AMD offers ATI chief $1.7 million
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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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The chip giant offers a $1m prize  to evolve the traditional PC into something more stylish.
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AMD Chairman and CEO Hector Ruiz acknowledged Thursday that 2007 was a bad year for his company, but that didn&#39;t stop AMD&#39;s board of directors from raising his salary anyway.&quot;We blew it and we&#39;re very humbled by it and we learned from it and we&#39;re not going to do it again,&quot; Ruiz told financial analysts in New York Thursday.AMD has struggled this year, largely due to technical problems that repeatedly&#160;delayed the widespread availability of its Quad-Core Opteron chip, known as Barcelona. As a result, the company saw its financial losses mount -- $1.6 billion during the first nine months of this year -- while incurring $3.7 billion dollars in long-term debt to help keep the company&#39;s operations running.The announcement Wednesday that&#160;AMD plans to take an as-yet unspecified charge for impaired goodwill from its $5.4 billion acquisition of ATI -- recognition that the graphics-chip vendor is worth less than AMD paid for it last year -- only added to the company&#39;s financial woes and dimmed investor enthusiasm for its stock. On Dec. 13, AMD&#39;s share price closed at $8.84, down 56.2 percent from one year ago.However, those issues will not affect Ruiz&#39;s base salary, which has been increased, according to a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission released Thursday, the same day that Ruiz apologized for the company&#39;s dismal performance.That filing, which contained a copy of Ruiz&#39;s amended employment agreement , shows AMD raised his annual base salary by 7.4 percent to $1,124,000. The amended agreement was dated Dec. 7.In 2006, Ruiz received a base salary of $1,046,358, while stock awards and other forms of compensation raised his total compensation for the year to $12,848,435.Ruiz&#39;s 2006 compensation was significantly higher than Intel CEO and President Paul Otellini, who took home a salary of $700,000 in 2006. Other awards raised Otellini&#39;s total compensation in 2006 to $9,806,400.
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ATI Technologies on Monday delivered the Radeon Xpress 200, a new chipset for desktops using Advanced Micro Devices&#39; Athlon 64 and other eighth-generation processors.
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The competition in the PC Graphic Cards market just got hotter. ATI has good news for the computer gamers. They have released five new cards aimed at advanced gamers.
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Advanced Micro Devices Inc. warned Monday that it was unlikely to meet its first-quarter revenue guidance of $1.6 billion to $1.7 billion, the latest in a series of disappointments for investors in the struggling chip-maker. The company's stock fell to a new 52-week low on the news.
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Gamers should welcome the latest news from ATIâfive new graphic processors from one of leading GPU manufacturers. The new entrants in the war for gamers&#39; hearts and systems are the ATI Radeon
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Advanced Micro Devices on Monday introduced a high-end graphics card whose core will also be part of its next-generation Fusion processors.The ATI Radeon 3870 X2 graphics card combines two chips from its predecessor, ATI Radeon 3870, on one board, doubling its performance, said Patrick Moorhead, vice president of advanced marketing at AMD. The ATI Radeon 3870 had one chip on the card.The chips, manufactured using the 55-nanometer process, are more power efficient and deliver better performance than the previous graphics processors, Moorhead said.AMD will incorporate a graphics-processing core based on the X2 in its&#160;upcoming Fusion processor. Fusion will integrate a graphics processor and CPU on one chip, said John Taylor, an AMD spokesman.There are no overt tie-ins between Fusion and the X2, but the graphics-processing cores are expected to be similar, Taylor said.While X2 is designed for maximum graphics performance, the graphics-processing core will be adapted for notebook platforms and implemented in Fusion, Taylor said.AMD last week said the Fusion family&#39;s first processor, code-named Swift, will be based on the Phenom core and optimized for power management with the latest graphics and processing technology on a single chip. Notebooks with the Fusion processor are expected to be out in the second half of 2009.Targeted at PC users who want high-end graphics, the X2 graphics board supports Microsoft&#39;s DirectX 10.1 gaming platform, Taylor said.The graphics board plugs into a PCI Express slot and supports up to 1GB of memory. It includes DVI and DisplayLink ports to support external multimedia devices.The card will support CrossfireX technology by the end of this quarter, which will allow up to four graphics cards to work together to scale multimedia performance, AMD said in a news release.Priced at $449, the card is available worldwide.With high-end features and midrange pricing, AMD&#39;s Moorhead hopes the new graphics card will boost the company&#39;s product offerings and heat up competition with rival Nvidia.Pricing makes the X2 impressive, but even more significant is the card&#39;s improved performance while using just one slot, said Jon Peddie, president of Jon Peddie Research. Users seeking a graphics performance boost usually end up buying two cards, which uses up two card slots.It&#39;s hard to predict whether the card will help AMD steal graphics market share from Nvidia, he said. &quot;It has the potential to do that if AMD is able to manufacture [X2] in volume,&quot; Peddie said.Nvidia held a 37.8 percent global market share in the third quarter of 2007, while AMD was in third place with 18.8 percent, according to numbers from Jon Peddie Research. Intel was in second place with 33.5 percent market share.
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In connection with what the two companies are only describing today as an investigation into potential antitrust violations, graphics processor producer nVidia and AMD â- the new parent of processor company ATI â- announced they have received subpoenas from the US Dept. of Justice.
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Loved and lost AMD's obsession with top server and PC makers has proved costly. The chip maker claims to have focused on so-called Tier 1 OEMs at the expense of its longtime channel partners and now blames declining channel sales for its expected first quarter revenue miss.â¦
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ATI Technologies Inc. (NASDAQ:ATYT)(TSX:ATY), the global leader in PC graphics, has broadened its offerings for PC gamers and extended its performance lead with the introduction of a family of powerful new graphics processors.
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For years, ATI played itself as the performance leader in the graphics space. But now as part of AMD, which is having a difficult time of late making its case for CPU performance, ATI may have to make like its new corporate parent for a little while.
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Carlyle Group is in talks to buy Advanced Semiconductor Engineering Inc., the world's largest chip packager, for $5.7 billion as demand for computer and mobile-phone components increases.
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Impressed by lawsuit against Intel low power IP The cash-starved, collapsed superstar of my enemy is still my friend, according to AMD, which has injected Transmeta with $7.5m.â¦
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Advanced Micro Devices Inc ,  the No. 2 supplier of computer processors, said on Monday it  would acquire graphics chip maker ATI Technologies Inc. for  $5.4 billion in cash and stock to expand its product mix and  grow market share as it battles Intel Corp. .
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The award for fees and costs comes in a case in which Microsoft agreed to allocate $1.1 billion for California consumers. By Associated Press.
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Leaves a mixed bag of chips David Orton, former president and CEO at ATI Technologies, has resigned as executive vice president of AMD.â¦