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AMD To Shed 10% of Its Workforce
Posted by
kdawson
on Tue Apr 08, 2008 12:53 PM
from the hitting-the-streets dept.
from the hitting-the-streets dept.
stress_life writes "Recent rumors about AMD firing 5% of its workforce proved to be understated. AMD just announced that the company is going to deliver pink slips to 1600-1700 workers, or around 10% of its employees. AMD needs revenue of $2 billion per quarter, but Q1'08 is expected to come in around $1.5 billion. These firings have to be complete by Q3'08, the quarter by which Hector Ruiz promised to be profitable." We most recently discussed AMD's struggles in February.
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Ask Slashdot: Is AMD Dead Yet? 467 comments
TheProcess writes "Back in February 2003, IBM predicted that AMD would be dead in 5 years (original article here), with IBM and Intel the only remaining players in the chip market. Well, 5 years have passed and AMD is still alive. However, its finances and stock price have taken a serious beating over the last year. AMD was once a darling in this community — the plucky, up-and-coming challenger to the Intel behemoth. Will AMD still be here in 5 years? Can they pose a credible competitive threat to Intel's dominance? Do they still have superior but unappreciated technology? Or are they finally old hat? Can they really recover?"
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And if... (Score:5, Interesting)
We saw something like this with Blu-Ray when HDDVD was announced to be dead.
And Via.. Well, they're VIA. Leaves a bad taste in my mouth.
Re:And if... (Score:4, Interesting)
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Re: And if... (Score:5, Insightful)
Too bad about the layoffs, though. I think this is going to get worse (across the whole economy) before it gets better. Business is so slow that my state's tax revenues have plummeted.
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Re: And if... (Score:5, Interesting)
I think there is a risk over the next five years of Intel again gaining monopoly or near-monopoly status in the x86 world (or whatever precisely it has morphed into now).
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Re: And if... (Score:4, Funny)
http://www.opensparc.net/ [opensparc.net]
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Re: And if... (Score:5, Funny)
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Never. (Score:4, Insightful)
Seriously, though, I realize I'm a bloody hypocrite for laughing at Mac fanboys whilst being an AMD fanboy, but I love AMD. I want to do things illegal in Texas to my Opteron.
I also realize I'm partially moronic for having brand loyalty in this day and age - but I've never had a problem with any AMD chip. They just work. Perfectly.
So the rest of you Slashdotters go ahead with your 'logic' and 'benchmarks'. I'll keep AMD afloat so you can enjoy competitively priced Intel chips.
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AMD isn't comatose (Score:5, Insightful)
When the Athlon came along, I think AMD was as surprised as the market was that Intel couldn't compete technically. Those days are gone, at least for awhile, and AMD is back where they started. There'll always be a market for a cheap cpu that does the job.
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Re:AMD isn't comatose (Score:5, Interesting)
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Re: And if... (Score:5, Interesting)
Measured by performance, yes. But then, I haven't based CPU purchases on performance since I was a teenager and computers had single-digit MHz's. Over time you end up with far more computing power if you buy best price/performance more often and every time, instead of spending the premium for higher end on more rarely occuring purchases.
I think there is a risk over the next five years of Intel again gaining monopoly or near-monopoly status
I doubt it. It's not a new situation, and as long as AMD can keep delivering better price/performance they will retain significant marketshare. If they fail at that tho, or if Intel lowers prices... but then again, Intel is too fond of charging what the market will bear, so that would be unlikely.
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Re: And if... (Score:5, Insightful)
Massive Layoffs are usually bad business decisions.
1. You reduce people who make your products better.
2. When/if you do start growing you need new people back, and then there is the turn over cost to take account of.
3. You in the short term raise your profits but don't fix the problem of the declining profits. The people on Top are Fat and Happy because they see the big numbers. But by not fixing the underlining problems The next quarter or fisical year the problem will reoccure again.
4. Layoffs effect the moral of those who are hired. Causeing them to spend more time and effort in either A. Politicking themselfs to not get laied off. B. Spenind time to find a new job. Niether of these means they are working harder at their actually jobs.
5. Ex Employees go work for the competition with their own Intelectual Property with them.
6. For big companies like AMD Layoffs effect the local economies of the areas. Which will normally cause a raise in taxes on the local companies (Including AMD) where if they were a big employeer then they may have tax breaks to incorage the company to attract people and businesses in the town.
7. Any slowdowns in production or product releases (due to limited labor) will cause customers to switch to cometitors.
8. Empty offices account to paying for unused property.
9. Extra workload on existing employees may lead to increase mistakes.
10. New Employees will be hesident in joining. Making rerecruting difficult if business does pick up.
See the MBA program is not all about Evil.
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Re: And if... (Score:4, Interesting)
AMD hasn't announced where it's cutting from, but if they're smart, they're going to cut fat, not lop off their head.
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Re: And if... (Score:5, Informative)
AMD Executives paid themselves MASSIVELY during the quarters when AMD was doing its worst.
http://finance.google.com/group/google.finance.327/browse_thread/thread/372bff68c6244c13
-Hack
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AMD has still a little head start... (Score:5, Interesting)
- x86-compatible 64bits architecture, integrated memory controller, low power and thermal
exactly at a time when intel was stuck in dead ends :
- on one hand Itanium proved not to be the optimal way to bring 64bit to desktops and was stuck in the scientific cluster market
- on the other hand the Pentium 4, which was the CPU equivalent of a hummer, and was unable to go above 3GHz although the NetBurst architecture was planned to reach 10GHz
Intel had to lose time, going back to an older generation (PentiumIII-based PentiumM) and developing a decent workstation & desktop processor out of it (Core 2 was the first decent answer to Athlon 64).
Now we are back to the statu quo. With AMD having some technologically interesting products (true quad-cores) and interesting perf/price ratio in the mid-range products, but other wise no massive advantage.
And Intel throwing tons of resources and replaying the "Gigahertz race", except this time with the number of cores bolted to the same package, offering expensive but fast processors.
*BUT*
AMD could still get some advantage in the near future.
First, the gain obtained by multiplying the number of cores will soon top (My crystal balls predict somewhere around 6-8 cores). Intel is going to hit a wall soon, just like they got stuck with their Gigahertz race.
Second, integrated design with the memory controller on the CPU and a standard bus between the CPU and the rest of the PC seems to make a lot of sense. At least that's what Intel's engineer are thinking.
Here again AMD has some advantages :
They already have such an architecture since Athlon 64, the hypertransport bus has been adopted already by several other constructor for various (FPGA and other accelerators, or simply communication between multiple chipsets on motherboard with several northbridges), their socket has stabilised (thank to the compatible family AM2 => AM2+ => AM3).
Whereas Intel will probably once again lose some time developing and perfect their Quick-Path based processors, probably changing their connector a couple of time along the way (can't technically reuse LGA775, will have to develop a new one and as usually will probably change it a couple of time before stabilising), will have to convince other constructor to adopt it (they will, of course as they are "the standard x86 cpu that every PC maker use". But it'll take some additional time), etc...
Once again we will see a transition at Intel, during which AMD has a small advantage (smaller than with the Athlon 64, but still present).
If they leverage their advantage well (partnerships around the HyperTransport, perhaps), they can achieve some success.
Of course that advantage won't stay indefinitely, and after that Intel will probably be back again with big beasts. Probably by then the technology will better take advantage of bigger multicores. And they'll also have a good advantage in the GPU / GPGPU markets by then.
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Transportation Stocks Suggest Recovery (Score:5, Interesting)
People that I have talked to in the transportation business seem to think the recession already took place from around mid last year into this quarter, but now they think the economy is recovering. They are basing this on a rather dramatic falloff in freight shipments and then a recovery.
This followed a similar pattern in the early 1990s.. that is, by the time Clinton said "It's the economy stupid", the recession was already technically over. It's just now the pundits and papers need something to scare people with to sell more punditry and their papers.
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Re:Transportation Stocks Suggest Recovery (Score:4, Informative)
For one thing, perception of the economy affects the economy - if businesses think that the economy is taking a downturn, they are likely to react accordingly. That sort of thing can actually cause or prolong a recession where there may not have been one or it may have been shorter.
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re: perception of the economy (Score:4, Insightful)
The "trend" I've observed in the last couple years is one of businesses trying to be more efficient with the employees they keep. Instead of 3 people, they're always asking, "Can we get by with one higher-paid worker who can then be asked to do the work of those 3?" If not, then they ask "Can we do things differently so we don't need to hire a replacement for employee X who is leaving?"
The statistics I saw published a few weeks ago bore that out. Despite the 5.9% unemployment rate shown, it also indicated average pay was UP over last quarter.
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Re:Transportation Stocks Suggest Recovery (Score:5, Interesting)
Only problem, none of the things that caused the credit crunch have been fixed:
* No regulations for transparency, so you can know the real risk of the "financial product" you're buying.
* The responsibility breakdown between loan origination and loan execution remains. (How the HECK can you get into a position to get a commission for writing a loan, with no responsibility to know that the borrower can really pay? What a job!)
* No regulations on allowable margin, or even for margin transparency.
- I'm sure there are more.
Nothing has been fixed, we merely appear to have dodged THIS bullet, but the madmen are still out there with their machine guns.
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Re:Transportation Stocks Suggest Recovery (Score:5, Insightful)
The only way to get ahead is to invest in appreciating assets. IRAs and 401Ks are good for supplementing a well-rounded investment portfolio, but there's no way I would stake my entire future in them alone.
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Re:Transportation Stocks Suggest Recovery (Score:4, Insightful)
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Re:Transportation Stocks Suggest Recovery (Score:5, Interesting)
No, you're wrong (especially if you're talking about America). Most people think this is how it works, but it isn't.
When you take ou a loan, "new money" is created as debt from that loan. Sounds ridiculous right? It is, but it's the truth.
I suggest that you or anyone else who is interested in this and in how the Fed operates watch these very short animated videos that will show you EXACTLY how banking in America works:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vVkFb26u9g8 [youtube.com]
They are very interesting, there are 5 parts - watch one, you'll want to watch them all and they are very informative.
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Re:And if... (Score:5, Interesting)
We saw something like this with Blu-Ray when HDDVD was announced to be dead.
On the other hand, I doubt that Intel would eliminate competition completely because there is certainly room for more than just one company. I'm not saying AMD is going to survive, but sometimes the best thing for a business is to terminate and reinstate itself.
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Re:And if... (Score:5, Insightful)
If you're working on stuff like CPUs, the semiconductor industry has positively WICKED barriers to entry.
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I don't disagree in general... (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:And if... (Score:5, Interesting)
AMD, as a company, may die. I seriously doubt their processors and GPUs will anytime soon. My guess would be either IBM or a Japanese semiconductor fab will resurrect their product line out of the smoldering crater.
A not-so-outlandish idea, however, is Samsung. To me, Korean ownership, development, and production makes a hell of a lot of sense.
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Re:And if... (Score:5, Informative)
Where is this FUD comming from? The bug was never covered up. They delayed production for an entire quarter and publicly announced why. All CPUs have errata, and AMD took a huge hit by doing the responsible thing with disclosure and a delay.
Second of all, AMD provided a BIOS patch to motherboard makers that ships with every K10 capable board. If you want to argue the patch degrades performance or bring up the faster B3 revision, fine. However, don't imply AMD's chips can't do virtualization reliably. The patch completely fixes any chance of a crash from the TLB issue.
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AMD and ATi (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:AMD and ATi (Score:5, Insightful)
Right now (heading into the medium term) it looks like they had some missteps but they're doing okay. It's still hard to tell what's going to happen long term, though. Intel's in the entrenched position since they're already the #1 video card maker because of their integrated chipsets. If ATI actually started changing the video card industry, then Intel's in a very good position to start competing with them quickly. I doubt Intel wants to start lagging behind AMD in performance again, especially with their CPUs actually beating AMDs for the first time since the original pentium came out.
All told, buying ATI was questionable, but it's not to the point yet where I would call it either way. AMD's already come into a market dominated by another company and beat it on its own ground, I wouldn't be surprised if they can do it again.
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Re:AMD and ATi (Score:5, Insightful)
As far as current products go, I think AMD was more interested in ATI's chipsets and embedded graphics, which are quite good, and help AMD build better 'platform' stories. Now they can provide a platform using mostly AMD chips, and that offers high performance, whereas before AMD made chipsets but they were generally not the best performing.
in the long term they were hoping to be able to start revolutionizing the video industry with tighter integration between the CPU and video card.
It's a neat idea, and there's a lot of potential there. We'll see if the potential ever becomes reality.
If they keep shedding people, probably not would be my guess.
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10 percent not so bad (Score:5, Funny)
Buggy products (Score:5, Interesting)
Apparently we have to wait even longer before this mess will be cleared up. Is it any surprise that revenue is down?
Lay off 10%? (Score:5, Insightful)
It drives me crazy when companies think that the only way out of their mess is to lay off the staff, when the people responsible for the mess (board of directors and executive), don't give themselves a pay cut of 10%. Chances are, knowing how US exeuctives pay themselves, it would proably equal the amount saved laying off 10% of their staff. But what do I know?
Re:Lay off 10%? (Score:5, Interesting)
That said - I agree with your feeling that executives never seem to take responsibility for screw-ups. Instead, they take million dollar golden parachutes into semi-retirement. I'd love to see an exec who says: "Wow, we stunk this year. I'm cutting my salary in half to help the company stay profitable." Or a CEO who says "Wow, we stunk these past two years. I'm obviously the wrong person to run this company, and am forfeiting all salary, bonuses and payments that were supposed to come my way." I guess that technically, the Board of Directors is supposed to do this, but that's a whole different issue.
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Re:Lay off 10%? (Score:5, Insightful)
But take what you said for a moment... We need a general expectation around here: Executive suite cuts the workforce 10%, they take a 10% pay cut. They get NO credit for growing profit by shrinking the company. Rather than shrinking the company, an executive worth his pay would figure out how to turn that "idle" resource into more revenue.
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Re:Lay off 10%? (Score:4, Informative)
http://amd.edgarpro.com/redirect_frames.asp?filename=0001193125-08-057479.txt&filepath= [edgarpro.com]\2008\03\14\&cols=7%2C0%2C4&SortBy=receivedate&AD=D&startrec=1&res=25&pdf=0
It looks like the executives made ~ $20 million in 2007(including option and stock grants, not just salary, also, the totals are lower than 2006).
I think cutting 1,600 jobs is going to save a bit more than $20 million, probably more than $100 million.
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Re:Lay off 10%? (Score:4, Insightful)
Not necessarily. There may still be some significant overlap between ATI and AMD especially in the non-R&D positions.
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Re:Lay off 10%? (Score:4, Interesting)
If they strategically cut groups that are not performing (including the managers)... that's cutting the fat.
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10% layoff is healthy (Score:5, Interesting)
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Shed? (Score:4, Insightful)
"Firing" vs "laying off" (Score:4, Informative)
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Yep (Score:5, Informative)
Laid off means that the university just didn't need your specific job anymore, or doesn't have the money to pay you. You get a severance package and other benefits. For example should the department that laid you off open the same (or similar) job within a year, it is automatically yours if you want it. Also you get priority for getting interviews for other jobs on campus. More or less a layoff means "Sorry, we'd like to keep you, but we just can't." You are, of course, eligible for rehire if laid off.
Being fired means you fucked up. It isn't easy to fire someone, there has to be documentation supporting it and such. When you get fired you don't get anything in parting. You are just out the door, and they are going to hire someone else to do your job. You aren't eligible to be rehired.
So yes, in many cases it can be very different.
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Other Layoffs: Dell, Google, Chrysler, Motorola, (Score:5, Informative)
"Dell Job Cuts to Top 8,800 as U.S. Spending Slows" (Dude! You're getting a pink slip!)
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601103&sid=aEO1GX_CC.8U&refer=u [bloomberg.com]...
"Google DoubleClick cuts 300 jobs"
http://www.newsoxy.com/google_doubleclick_cuts_300_jobs/article10671.htm [newsoxy.com]
"Motorola to lay off 2,600 workers"
http://www.chicagotribune.com/business/chi-fri-motorola-8k-jobcuts-motap [chicagotribune.com]...
"Chrysler Slashing Tech Jobs - The latest cutbacks affect 400 technology workers"
http://www.thecarconnection.com/blog/?p=1095 [thecarconnection.com]
In other news, according to the NYT:
> The economy shed 80,000 jobs in March, the third consecutive month of rising unemployment, presenting a stark sign that the country may already be in a recession.
> The unemployment rate ticked up to 5.1 percent from 4.8 percent, its highest level since the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina in September 2005.
> The downturn has even come to San Francisco, where highly trained workers with elite degrees flock to work for some of the world's biggest technology companies. CNet Networks, the online media giant, laid off 10 percent of its staff -- about 120 workers -- this year in an effort to increase profitability and its share price. Yahoo, the search engine company, said it would cut its work force by 1,000.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/04/business/04cnd-econ.html?em&ex=1207540800&en=c1de4fb13c4ec4bd&ei=5087%0A [nytimes.com]
Re:Other Layoffs: Dell, Google, Chrysler, Motorola (Score:5, Informative)
Also, your link to newsoxy seems to be some kind of spammy site. A better article is here: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/04/03/BUA2VUNAO.DTL&tsp=1 [sfgate.com]
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Re:Other Layoffs: Dell, Google, Chrysler, Motorola (Score:4, Informative)
> "Job security for IT professionals plummeted more than 10% from January to February of this year, far surpassing the average job security declines seen nationwide in a rigorous analysis of U.S. employment patterns."
http://www.networkworld.com/newsletters/edu/2008/033108ed1.html [networkworld.com]
And this:
> WSJ: "Government Quietly Changes Rules on Foreign Tech Workers"
> On Friday, DHS issued a press release saying that businesses could now hire foreign students who attended American schools for 29 months without obtaining an H-1B visa,
http://blogs.wsj.com/biztech/2008/04/07/government-quietly-changes-rules-on-foreign-tech-workers/?mod=WSJBlog#comment-18914 [wsj.com]
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Apple and AMD (Score:5, Insightful)
The past few years has certainly vindicated Apple on that regard. They absolutely made the right choice.
Re:Well that's good (Score:4, Funny)
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Re:Well that's good (Score:4, Funny)
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Re:Well that's good (Score:4, Funny)
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Re:AMD NOT going under (Score:4, Informative)
Do you know how to read? Read some books about CPU design. Then read some prices.
The Opteron (Athlon/Phenom) has the better interconnect, and came out 5 years ago. Intel *might* be bringing out a competitor this year. Or maybe next,
AMD processors scale, since you get double the memory bandwidth with double the processors in a system. Intel's are still choking on a 1980's vintage front side bus. Back in the 90's, AMD had a cross-bar switch. Now they have NUMA.
From what I can see [scan.co.uk], a Q6600 is 2.4HGz. Mind you, it has 8MB of cache, which helps it along quite a bit, but only if you have one of them in a system.
Would a dual Q660 beat a dual Phenom 9850? OK, it will be called an "Opteron" when it's available next month.
Of course, intel would really like you to buy itanic for multiprocessor systems.
Years of experience with intel, AMD and UltraSPARC systems have taught me that intel processors look and feel impressive on single-user single-tasking jobs. When you add tasks and users, the performance falls away.
But, hey, intel have the brand name and the catchy adverts.
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Re:1929 (Score:4, Insightful)
In fact, FDR's plans were so catastrophic that he was elected "only" 3 times, and people cried in the streets when the guy crooked.
Sometimes, the ignorance of the American populace as illustrated by the anonymous coward above astounds me. The lemming attitude that makes idiots like these proactively handicap their own interests astounds me.
So let me get this straight, one of the few economic policies with a proven record of success (the new deal for example) are now framed as toxic. Whereas the insane policies that led to the gilded age, the great depression, the crash of the late 80s, the recession of the early 90s, and the current credit crunch... all those things are now gospel. Wow!
No wonder that capitalism is about making dumb people part of their money, as there seems to be an infinite supply of dumb idiots....
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