AMD invests in ailing chip company Transmeta
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Advanced Micro DevicesÂ is investing $7.5 million in energy-efficient chip company Transmeta, which has beenÂ battling falling revenueÂ and widening losses.
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The high-flying Advanced Micro Devices Inc. of 2006 has given way to a company in financial peril, saddled with debt and bleeding from a brutal price battle with its larger and suddenly resurgent Silicon Valley archrival, Intel Corp.
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(InfoWorld) - Advanced Micro Devices Inc. (AMD) is moving fast to complete a planned acquisition of ATI Technologies Inc., offering US$1.7 million in salary and bonuses to hire the graphics card vendor's chief executive officer, David Orton. Retaining Orton could help AMD to reach its stated goal of building a single platform to boost its performance in media and data processing and to build a stronger presence in the consumer digital media market, AMD said whenÂ it announced the $5.4 billion offer in July. AMD hopes to build electronics that combine its microprocessors with ATI's GPUs (graphics processing units), and thus maintain its momentum in nibbling away at the market share of rival, Intel Corp. So the company offered Orton a job as senior vice president of the planned 14,900-person company, according to papers filed Wednesday with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. AMD also reported this week that government officials on Taiwan's Fair Trade Commission had approved the deal. AMD expects to clear all other hurdles by the end of October, including the approval of ATI shareholders and Canadian securities regulators. But even asÂ AMD nears its goal, rumors surfaced Wednesday that Intel wants to acquire ATI's rival, Nvidia Corp., the only remaining vendor of the graphics cards used in PCs, gaming consoles, set-top boxes and handheld devices. An industry analyst was quoted by the EE Times saying the rumor is swirling, but he believes it is unlikely. Indeed, such a move would be surprising, given Intel's ongoing corporate reorganization. The company is struggling to meet profit targets and has recently cut costs by laying off 10,500 workers and selling several divisions. Also, Nvidia is growing more expensive by the day, as stock traders see a bright future for the sole remaining independent graphics vendor, boosting company stock from $18 to $30 since AMD announced the deal to buy ATI, as of midday Thursday. Intel does not comment on rumors, a spokeswoman said. A Nvidia spokesman declined to comment, calling the rumors mere market speculation. Â
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Advanced Micro Devices Inc. (NYSE: AMD) has entered into sourcing and manufacturing technology agreements with Chartered Semiconductor Manufacturing Ltd.
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The Taiwanese electronics industry daily DigiTimes is citing motherboard manufacturers there as saying they're gearing up now for production of new models that will support three new AMD premium processors.
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AMD has delayed general availability of some key products until early next year, when it projects the chips, along with other new processors, will return it to profitability.The biggest hit went to its quad-core microprocessor, code-named Barcelona, which it needs to compete against Intel among server vendors. The chips, along with AMD&#39;s desktop platform, Phenom, won&#39;t be generally available to customers until the first quarter of next year. The products were supposed to ship in volume by the end of this year, but&#160;a technical design error in the chips caused AMD to slow the schedule so it could apply a fix, said Dirk Meyer, the company&#39;s president and COO in a meeting with analysts on Thursday.The company&#39;s Puma platform, a set of chips aimed at laptop PCs, will also be delayed until the second quarter of next year, a costly miss considering the fact that the laptop PC market is growing at around 30 percent per year.AMD also reduced its planned spending on new production lines to $1.1 billion from a previous estimate of $1.7 billion and said all its business divisions wouldn&#39;t return to profitability until next year.The statements caused AMD&#39;s stock to fall as much as 5 percent during early trading on the New York Stock Exchange, before rebounding to down just 1.8 percent, at $8.81 in the afternoon. The market was still open as of this writing.AMD executives apologized for missteps, such as the delay in Barcelona.&quot;We blew it, we&#39;re very humbled by it, we learned from it, and we&#39;re not going to do it again,&quot; said Hector Ruiz, chairman and CEO of AMD. He said AMD would go back to its habit of under-promising and over-delivering.To start, the company will be on a path to break even financially by the second quarter of next year and return to profitability by the end of the third quarter, he said. The financial performance will be boosted by the launch of several new products in graphics, chipsets, digital TV processors, and more, not including the delayed products.The company forecast its processor shipments will rise at least 15 percent next year, while graphics processor shipment growth will be greater than 6 percent, digital TV processors more than 13 percent, and handheld chips up 8 percent.AMD&#39;s gross margin will rise to between 46 percent and 50 percent next year, up from 37 percent during the past four quarters, said Bob Rivet, chief financial officer of AMD.&quot;We&#8217;re in a massive product refresh. In 2007, we were living on some old stuff. 2008 is all new stuff, and we believe it will yield goodness,&quot; he said.
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I guess this news will have to hold us over until the individual companies make their announcements. AMD today announced PCI Express support from leading chipset manufacturers, offering performance-hungry
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Taiwanese chip assembler Advanced Semiconductor EngineeringÂ (ASE) plans to invest $60 million in a low-end chip assembly company based in China.
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AMD and IBM said today they will begin using a strained-silicon transistor technology designed to augment processor performance and power efficiency.
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In a move that was successfully kept secret, for the most part. AMD is making an unprecedented, near-term adjustment to its technology roadmap. As soon as the first half of next year, the company plans to introduce into the desktop CPU market a new line of Phenom triple-core processors, whose architecture was christened with the code-name Toliman just hours ago.
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Blog: Bad: AMD lost $600 million this quarter. Good: Chip shipments surged.
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(InfoWorld) - Qualcomm and Samsung Investment VentureÂ have each invested $8 million in Advanced Micro-Fabrication Equipment Co. (AMEC), a Chinese company that plans to develop and sell equipment used to manufacture semiconductors. The investments were part of $43 million raised by AMEC in recent months. In October 2006, the company announced it had raised $35 million from several investors, including Goldman Sachs. AMEC plans to develop semiconductor manufacturing equipment for 65nm and 45nm production processes, hoping to tap China's growing semiconductor manufacturing industry. AMEC is led by Chairman and CEO Gerald Yin, a Chinese semiconductor executive who formerly worked for chip equipment supplier Applied Materials.
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Transmeta Corp. has begun shipping its second-generation Efficeon processors, the TM8800 series.
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Advanced Micro Devices (NYSE: AMD) continues to plug away at microprocessor rival Intel&#39;s (Nasdaq: INTC) lead, which once seemed insurmountable.
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(InfoWorld) - Transmeta will stop offering engineering services in order to focus entirely on developing and licensing intellectual property, the Santa Clara developer of chip technologies said on Monday. The move follows aÂ restructuringÂ in early 2005 that cut its chip sales business in order to focus on engineering services and intellectual property licensing. "Over the past year, the level of activity for engineering services has declined dramatically due to the completion of programs and our customers' declining staffing requirements," said Les Crudele, president and CEO of Transmeta, during a conference call to discuss the change. "As a result, the billable time for our engineers has declined to the point that the projects are no longer sufficient to cover the costs associated with that business." On Friday, Transmeta laid off 75 employees, mostly engineers in the services business, and expects to let go another 25 to 55 people in the next few quarters. The majority of Transmeta's engineering business came from Microsoft and Sony. Last year, SonyÂ reduced its deal with TransmetaÂ and its contract ends in March. Transmeta has also completed a services contract with Microsoft on theÂ FlexGo project, a program that enables customers in developing economies to buy computers and software on a pay-as-you-go basis. Transmeta plans to retain some staff in order to support that program as it progresses past the trial phase. Transmeta also plans to close its sales and support offices in Taiwan and Tokyo. Without the drag of the engineering services business, Transmeta hopes that it can build its licensing business by attracting more customers. Currently, companies including NEC, Fujitsu, Sony. and Toshiba license technology from Transmeta. The company has been talking to chip makers outside of Japan about licensing deals but isn't ready to make any announcements yet, Crudele said.
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Advanced Micro Devices Inc. (AMD)  , the world's second-largest maker of computer  microprocessors, said on Tuesday it expects its declining  market share to bottom out and return to an upward trend by the  end of the year.
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Advanced Micro Devices will receive preferred shares in exchange for its investment in company whose financial performance has fallen lately.