Tag Archive: Abu Dhabi

Historically, there has been little love lost between chipmakers Intel and AMD, with the companies famously locked in battle over antitrust allegations and, of course, in a perpetual marketing war over whose processors offer more bang for the buck. Now AMD’s recent move to spin off its manufacturing plants into the new company GlobalFoundries has raised Intel’s ire, with Intel claiming AMD is violating a patent cross-licensing agreement by letting GlobalFoundries have access to its intellectual property. AMD says it considers GlobalFoundries a subsidiary company and, therefore, it is in full compliance with the agreement.

Back in 2006, heads turned when chipmaker Advanced Micro Devices plunked down about $5.4 billion to acquire graphics developer ATI…but things haven’t quite worked out like AMD planned. A year ago, AMD was forced to write down some $1.7 billion of the “goodwill” value of ATI—essentially, admit it overpaid for the business—and back in July AMD wrote off another $880 million, citing ATI’s underperforming mobile graphics and digital television technologies…which it sold to Broadcom in August for just under $193 million. All told, AMD had eaten about half the $5.4 billion it had sunk into the graphics developer…and now, in a new filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, the company admits it will have to write down the value of ATI by an unspecified amount that will have a “material” impact on the company’s financials.