AMD To Cut 430 Jobs

Advanced Micro Devices (AMD), which promised to reduce expenses following a first quarter of huge losses and falling revenues, said Thursday that it would cut 430 jobs worldwide. The reduction in headcount will amount to about 2.5 percent of the company's workforce of nearly 16,000 employees, AMD spokesman Travis Bullard said. Staff and management positions would be cut from sales and marketing, administration and engineering. About 80 jobs are to be cut in the company's Austin, Texas, office; 40 in its Sunnyvale and Santa Clara, Calif., offices; 50 more in Markham, Ontario; and about a dozen in a Boston design center. The rest of the cuts will be spread in small numbers throughout the world. AMD is headquartered in Sunnyvale. Last month, the chipmaker reported a net loss in the first quarter of $611 million, while revenues year to year fell 7 percent to $1.23 billion. AMD, which had gained market share over the last couple of years, suffered in the quarter from a price war with its larger rival Intel, and the merger with graphics chipmaker ATI Technologies, which AMD acquired last year for $5.4 billion. In addition, Intel started delivering more competitive products. In announcing the results, AMD Chairman and Chief Executive Hector Ruiz promised analysts the company would be aggressive in cutting costs, and said 800 jobs, or about 5 percent of the workforce, could be cut, Ballard said. That number, however, was reduced to 430. "As they went through and analyzed the numbers over the last few weeks, and looked at where it would be appropriate to make the cuts, they came up with 430," the spokesman said. "We don't have any additional cuts coming at this time." AMD is hoping to regain its financial footing with the release in the second half of the year of a quad-core processor codenamed Barcelona. Intel last year released its Core 2 Duo chip, which comprises two duo-core chips. AMD claims Barcelona will get better performance because its four processors are on one piece of silicon.