member of the Chinese Academy of Engineering (CAE), and currently works as a professor at the Institute of Computing Technology, Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS). Guangnan Ni graduated from Nanjing Institute of Technology in 1961. He presided over the research and development of the Associate (Legend) Chinese Character System and Legend-series PC during his employment as Chief Technical Officer from 1984-1995 at Legend, which was recently renamed Lenova. He won the first prize for the State Award for Scientific & Technological Achievement in 1988 and 1992, has published more than 50 academic papers, and trained dozens of doctoral and master students.

In 1990, Professor Ni was honored as an Expert of Outstanding Contribution (Young and Middle-aged Group) by the China State Council. In 1993, he was elected as a representative of the Eighth National People's Congress, and was one of the first academicians to be nominated to the Chinese Academy of Engineering, in 1994. In addition, in 1995 Professor Ni won an Award for Excellence from the Chinese Institute of Engineers in the U.S. He was also appointed a member of the Ninth National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference in 1998. Since 2002 he has been the president of the Chinese Information Processing Society of China.

About the AMD GCAB
The AMD Global Consumer Advisory Board’s (GCAB) mission is to improve the quality of end users’ technology experiences. The GCAB consists of 14 consumer and small business experts, academics, journalists and technology futurists from around the world who seek to improve through research and advocacy computing technology issues facing home and small business computer users worldwide.

Professor Ni will join 13 existing GCAB members, including:

Patrick Moorhead, GCAB chairman and AMD vice president, consumer advocacy
Dr. Soonhoon Bae, professor, Korea Advance Institute of Science and Technology
Jim Blasingame, creator and host of the U.S. nationally syndicated, weekday radio/Internet talk show, “The Small Business Advocate”
Mark Boleat, United Kingdom consumer policy and business representation consultant and a board member of the National Consumer Council (NCC)
Dr. William Halal, professor of management at George Washington University
Ken McEldowney, executive director of Consumer Action, a San Francisco-based consumer advocacy and education membership organization
Enrico Mercanti, consumer marketing, business consultant and business manager for BENQ, Italy
Tricia Parks, founder and president of Parks Associates, a U.S. consulting firm
Jose Antonio Romalho, a Brazilian technology writer and syndicated columnist
Dr. Carlos Scheel, professor at the Graduate School of Business (EGADE) of the Monterrey Institute of Technology in Monterrey, Mexico
Dr. Bernd Skiera, professor and first Electronic Commerce chair at the Johann Wolfgang Goethe-University in Frankfurt, Germany
Dr. Hideyo Waki, professor in the Information and Telecommunication Department at Tokyo Denki University
Dr. Barry Wellman, sociology professor at the University of Toronto, as well as director of the University’s NetLab.

The GCAB is part of AMD’s Consumer Advocacy Initiative (CAI), which represents the company’s commitment to understanding technology end users, and the company’s dedication to putting end users at the forefront of the industry’s technology discussion. Consumers or small businesses with questions or comments may e-mail the GCAB at amd.gcab@amd.com. More information about the GCAB and its research can be found at www.amdgcab.org.

About AMD
Founded in 1969 and based in Sunnyvale, Calif., AMD (NYSE: AMD) is a global supplier of integrated circuits for the personal and networked computer and communications markets with manufacturing facilities in the United States, Europe, Japan, and Asia. AMD, a Standard & Poor’s 500 company, produces microprocessors, Flash memory devices, and silicon-based solutions for communications and networking applications.

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