David E. Orton

Who is David E. Orton?

David E. Orton is an American engineering executive.

David E. Orton was born around 1954 and earned a BS in mathematics and economics at Wake Forest University, and a MS in electrical engineering from Duke University. He worked in the graphics and semiconductor industry as an engineer at Bell Laboratories in 1979 to 1983 and then General Electric through December 1988. He joined Silicon Graphics in 1990, and was senior vice president of visual computing and advanced systems through 1999. In 1996 SGI bought Cray Research and Orton had to deal with merging the companies overlapping technologies.

Orton joined ATI Technologies as a result of an acquisition of ArtX 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. Despite ATI's principal location in Markham, Ontario, Canada, Orton spent most of his time in California where he resided.