SiliconBeat

Applied Micro Devices became the latest victim of the bankruptcy of Spansion, a company it helped bring into being in a joint venture with Fujitsu that eventually was spun out into a separate public company.

As part of its reorganization, Spansion filed a motion in which it indicated that it does not intend to Read the rest of this entry »

Advanced Micro Devices adjourned a special meeting of its stockholders intended to let them vote on its plan to spin-off its manufacturing plants into a separate entity as part of an investment from the Abu Dhabi government.

The vote was to take place this morning at the Hilton Austin Airport in Texas because the company didn’t have enough  Read the rest of this entry »

John Gifford, who founded analog chip maker Maxim Integrated Products and served as its chief executive until his retirement in 2007, passed away Sunday of an apparent heart attack, according to a company press release distributed Monday.

Gifford was born in 1941 and grew up in Los Angeles. After graduating from UCLA in 1963 with a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering, he worked for Fairchild Semiconductor, first in sales in L.A. and later in marketing in Silicon Valley.

An industry legend, Gifford was one of the many engineers Read the rest of this entry »

Carl Icahn placed a bet on Advanced Micro Devices in the third quarter, acquiring 1.6 million shares of the Sunnyvale chip maker, according to a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission Friday in which his investment company, Icahn Capital, periodically details its holdings.

The stake was valued at Read the rest of this entry »

Here’s some good news: shipments of microprocessors used in personal computers reached record levels again in the third quarter, according to market research firm IDC. They were up 14 percent from the quarter before and up 15.8 percent year over year. The firm even gave a nod to Intel’s new Atom processor (pictured here next to a penny) for “ultra low cost mobile PCs (which Intel calls “Netbooks’)” — without Atom, the growth would have been Read the rest of this entry »

Advanced Micro Devices says it will lay off about 10 percent of its workforce between now and the end of September. That would be effect more than 1,600 employees based on the the company’s employment at the end of 2007.

The step was announced in a press release the company put out after the markets closed today in which it lowered guidance on sales for its fiscal 2008 first quarter. It said it expected sales to be approximately $1.5 billion, below the average analysts forecast of $1.62 billion, according to Thomson.

AMD said that the decrease was caused by lower than expected sales across all business
segments. The company will take an as yet to be determined restructuring charge in its second quarter.

No word on the severance yet, but its safe to say they will probably be less than the $8.9 million payment CEO Hector Ruiz would get for termination without cause, or the $5.4 million that COO Derrick Meyer would get or the $4.2 million CFO Robert Rivet would collect (in addition to his $11 million retirement benefit), according to AMD’s proxy filed last month with the SEC.