amd

Both major graphics chip vendors are taking the covers off of new technologies that let you use multiple graphics chips.

Advanced Micro Devices showed CNET Reviews its ATI Hybrid Crossfire design the other day, and various previews of Nvidia's new 3-way SLI popped up around the Web as well. The two takes on multichip graphics processing couldn't be more different from each other, and each reflects where their respective vendor seems to be throwing much of its energy lately.

Being populists, we're most excited by Hybrid Crossfire design. When supporting motherboards and systems come out next year, … Read more

If you've been following the AMD saga lately, you probably know that this company is in utter disrepair. After shocking the world just a few years ago with a downright unbelievable set of processors that blew Intel's socks off, AMD awoke a sleeping giant that has proven to be more formidable and dangerous than ever before.

To make matters worse, AMD is in financial trouble and hopes to turn a profit by the latter half of 2008. Oh and in case you're keeping score, the company just admitted that it overpaid for ATI and will need to adjust its financial statements to reflect that error in judgment.

But for all of its issues, AMD is still the world's number two microprocessor maker in the world and it does control one of the major video card manufacturers. But is this enough to justify its existence? If it is, shouldn't something be done with the company's decision-makers to jumpstart things a bit?

Regardless of where you stand on this issue, there's one element to this story that should not be overlooked -- AMD is in dire straits right now and its chances of getting out from under it are dwindling with each new processor from Intel.

If you ask me, AMD should be sold to the highest bidder and liquidated. Of course, if you think that's a bit extreme, fire all of its loser executives and try to find some people who actually know how to run a business and compete against larger competitors.

Trust me, it's the only way.… Read more

UPDATED: See lengthly explanation below.

Apparently blessed with the best salary-negotiating skills in the universe, AMD CEO Hector Ruiz is getting a raise.

After spending most of Thursday apologizing to financial analysts for AMD's performance in 2007, the company revealed in a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission that Ruiz's compensation agreement was amended on Wednesday with his new salary: $1,124,000. Earlier this year, AMD said Ruiz made $1,046,358 in base salary (click for PDF) during 2006, with a total compensation package for the year of $12,848,435.

AMD's stock is … Read more

AMD executives put their best foot forward Thursday during a conference with financial analysts, but only time and a better performance will lift the company out of its 2007 spiral.

The company owned up to its mistakes with Barcelona, its first quad-core server processor, during the conference call. Barcelona will have to be tweaked before it can be sold for general-purpose use, and the revamped chips won't be available until the first quarter of 2008, said Mario Rivas, executive vice president for the computing products group. Systems using Barcelona aren't expected to be available until the second quarter, … Read more

AMD will be forced to delay the ramp of its Barcelona server processor after running into a bug, the company has confirmed.

Barcelona, AMD's first quad-core processor for servers, is shipping to some customers in the high-performance computing market. But the company had hoped to start shipping it to a wider variety of customers this month, as well as introduce a faster model that could better compete with Intel's latest Penryn chips.

Unfortunately for AMD, that's going to have to wait, according to a company spokesman. The Tech Report has an excellent description of the problem that … Read more

You may have seen news today that AMD announced its new Spider platform this morning, consisting of two quad core Phenom CPUs, a new 700-series of motherboard chipsets, and its already announced Radeon HD 3000-series of graphics cards. At 2.2GHz and 2.3GHz for the Phenom 9500 and 9600, respectively, AMD's new chips will need to rely on price, rather than performance, to entice buyers to choose those chips, or systems based on them, over Intel's 2.4GHz Core 2 Quad Q6600. Pricing will shake out as the various retailers get their inventories and can gauge demand, … Read more

The first major fruits of Advanced Micro Devices' acquisition of ATI Technologies are ready for the public just as the market for those products is going through some profound changes.

Spider will be AMD's first "platform" product when it makes its expected debut Monday. It is designed for desktop PCs, and the entire Spider package comes with a new processor, AMD's quad-core Phenom chip, the new 7-series chipsets, and new graphics chips.

The two Phenom processors launching Monday are essentially desktop versions of AMD's Barcelona quad-core processors. They're designed for the upper half of … Read more

The Writers Guild of America can keep up its strike--there's plenty of unscripted comedy on the fledgling Fox Business Network.

On its morning show, Money for Breakfast (full disclosure: I have been a guest on Money for Breakfast), anchor Alexis Glick accidentally reported that Apple had taken an 8 percent stake in chipmaker Advanced Micro Devices.

"There's some news coming across the tape right now," Glick said on the live program. "We're seeing from Wall Street Journal that Apple is buying an 8 percent stake in AMD."

In fact, it was the government of the United Arab Emirates state of Abu Dhabi, not Apple, that had purchased the stake in AMD. Yes, yes, I know Steve Jobs' Cupertino empire really could be mistaken for a cash-flooded sovereignty sometimes. But let's be serious. Apple? Abu Dhabi?

When the mistake became clear, Glick's co-host, Peter Barnes, said, "Oh, the Arabs. OK." To make matters worse, the program even referred to the country incorrectly, as "Abu Dubai," not "Abu Dhabi."

Even funnier, contributing analyst Charles Payne--the founder and CEO of Wall Street Strategies--had gone right along with the gaffe. "That's real smart by Apple because AMD is in trouble right now," he had said to Glick. "AMD has always had two problems: either it had a great product that was either sometimes superior to Intel but not the distribution, or it would have a terrible product that obviously they couldn't compete."

Never mind the fact that Apple has been stocking its computers with, um, Intel chips, and has been doing so for over two years. If Jobs & Co. had bought a stock in AMD, that'd be beyond huge news.

It doesn't look like any video of the snafu has surfaced (yet), but check out the transcript, courtesy of the Silicon Alley Insider. It literally reads like something out of Anchorman or a Saturday Night Live skit:… Read more

What does Abu Dhabi want out of Advanced Micro Devices? A way to make money that doesn't involve an oil well.

On Friday, Abu Dhabi's Mubdala Development announced it was buying an 8.1 percent stake in chipmaker Advanced Micro Devices, which could cost it roughly between $550 million and $700 million. Mubdala is a separate organization but it's funded by the government. The emirate, part of the United Arab Emirates, is awash with money thanks to escalating oil prices so it needs to put the money somewhere. But there is also more going on in the … Read more