Chipmaker AMD has announced that it plans to eliminate an additional 1,100 jobs from its 15,000-person workforce in a bit to reduce costs and improve the bottom line…even as it spins off its manufacturing operations to The Foundry Company. The company expects 900 of the job cuts will come through layoffs, while the other 200 will come through attrition and the sale of ATI’s digital television business to Broadcom.
The layoffs represent AMD’s third round of job cuts in the last year; AMD laid off 600 workers last month, and another 1,600 earlier in 2008.
AMD is also cutting worker pay, including compensation for its executives. CEO Dirk Meyer and former CEO Hector Ruiz will see their salaries cut by 20 percent, while VPs and other top execs will get a 15 percent cut and other salaried workers will see a 10 percent cut in pay. Wages for hourly workers will be cut by 5 percent. AMD says the wage cuts are temporary, and did not detail how wage cuts might impact workers outside the United States.
The announcement also comes after AMD announced it was writing down the value of its ATI graphics business unit by another $684 million; the move was the third time AMD has devalued its investment in ATI, placing its value to AMD at less than half what AMD paid for it in 2006.
