AMD denies having already cut jobs, demurs on future
AMD denied Thursday that it has started laying off people amid an economic downturn, but it declined to comment on whether it was about to do so.
A report from The Inquirer Wednesday said that AMD has already started cutting workers from its payroll, with plans to shed 5 percent of its workforce across the board. An AMD representative denied that any cuts have taken place as of Thursday morning, but when asked if cuts were impending, declined to comment on "rumors and speculation."
AMD is starting to right its ship after a disastrous 2007, with the fixed versions of its quad-core Barcelona and Phenom processors about to ship, a well-received integrated graphics chipset already out in the market, and the pending debut of its first designed-for-mobile notebook chip. But it's had to scramble to get to this point, and the effort to correct the mistakes made on Barcelona and Phenom might have caused problems in other parts of AMD's business.
The Inquirer said AMD is about to miss its quarterly earnings targets as well, but the AMD representative likewise declined to address that statement. AMD CEO Hector Ruiz has promised to get the company back to break-even by the second half of the year, and continued losses might force the company's board of directors into making a move.
Tom Krazit writes about the ever-expanding world of Internet search, including Google, Yahoo, online advertising, and portals, as well as the evolution of mobile computing. He has written about traditional PC companies, chip manufacturers, and mobile computers, spending the last three years covering Apple. E-mail Tom. 
