Thomas Seifert is stepping down from his position as AMD’s chief financial officer. Seifert has served as CFO since 2001 and has left his post to pursue other opportunities, according to a bare-bone release that the chipmaker published this week.

Seifert, who played a very important role in the company both as CFO and as interim CEO  in 2011, is temporary handing over his title to Devinder Kumar, senior vice president and corporate controller, until a permanent replacement is found.

“We thank Thomas for his many contributions to AMD and for serving as interim CEO in 2011,” said Rory Read, AMD president and CEO. “Thomas’ personal commitment to the highest standards of accountability and financial integrity has helped define how AMD does business today.  Devinder is an experienced financial executive whose financial expertise and semiconductor experience developed during his 28 year tenure at AMD is an asset to the company.”

Seifert will stick around until the 28^th of this month, when Devinder will officially step in as interim CFO.

AMD is currently ahead of rival Intel in the mobile space, and it’s looking to solidify its position in the data center as well.

About a week ago the chipmaker unveiled a new microserver that leverages technology from SeaMicro, a maker of data center equipment that AMD acquired for $330 million earlier this year. The SeaMicro SM15000 boasts 5 petabytes of storage and a bigger emphasis on power efficiency: the SM15000 uses a quarter of the electricity needed by competing micro-servers, according to AMD.

Power efficiency is becoming a very big deal. It’s the main focus of a $10 million NREL contract recently awarded to HP and Intel – the two vendors will develop an HPC environment that use energy efficiently and recycle almost all the heat waste produced by the hardware.