News - AMD to split into two companies

[HEXUS]

AMD is expected to formally announce the spin-off of it manufacturing operations into a new joint venture today.

Read more.

[moogle]

AMD's balance sheet has been on the unhealthy side ever since it bought ATI a couple of years ago.

No ****

Maybe this will allow AMD to concentrate on making their CPU's better and if not beating Intel, bringing the performance closer to it's Intel counterparts.

[joshwa]

Calling the manufacturing company ATI will make things confusing... As far as I can tell AMD and ATI (gfx) are still one company called AMD... and the manufacturing company is being split off and called ATI - why would they do something so blatantly stupid?

[kalniel]

Calling the manufacturing company ATI will make things confusing... As far as I can tell AMD and ATI (gfx) are still one company called AMD... and the manufacturing company is being split off and called ATI - why would they do something so blatantly stupid?

Where do they say they're doing that? All I can see is they're calling it Foundry Company for now.

[DavidM]

The investment company is called "Advanced Technology Investment Company" - not the Foundry Company.

[joshwa]

Ah my bad. the investment company is called ATI or ATIC ... and the manufacturing company has been temporarily named the Foundry Company.. fair enough...

[Scott B]

The full press release is here. I'm writing an analysis of it now...

[shaffaaf27]

so what does this mean then?

[Zak33]

many companies needing cash are doing similar.

Sell off your buildings/land and lease them back on a contract to get some cash in.

This is not pretty tbh. Surely it means someone ese owns the entire plant/fab and can offer it to other people one day?

[Funkstar]

Thats the idea isn't it? So they can make money from other peoples chip manufacturing. Increase utilisatiion of the plant, thus reducing their own costs-per-waffer.

Also means they can use previous manufacturing processes that are too old for AMD/ATI parts for other clients that dont need high spec, cutting edge processes.

[pow1983]

AMD certainly need to wake up.

Their "spider" platform is from the stone age.

They still havnt joined in on the netbook boom when they should have been at the forefront. Its yet another project that they're interested in but will nevertheless take several months to follow it up with some half hearted release, and then eventually release something more promising in later months.

They have less and less partners bothering to use their current CPU's and any that do put them in 1/10 of their range in the corner out the way. AMD's partners seem to just buy the chips out of sympathy.

If their AM3 is late and performs badly they will be in big trouble, they will no doubt have to be bought out.

I believe the AM3 is their last chance after this split.