AMD loses $1.18 billion, and appoints new CEO

I quote: ''''from AMD told Custom PC that ‘instead he will become the company’s executive chairman, '''' If he was once the CEO how can one become the chairman on the non-executives, who are supposed to be seperate entities from the company, to ensure non bias? I think that move alone is enough to cripple them. Non-executives i have seen in case studies showed that the company failed because these people were linked too closely to the company in question. Quote again: ''''AMD’s chief financial officer, Robert J Rivet, partly blamed ‘challenging macroeconomic conditions’ for the results'''' I believe he is referring to the whole credit crunch issue here, and since being based in America, its probably worse off for them that it would be anywhere else. If these continue to produce a shortfall in its P+L in the third and fourth quarters, it could be looking at administration in the early period of 2009.

Comment by Lightning_Pete at 11:49am 23rd July 2008

My workstation reports as Core isn't working properly but the first core is fine. I didn't go into details with the IT chap, he just quoted the numbers of failures and the planned work to replace. When you have purchased dual cores but one shuts down, it's a problem. When so many are failing then it really is a major problem. Luckily, I just use my workstation for communications and spreadsheets. If I needed to use a more demanding system, I would be a little more peeved at this lack of reliability. On the point of the purchase of ATi, it's a bit of a pickle. Some finanical observers claimed it was too much, while others claimed it was a match made in heaven. When ATi cost $5.34Billion to purchase and now the whole AMD/ATi company is only worth $3.14billion, that isn't good.

Comment by crazyceo at 2:26pm 20th July 2008

Out of interest what is meant by cpu errors? is that basically cpu induced crashes, burnt out cpu's? I don't think buying ati was a big mistake it was the amount they paid for them that was. Way too much was spent on that acquisition which no doubt put alot of stress on funding holding back development, you could probably say it acted as the catalyst for the situation they are in now. With regards to the F1 sponsorship I would like to think it was a long term contract agreed back when they were making money if not they clearly have lost the plot.

Comment by tiff_lee at 12:44pm 20th July 2008

Well my firm has over 35 AMD CPU systems and as of yesterday 14 recorded CPU errors. The boss has given a green light to replace and the IT guy won't be using AMD to replace them. On the other side of the water, DreamWorks just pulled the plug on AMD CPU workstations and Servers, purely on performance and reliability. I don't doubt your system has been trouble free but my experience isn't positive. You want a pi$$ing contest, be my guest.

Comment by crazyceo at 2:17am 20th July 2008

Aquiring ATi should have been a great move, but it happened at the wrong time: just as Intel were preparing Core and nVidia were preparing the 8 series. If Intel and nVidia didn't have such strong products ready to hit the market then AMD and ATi would've been a killer alliance. And we would now be complaining about how a certain Green and Red company is extorting its customers with "Black Edition" processors!

Comment by Zhaoman at 11:15pm 19th July 2008

What really gets me is that AMD sponsor Ferrari in F1 racing. For a company in this much financial debt, you've really got to wonder if the money the fork out for that piece of advertising is really worth it.

Comment by TWeaKoR at 10:09pm 19th July 2008

AMD lost the plott buying ATi was not the best thing for AMD . What did they do with all the cash they got from all the AMD fanboys for the super fast high end £$ CPUs

Comment by kingjohn721 at 8:32pm 19th July 2008

Or go with an extremly super duper hot and dare i say it 'sexy' Intel Quad core chips that are now only 100 GBP's inc VAT. and erm.. well have a blast ;)

Comment by Lightning_Pete at 3:00pm 19th July 2008

I want to build a new gaming rig, but i will wait a least six months before i make any purchases, im waiting till the dust settles, all this new stuff coming exciting times for sure.. roll on 2009, cant wait.

Comment by blazinglory at 7:31am 19th July 2008

Hi hguyz. This is sad news about amd. But let's face it it bwon't be the end of the world. If amd go down it will mean simply that one of the great romances and excitements of the industry is gone. We will still get our work done whether or not we have amd. It';ll be just like when the pii c ame out. Intel will have to concentrate on the bargain market anyway, not everyone can offord nehalem i do hope that amd make it though. Looks like ms vs netscape all over agian. Onte other hand, while the death of netscpawe was bad for the industr, it made mozilla, ff is a much better prod then ie. So, there might be hope yet. i dubt if amd can come back i sincerely hope so but maybe not. They SHOLUD have replced ruiz 2-3 years ago. he shbould have been 2nd and nvidia= should have been the ceo with an nvidia takeover. my 2 cents...

Comment by wasimsouk at 5:01am 19th July 2008

lol 'amd love in' I like it, how about we form a circle round a camp fire all hold hands and sing Kum ba yah! Being serious though I think alot of people are hoping AMD bounce back purely to 'try' and keep the market competitive. As we have seen recently with the release of the new ATI cards Nvidia reduced prices by a massive amount, whether the ATI cards are good or not isn't the issue i'm merely highlighting the fact that had they not been released Nvidia would of kept milking the consumer. Yes it is unlikely AMD will pull a rabbit out of the hat in the form of a Nehalem killer but I do hope they manage something if not just to force intel to lower the price of their cpu's.

Comment by tiff_lee at 2:09am 19th July 2008

AMD doesn't have reliability problems, I had a 754 system for three years, oveerclocked by 50% with no problems, I now have a 939 system (a year old), o/c'd from 2.2 to 2.8 and an AM2 5000BE at 3.4 for six months and not swapped once so is it really reliability or did you just have to have another cpu upgrade? or are you just doom-mongering a little more. No offence intended as I don't know you apart from your doomsday posts, but whatever job you're doing - quit it and get a job at Fox News or CNN and you'll be anchorman in a week! :p

Comment by EdArch at 1:52am 19th July 2008

firstly, Intel would say that the jump to Nehalem is similar to netburst/C2D, I'm taking that as amrketing talk until I see some benchmarks - it could be true but PR guys are paid to say things like this. Second, I don't think AMD have the resoures or the investors to develop a 'new' architecture - I think they are goin to have to stick with what they have and just make it WORK, the review of the 9850BE said quite rightly that this is the CPU phenom should have been all along and it's been almost a year in the making. in short thay've wasted alot of they're money on the lower-end phenoms where they should've just released a few decent BE's, but that didn't happen. Thridly, yes the 48xx cards should help the company, as will the rulings on unfair competitive practice but AMD are unlikely to recuperate any 'loss of income' from this - unlike the movie/music/games industry which could, so although it seems a step in the right direction on one front, I doubt it will hold the rest of the company up - and they really do need dual-slot coolers for the 48xx cards as they do run very hot! Fourth. The way their CPU's are designed are great, but who's to say that sticking together 2 X2-5000BE dies wouldn't have worked better? and also, instead of following Intel's path from 65nm to 45nm they should be looking past this and trying smaller die sizes - they've had a long partnership with IBM on this front to develop cores as low as 24nm so why this isn't being put to good use is beyond me. My only hope for the industry in general is that a change of heads will signify a change of fortunes - one that will benefit us all whether we use intel or amd systems, but as a couple of people have pointed out, the next six months will be crucial. Even if the investors are getting really pissed off at them, you can be sure that the investprs are tech-savvy and will be demanding that AMD do something about the performence of all their products, so the currentphenom line-up is probably what you could call a building block and the ivestors are demanding more just as we are...on the other hand, if we really cared that much, we could buy just ONE share and sit at an AGM and give the CEO our ten cents...

Comment by EdArch at 1:28am 19th July 2008

What the hell is this, an AMD love in? Christ, if they pulled their thumb out of their a$$ for long enough, they may just release a CPU that might be worth buying. If the AMD fanboys could stop wishing upon a star for just a minute and understand that this company needs to release their next product NOW or we wont have an AM3 to compare against Nehalem.

Comment by crazyceo at 12:21am 19th July 2008

KoopaKingTurtle and I had a little discussion about the potential performance of AMD's new socket AM3 in the other headling "EC rules against Intel...". My first post is titled "AMD finished?". KoopaKingTurtle then replied with "@Zhaoman" and so on. I think it was very interesting and it would be great if you could give your take on it.

Comment by Zhaoman at 11:12pm 18th July 2008

I hope that this is a good thing for AMD, but I'm still worried about them. I'm glad that they've finally got a brilliant couple of graphics cards out the door, and I'm sure this will help them to make a bit more money next quarter, but I don't know what I would do about CPUs in their position. Here we are, probably 6 months or so away from Nehalem, and AMD are going to have absolutely nothing to counter that. I've read that Intel think the gap in performance will be similar to the gap between Netburst and Core! That's insane, and AMD had better be developing a TOTALLY new architecture that is going to be a hell of a lot better than the crap that is Phenom at the moment. I was looking back through old CPCs and thinking how crap netburst was compared to Athlon, but now it's totally reversed and it's a shame that it's hitting AMD so hard. I hope they can come up with something.

Comment by RedHotsRule549 at 10:36pm 18th July 2008

I think the next year will be the most interesting time in the silicon industry for a long time; we have 2 outcomes: AMD's next product will be unstoppable and will completely demolish Intel's Nehalem in terms of performance, and people tentatively start buying AMD again; OR AMD's next product does not destroy Intel's in terms of performance and we see the death of a former giant. Either way there's going to be drama of the highest scale.

Comment by Zhaoman at 10:36pm 18th July 2008

AMD made the same mistake Intel made with the pentium 4-because they were on top they presumed they'd stay there without working at it and as always happens the company playing catch up takes advantage. i just hope AMD don't go under, i'd hate to see companies like intel and nvidia monopolising the market and dictating prices.

Comment by hicks at 9:13pm 18th July 2008

AMD made the same mistake Intel made with the pentium 4-because they were on top they presumed they'd stay there without working at it and as always happens the company playing catch up takes advantage. i just hope AMD don't go under, i'd hate to see companies like intel and nvidia monopolising the market and dictating prices.

Comment by hicks at 9:13pm 18th July 2008

Where did it all go wrong? AMD were beating Intel on price and performance for years, until C2D was released. Everything seemed to go tits up with AM2 and the acquisition of AMD. They've finally brought out a decent graphics card, lets hope they can bring out a decent CPU and pull themselves back from the brink.

Comment by michael at 8:50pm 18th July 2008

Bring on Via and their new CPU. BTW, AMD on your way out hand back ATi.

Comment by DudQuitter at 8:32pm 18th July 2008

My office PC has had it's AMD2 swapped three times within the last 6 months. It's due a fourth time as one of the cores is now showing an error. Especially in business you don't want this happening. Dreamworks (guys who made Shrek) have just announced that they have replaced AMD with Intel for ALL of their hardware needs. That's every work station and all of the servers they run will be replaced by Intel. That's a huge contract to loose at a time like this. The question isn't "Will AMD by taken over?" it's When? I just hope it's a good company and not a speculative M&A company who will break the AMD up and sell of it's assets.

Comment by crazyceo at 8:02pm 18th July 2008

That part of the reason for such a big loss is that they have spent a shed load on R&D and manufacturing (I think I read a report somewhere that recommended this was what they had to do to keep up with Intel and win some ground back - take a large loss to try and secure a future profit) ... speculate... accumulate ...

Comment by NewParadigm at 5:52pm 18th July 2008

I'm sure that Dirk meyer would be the make or break for AMD and I personally think that we may have better products from AMD with Dirk as CEO since he has experience with the more indepth stuff so he may make better decisoins which allow them to produce products which are easier to develop, meaning the costs would be cheaper and improving the products would be much easier.

Comment by NikoBellic at 5:17pm 18th July 2008

Personally, I'm seeing this as good news. They made a huge loss, yes, nobody expected otherwise. This was the kick they needed to finally give Hector the boot, who AFAIK seems to have taken AMD from strength to ruin. Hopefully ATI can keep AMD propped up whilst the new CEO turns things around. [Also I really doubt anyone will attempt a takeover, AMD would cost far too much (ok share price is low, but the buyer would inherit all of AMDs debt)]

Comment by NotFred at 4:36pm 18th July 2008

If only they would make Motherboards Universal to use either AMD or Intel and Nvidia and ATI, AMD wouldn't be in this position.

Comment by pitbull466 at 4:18pm 18th July 2008

its really is survival of the fittest, im a network engineer and i look after over 300 servers accross the uk and silly amounts of workstations, every server i look after is intel based and easily 90% of the workstations/laptops are intel based. AMD chips just cant keep up simple as! people arent going to buy a slow chip when they can buy a fast chip for the same price.

Comment by MDK_UK at 3:38pm 18th July 2008

Intel and IBM recorded higher than forecast profits and still saw downturns on share value. This industry has become a burnt finger to a lot of investors and even level headed observers are slow to recommend even well managed and profitable companies. They are getting tarred with the same brush which is wrong. Anyone know what the US authorties would make of Nvidia coming in to buy AMD? It's been recommended to them as early as last December.

Comment by crazyceo at 3:28pm 18th July 2008

M$ look to e going downhill on the software side of things.... i reckon they're too focused on the 360

Comment by NikoBellic at 2:41pm 18th July 2008

Why doesn't Microsoft just buy them all and get it over with.

Comment by Zhaoman at 2:37pm 18th July 2008

Well now I just hope that another manufacturer such as Samsung joins in on the CPU Wars...

Comment by NikoBellic at 2:34pm 18th July 2008

Sure on the face of it posting a loss in excess of $1bn is shocking news. But do we know if this is a tax loss or an underlying loss? The two are seldom the same and I suspect the media will use the tax loss as its shows on face value that AMD are sh*&%ed! All we need to know is whether the company has sufficient cash funds to keep in operation and whether the company has enough liquidity in it to keep trading. Having said that, its such a massive loss that they must have also lost a fair bit on their underlying figures. It is worrying as although AMD/ATi aren't particularly great competition to the likes of Intel and nVidia they are still competition, without these guys the other two fat cats would r**e us for every penny we had!

Comment by CP_ad83fd462ed8 at 1:43pm 18th July 2008

the 4870 is a very good card for its price bracket (very very good, and I tend to prefer Nvidia). If they can do the same with their CPU's that will help. I think Nehalem isn't going to perform as well as the Intel hype would like us to think. If AMD can blitz the mid range price bracket with a good performer.. who knows..

Comment by NewParadigm at 1:16pm 18th July 2008

told you so... they called them "Advanced Micro Devices Inc., the money-losing maker of computer processors"............. http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&sid=a15IHxsOVSUI ...... "AMD has reported 9 annual losses in the past 15 years as it struggled to win share from Intel Corp., the world's largest chipmaker. Its challenges were heightened by the 2006 purchase of graphics chipmaker ATI. The $5.4 billion transaction now dwarfs AMD's company value of $3.01 billion, as of yesterday. [10 July]"

Comment by cookie at 1:12pm 18th July 2008

I think it's just a matter of survival of the fittest from now on. AMD knows their next processor needs to be absolutely outstanding in every way, anything short and it looks like they are finished.

Comment by Zhaoman at 12:52pm 18th July 2008

If dirk meyer cant turn this around in the next 6 months then I guess I'll have to find a new hobby :(

Comment by NikoBellic at 12:51pm 18th July 2008

Its sad to see amd in this position, the company keeps suffering, and without amd, intel will simply overprice their stock, i think its time that companies such as dell hp and ibm start to support amd more, intel already has a monopoly in that market, and in my opinion its getting worse...

Comment by WTF_NL at 12:34pm 18th July 2008

Looks like AMD may be on their wy out. Unless a mirical happens for them their pretty much screwed

Comment by Nickuk1987 at 12:36pm 18th July 2008

Prime for a takeover me thinks! Nvidia do need a x86 license. This could be their cheapest option. We can't say we didn't think this was going to happen with AMD but the amount of loss has shocked even the most negative. Has AMD got enough in it's locker to take on the Intel Nehalem CPU? Has ATi got enough against the potential of Larrabee and the next Nvidia GPU? Unless they do this soon, we really will be without one or two major players in the industry. This can't wait for next quarter or by the end of the year. There will be a time when the investors say no more.

Comment by crazyceo at 12:35pm 18th July 2008

• Far Cry 2 release date revealed
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• Nvidia and ATI accused of fixing prices
• Ghostbusters is first film to be released on USB stick
• Intel launches new budget quad-core and dual-core CPUs
• Win £500 with your modding skills
• Google announces Chrome web browser
• VIDEO: Monkey Island creator returns with DeathSpank
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These are the most popular news articles over the past seven days.

• Ghostbusters is first film to be released on USB stick
• Top 10 PC games chart
• Intel launches new budget quad-core and dual-core CPUs
• PC gamers receive bill of rights
• Nvidia and ATI accused of fixing prices
• Google announces Chrome web browser
• VIDEO: Monkey Island creator returns with DeathSpank
• Far Cry 2 release date revealed
• Win £500 with your modding skills
• 50,000 Warhammer Online BETA keys up for grabs