The top bosses at Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) are facing the heat of competition from market leaders Intel. Anyone who has been following the processor wars and PC landscape as a whole, it probably won’t come as much surprise that the chip designer headquartered in Sunnyvale, California, has planned a restructuring to slash its workforce by around 5 per cent. That works out to about 500 employees.
The chip maker currently staffs nearly 9,500 employees across its global offices and according to a few media reports the forthcoming layoffs are part of a restructuring plan. AMD is looking to streamline its multi-faceted operations and cut costs as it continues to lose market share to rival Intel, the largest semiconductor player in the world.
On its next financial report, AMD will record charges of around $42 million associated with the restructuring effort and job cuts. AMD expects the reduced headcount will save the firm around $9 million through the last two quarters of the year, and about $58 million through all of 2016. The company has generated close to $2 billion in the first two quarters of 2015.
In its most recent financial report, AMD CEO Dr. Lisa Su noted “near-term challenges” in the company’s “PC processor business due to lower than expected consumer demand that impacted sales to OEMs.”
More recently, AMD split its graphics division into a newly formed Radeon Technologies Group, which operates under the helm of Raja Koduri, who is a veteran in the graphics sector. He’s helping RTG do some radical stuff with tie-ups around movies and games, which could result in some interesting things from AMD, though it’s a long-term play.