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By Jose Vilches, TechSpot.com
Published: May 11, 2007, 5:16 PM EST

Chipmaker AMD said Wednesday it will cut 2.6 percent of its employees or 430 jobs in its operations around the world due to a first-quarter loss of $611 million, with most of the job cuts being made in sales, marketing and administration positions.

Industry analysts are unsure if AMD will have to cut more jobs in the near future. "I'm surprised the number is as small as what it is," said Brian Piccioni, a BMO Capital Markets analyst.

American Technology Research analyst Doug Freedman believes the job cuts could "save the company about $40 million per annum in operating expenses and add 8 cents to the bottom-line."

AMD had gained market share to its rival Intel in the past couple of years; however, Intel regained its leading position delivering more competitive products like the Core 2 Duo chip. Currently AMD and Intel face a brutal price war which reduces the profit margins, not to mention last year’s merger with graphics chipmaker ATI Technologies, which AMD acquired last year for $5.4 billion.

AMD is hoping to regain footing in the CPU market with the release of a quad-core processor codenamed Barcelona later this year.


Source: techspot.com

Relevant article: dailytech.com

Crash and burn baby...Long live Intel..!

Uber, stay outta AMD threads and I'll keep out of Intel threads..
Sounds fair..? /wink.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=";)" border="0" alt="wink.gif" />

I was a bit big-eyed when I saw this....$600M+ in first quarter loses. Eeeks.

I still use one of the original AMD dual cores (3800) on my desktop....but there's no denying it: The Intel Dual 2 Core is just smoking hot right now...and I'm not talking about core temps (a la the old P4's!). /smile.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":)" border="0" alt="smile.gif" />

Actually, I hope AMD can turn it around....just so Intel has some competition! Otherwise, you know Intel is going to jam us for even more cha-ching!

That's what happens when you go out and buy another large company (ATi). That was so stupid of them.

Dudes, don't be so quick on assumptions /wink.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=";)" border="0" alt="wink.gif" />
AMD made the mistake to take a longer rest than it should when they released the KICKING K8.
Also, when you make such large purchases, it's NORMAL to be short for the first couple of trimesters till everything is settled.

Even tho Core 2 Duo are really good right now, and despite what AYHJA would like to dream about, AMD's architecture is still ages ahead of Intel's since it's more multicore-friendly.

Just wait and see /wink.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=";)" border="0" alt="wink.gif" />

/me is happily waiting for the full-out release of their new architecture.

Let's hope AMD is able to continue to compete. If Intel gets a monopoly, it will be bad for everyone. The competition between those two has brought lower prices, higher speed and greater efficiency to the CPU market.

Yes please, tell that to Mr Monopolayhja here who thinks that intel should reign :p
Then again, this guy thinks that firefox is a browser... go figure :D

Companies do layoffs all the time and dont crash and burn... restructuring and such is a much better idea. Layoffs are a short term boost to the bottomline to keep shareholders happy.

No worries. The bigger problem will be can appz keep up with the dual, quad and octcore processors coming out -- as more work is split between more than one chip and speeds havent increased as much how many appz can utilize quad or more core technology. That's the monopoly the company that makes it appz utilize 'em.

I used AMD the most but have machines with Intel in them.. so I want both to survive.