Digital Trends
Last October, chipmaker AMD announced a bold move: to keep its costs under control, the company would go fabless, spinning off its factories in a partnership with Abu Dhabi into The Foundry Company. The spinoff would, naturally, make chips for AMD, but also take on manufacturing tasks for other companies. Meanwhile, AMD could focus on design—and would gain some financial stability from the deal.
After writing down substantial sums on its $5.4 billion purchase of ATI back in 2006, AMD is beginning to divest itself of some of the assets of that sale, announcing today that it has struck a deal with Broadcom to buy all AMD’s digital television business and assets for $192.8 million in cash. The announcement follows AMD writing down another $880 million on its ATI acquisition, Hector Ruiz stepping down as CEO, and announcing earlier this year it would be cutting 10 percent of its workforce.
Struggling chipmaker AMD has reported an operating loss of $1.189 billion for the second quarter of 2008, as the company formally announces it plans to divest itself of its handheld and digital television product businesses which it acquired with graphics developer ATI back in 2006. However, perhaps more importantly, AMD has decided to change the man at the top: long-time CEO Hector Ruiz has announced he is stepping aside, to be replaced by chief operating officer Dirk Meyer.
Chipmaker AMD today launched “Business Class,” a PC brand featuring AMD Phenom and Athlon processors aimed squarely at business users rather than home users, consumers, or PC enthusiasts. The initial desktop offerings are based on AMD’s 780V chipset and are designed to appeal to small and medium sized businesses; AMD pans to add notebook computers and enterprise-grade systems to the equation as they move the brand forward. Several OEMs are already working to product PCs on the platform (Hewlett-Packard looks to be the first out of the gate), and AMD says that the platform will be available for a minimum of 18 months, giving solutions providers a guaranteed roadmap they can take to their customers.
With a simple upgrade path to more efficient computing, based on AMD’s existing system infrastructure and industry-standard architecture, enterprise customers can expect more efficient processing power without the penalties of increased power consumption and heat dissipation. The dual-core AMD Opteron processor for servers and workstations is expected to offer the best performance per watt in the market when AMD plans to make it available in mid-2005.
“This industry milestone changes the dynamics of the computing business,” said Dirk Meyer, executive vice president, AMD Computation Products Group. “Once again, AMD is delivering a simplified approach to more efficient processing power, with products that will deliver multi-core 64-bit computing to our strong customer base.”
From AMD’s press release:
AMD announced today that it is achieving a smooth transition to 90 nanometer (nm) manufacturing and has shipped low-power 90nm Mobile AMD Athlon 64 processors for thin and light notebooks (previously codenamed “Oakvilleâ€) for revenue. Manufacturers are expected to launch systems based on the new 90nm Mobile AMD Athlon 64 processors in the coming months.
In addition to providing performance and power benefits to AMD64 products today, the transition keeps AMD on track with its plans to deliver 90nm dual-core products mid-next year and also provides operational benefits such as increased production capacities.
The AMD Athlon 64 FX processor delivers what no other PC processor can: the highest overall 32-bit performance for today’s demanding applications and the power of 64-bit computing for the next waveof software.
Specifically designed for gamers, PC enthusiasts and digital content creators, the AMD Athlon 64 FX processor is the most technically advanced and highest performing 32-bit and 64-bit PC processor inthe world. Systems based on the AMD Athlon 64 FX processor enable a “cinematic computing†experience that is immersive, interactive and provides a new level of realism not available today except fromDVD-quality films.
Microsoft made the announcement at AMD’s launch of the AMD Athlon (TM) 64 processor in San Francisco. The updated 64-bit operating system, Windows XP 64-Bit Edition for 64-Bit Extended Systems, whichwill run natively on AMD Athlon 64 processor-powered desktops and AMD Opteron (TM) processor-powered workstations, provides the superior performance needed by consumers and business customers for thenext generation of high-performance desktop computing, including gaming, digital content creation and video editing.
A key benefit of the updated operating system is the Microsoft Windows on Windows 64 (WOW64) technology, which will enable customers who currently have Windows XP-compatible 32-bit applications to run those applications on the 64-bit operating system. The WOW64 architecture takes advantage of the AMD64 architecture to enable compatibility with 32-bit applications without a loss of performance in nearly all cases, helping protect customers’ current and future technology investments.
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