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AMD Hires Bank To Explore Sale Options
Dainsanefh tips this report from Reuters:
"Advanced Micro Devices has hired JPMorgan Chase & Co to explore options, which could include a potential sale, as the chipmaker struggles to find a role in an industry increasingly focused on mobile and away from traditional PCs, according to three sources familiar with the situation. ... Some investors believe part or all of AMD could be bought by a technology company that might want to emulate Apple Inc's tight control of software and components, a strategy credited in part for the success of the iPad and iPhone. Microsoft Corp, Google Inc, Samsung Electronics, Intel Corp and even Facebook Inc have been suggested by Wall Street analysts as potential suitors that could benefit from some of AMD's chip business, including its graphics division, PC processors and server chips. Others say AMD's most valuable asset may be its deep bench of engineers or its patents."
Update: 11/14 01:44 GMT by S : In an emailed statement, an AMD representative said the company "is not actively pursuing a sale of the company or significant assets at this time."
Oracle? So they can make some sense out of Niagara... :-D
Sony? So they can make another poor decision...
They hired the most mercenary company they could find in order to salvage what is left of their shareholder's wealth. I'm sure they've already parted with whatevery IP allowed them to compete to date. I wonder what J Pee Morgan will be able to find in this pile of smoking rubble...
Their real estate and facilities must be worth something. Too bad they don't own clear title to their employees. Chatel used to sell well, back in the day.
If this is about mobile becoming more relevant then how come Intel isn't looking for buyers?
They're the only likely candidate. Regulators would shit all over the idea of Intel buying AMD, even if they had a good reason to do it. nVidia might be interested, but again regulators would probably demand they'd divest themselves of the old ATi portion of the business. Facebook and Google? Don't see why'd they'd be interested. Dell or HP might have a sniff, but most of their business has always been built around high end Intel processors. Samsung are the only ones who make much sense, out of the list of potential suitors.
It's too bad about this decline. I'd hate to have to buy all my processors from Intel.
AMD processors all support ECC memory, while Intel usually only supports it in the Xeon processors (which can cost thousands of dollars).
All Bulldozer-based processors and future generation AMD processors have hardware accelerated AES. Intel usually doesn't, but frequently they don't even specify it.
AMD was also committed to Coreboot for a while, which was great for our freedom. (Unfortunately, they haven't released the required specifications for their more recent chips.)
They want their own CPU and intel wont give the flexibility they want. Apple would gain their own GPU to tinker plus with bulldozer (or whatever they call it now) can have a nice APU for thei MBAs or IPADS with the x86 port replaced with an ARM.
Of course that would suck for us as I am typing this on an all AMD/ATI phenomII from Asus. But good for Asus investors since it looks like they wont survive this new recession that is starting.
http://saveie6.com/
no no no no no no no no
I don't want intel inside dammit! Twice the cash and the same fucking speed.
Someone give them a bailout.
So they can make Attack of the Clones?
AMD and ATI should have never merged. The companies were doing well independently, but together they're like oil and water.
No competition = higher prices = we suffer.
Somewhere between Arduino, Raspberry Pi and the $279 HP PC I use for a media server, there's a fertile market.
People need small machines to use for everyday tasks, from automating other machines, to serving data, to experimental purposes in a lab.
Make yourself a custom chip-set, AMD, and install your own flavor of Linux on it.
Truly bring (computing) power to the people.
Futurist Traditionalism
I can't see anyone touching them with a ten foot pole unless the price is REALLY beneficial. AMD was done for when they bought ATI. You knew they were desperate then and even more so now. I know a lot of geeks love AMD, but they will never beat Intel because of Intel's brand recognition and DEEP DEEP pockets. And besides, Intel is in bed so bad with companies like Microsoft and Dell then AMD stands no chance of gaining anything there either. I could see Microsoft buying them as a last ditch attempt at catching Apple but if they did, it would be the end of Ballmer and many executives at MS. If they thought the investor fallout has been bad from the Surface debacle, this will be a hundred fold.
My sig of choice is Marlboro
That's worth something only if employees are bound serf-like to AMD, as opposed to being able to move to a different company if they don't like the new owner.
Similar post-sale exoduses happened when DEC sold itself off chunk by chunk.
"I don't know, therefore Aliens" Wafflebox1
...AMD's most valuable asset may be its deep bench of engineers or its patents
Engineers profoundly hate to be sold along, as if they were pieces of equipment, with the company they work for. Moreover and ipso facto, it is nigh impossible to sell what engineers have in their heads: resourcefulness, the capacity to come up with ever-new ideas.
Patents ? Mebbe. Valuable for patent trolls, yes. Valuable for Microsoft, Samsung, Apple, Oracle ? Doubt it.
Religous speak to God. Insane are spoken to by God. When all shut up, one can finally hear Shostakovich in peace
Build up a cloud infrastructure with all their own chip/gpu/networking gear.
... I thought these people were supposed ot be experts in thier fields and stuff. I think even the most casual observer saw the market interest changing. Personal computing is evolving. They should have been evolving along with it. And what's intel doing? They remain quite relevant... not so much on the mobile end I guess... their Atom processor ain't quite it you know?
Still, for home appliances, Atom is pretty good stuff.
This statement is either false, or "analysts" are even dumber than I expected.
"The agriculture ministry is not in charge of Gundam" - Japanese ministry official.
.add more cores?
IBM, so they can definitely revenge themselves for their humiliation at the hands of Wintel.
When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
After the sale, I sure hope they continue to participate in the x86_64 CPU market.
We're already starting to feel the bad effects of the fact that AMD is not competitive anymore in the high end of that market.
If AMD left that market completely, it would be devastating to the industry. Intel's CPU innovation would cease, and prices would shoot up sky high in the mid and low segments of the x86_64 market.
Intel Corp ... suggested by Wall Street analysts as potential suitors
I realize it says "Wall Street analysts", but what utter moron even among that crowd of utter morons could possibly think having effectively all desktop CPU production controlled by a single company would be a good idea?
If only Valve/Gabe Newell had enough capital to buy AMD.
"Microsoft Corp, Google Inc, Samsung Electronics, Intel Corp and even Facebook Inc have been suggested by Wall Street analysts as potential suitors"
Intel would never buy AMD. Face it - right now, Intel is *winning* in the market, pretty much legitimately (not 100%, and they used to cheat like mad, but right now they're winning more-or-less fairly). But they need a competitor to avoid a massive antitrust investigation. They need AMD as an enemy more than they need it as an asset.
Facebook would not, and could not, buy AMD. They may be riding high on the Web 2.0 Bubble, but they're an absolutely terrible match. Facebook's made it a point of using off-the-shelf hardware and open-source solutions. They have very little experience with hardware (besides setting up networks and racks), and gain nothing from producing their own hardware.
Google doesn't need them. They're doing fine running on commodity servers for their web stuff, and trying to produce their own mobile chips would anger their hardware partners for Android. It might give them a slight edge in the long run, but the short-term harm seems to outweigh that.
Microsoft *might* work. They need some special edge in the tablet war they just jumped into, and AMD is a good match with their successful Xbox line. But AMD isn't known to be particularly good at low-power chips. Perhaps they just haven't tried yet, or some older design could be successfully adapted into tablets (a single/dual-core, low-power K8 paired with a good Radeon design might be a good A6 competitor, especially if Microsoft tries to bill itself both as an 'enterprise' tablet *and* a 'gaming' tablet). But really, although it makes sense for Microsoft to buy some hardware company, AMD isn't the best choice. NVidia might make a better one, but I don't think they're looking to sell out right now.
Samsung might buy parts of the company, but they wouldn't want the whole thing. I imagine they would love the graphics section, maybe some of the CPU engineers, but I doubt they want to enter the full-on CPU market.
You know who might make more sense? Cray, or maybe IBM. AMD stuff is popular for supercomputers, both their Opterons and their FireStream/FirePro cards. IBM isn't too likely (they have enough good hardware people already), but Cray or one of their competitors seems at least more plausible than any of the other suggestions.
Another idea is some gaming company. AMD has a somewhat-competitive graphics division, and a compute side that could handle gaming loads well with some tweaks. Sony is really the most likely - they've *never* been good at the hardware side, only lucking into success with the PS1 and PS2 after some clever business decisions. But I also doubt Sony is smart enough to try to do that, especially since buying AMD might hurt their (Intel-focused) laptop business.
I only see Google buying them, or at least the ATI division, only if they want to do something like they did with WebM/VP8, push for open GPUs. can I dream right?
Hire back Linux Kernel Devs and focus on servers.
The fact is that AMD's Opterons are very competitive perfomance and feature wise vs Intel Xeons. The price puts them over the top, though.
You can build 64 core, 1U servers for ~$5000 with moderate DDR3 ECC RAM and HDDs (you'd probably want a SAN though). Fully maxed out still less than $10K.
I respect AMDs cheap desktop and mobile lines but Intel is a juggernaught in this space. They have better contracts with more manufacturers.
... and the MBA consultants couldn't come up with a plausible path to victory in those nicely bound strategy reports filled with PowerPoint slides.
No! First you must give me my multiplier unlocked Opterons!
The only thing anyone would want to buy is the graphics division - it's the only part that's competitive anymore. Reading the Piledriver review I was thinking, yes! 10% improvement over Bulldozer - keep this up and in another 4 years they might be competitive with Sandybridge
I'd like to see AMD remain an independent company like Intel.
That was my favorite processor ever. I upgraded from a pentium 4 to the X2 series "actually the opteron 170 I think." It provided a dramatic improvement in performance over the single core P4, and trounced Intel's Pentium D.
Then Intel came out with the Core series, the Core2 providing a dramatic improvement over the X2's.
AMD responded with Barcelona, and it was all down hill from there. I promptly bought a Core2 based system and have been using Intel again ever since, AMD never became truly competitive again "I believe they've had some success competing at the lower-end."
I really loved AMD, they made some great products in the past but have slipped too far. I used to actually check out AMD's new offerings when they debuted, but I haven't done that in the past year. I just have no faith they can ever be competitive with Intel again. Sad really...
Remember the X2...
Of all the proposed buyers, only 4 have enough cash : Apple, MS, Google and Intel. Intel can't because of monopoly concerns, and I don't see how MS or Google might use AMD.
Apple, has infinite amounts of cash and is looking to expand vertically (take over control of suppliers) so why not ? Everybody agrees that what AMD lacks to fight Intel is money to invest. Well Apple has $120 billions in cash right now, surely enough to fund AMD's R&D to levels unheard of yet.
I don't know exactly what they would gain from it, and I surely don't like the idea of AMD hardware being limited to Apple's Mac but I think it might be a sound strategy if they want tigher control on the silicon they put in their Macs which appears to be the case when you see their debates with Intel and switching macs to ARM.
On an unrelated note : why did AMD/ATI turn its back on Linux ? can someone please tell me ? The ONLY mparket they were dominating was servers with 32+ cores, and they ALL (99%) run Linux or *BSD so WTF ? Microsoft has been in bed with Intel for ages and Linux has been waiting for a commited hardware manufacturer to bloosom in the dekstop market lately.
I mean for a very long time linux wasn't user friendly enough for my grand ma but these days are over, nowadays the only obstacles are good hardware support and games (but Valves is coming). So AMD who amkes your strategic decisions because I don't see them being smart in the short term or the long term..
The article text actually says that they are not pursuing a sale strategy but they need to fix their profitability. AMD is the GPU supplier for the Wii U, and early development boxes for the new xbox and playstation are running AMD chipsets. So AMD should just need to stay afloat until all the next gen consoles are released to return to being profitable.
A game has objectives and is competitive, anything else is just play
IBM should most definitely considering how they let sun microsystem slip from their hands by a paltry few million. IBM needs to keep AMD's I.P. out of the hands of the WinTel group. IBM should buy AMD for ATI's I.P., and let Intel have the entire x86 market, and release 45nm or 32nm PowerPC's for the idiot PC users.
JP Morgan sounds like desaster: bankster takeover.
speculation based on internal rumors... at one point, shortly before the recent layoffs, the execs supposedly offered to "sell" part of the company (ie some folks in markham that were laid off) to qualcomm. they declined, naturally, since why pay AMD for the privilege of hiring people that AMD's laying off (and who can then be hired directly, minus finders fee). this may be related to that line of inquiry.
"Others say AMD's most valuable asset may be its deep bench of engineers or its patents."
I thought part of AMD's decline came about from them laying off engineers and moving to software-driven design instead of hand-crafting.
Wouldn't it be funny if Nvidia bought AMD? They used to make Intel motherboards and have wanted to get into the x86 business in the past but were denied. Intel hates Nvidia and knows they can compete, that's why they sued their motherboards off the market. It would be ironic if Nvidia bought AMD and scared Intel into a hole for retribution.
There was a story about AMD hiring a regular bank about a YEAR ago, maybe even more! I don't remember details because it was quite a while back, but the headlne and story was almost *exactly* the same as this one.
Nothing happened then, and I can just about guarantee you that this title is unsubstantiated and sensationalized.
They have been riding high.
And what about those giant black holes known as HP and Cisco.
It was IBM that revived the dying corps that was AMD in 2004-2006, gave the SOI, helped them with 45nm and 32nm.
""Advanced Micro Devices has hired JPMorgan Chase & Co to explore options"", --- keyword EXPLORE..
""In an emailed statement, an AMD representative said the company "is not actively pursuing a sale of the company or significant assets at this time."
Key part "at this time".
No wonder why they are falling apart!! They failed to read the Reuters story thoroughly. I hope some other company can step besides the asshole caompanies they listed, maybe a company from the Linux community could buy or invest money into AMD, ideally it would need to be one that is making money from mobile devices, it could further open source ambitions to have a chip maker like AMD as its own.
Just an idea, no need to take it literally..
Gotta love those non-denials by PR flaks...
I've been in companies that did this... announce "we are not doing {x} at this time" where the magic words are "at this time" ... this could mean the bankers are in the building and the ink is already dry... but the action will not happen until next week, or next month, or tomorrow, or next year... just not at the instant that the PR announcement is made.
COME ON!
Their chips occupy most of the best price/performance ratios of any high performance chip, including Intel's offerings . Their 8-core $189.00 8320 is much faster than anyone realistically needs a chip to be. IF anyone is thinking about buying a new computer, check out PASSMARK's rating of your options for high end CPUs and focus in on the price performance ratio and then realize that this is just the single-threaded measurement, and AMD really shines in multi-threaded / multi-core computing , like the kind you do every day while you watch YouTube and edit music and chat with your friends etc etc etc.
Yes, I know I am asking for it from Intel employees and fanbois here... Sorry.
Why don't they just keep moving forward on the desktop front and open up new areas of revenue which leverage their ability to make fantastic chips inexpensively, revenues to be had in mobile devices and more forward looking, The Internet Of Things? That would give them this profile: Making fantastic desktop chips now? Check. Proven ability to leverage existing capabilities into current, rising markets? Check. Excellent long term outlook and R and D dedicated to soon-to-be-exploding, near future emerging computing markets? Check
Verdict- buy.
What I don't understand is one day, another chip maker will rise. That chip maker will spend a LOT of money and have to earn-the-hard-way a LOT of knowledge just to get where AMD is now. It's ridiculous that AMD is even thinking about throwing in the towel when they have the know how and capacity produce chips like they do at the prices they offer.
AMD leaving the stage would be the worst possible thing for consumers. Intel is a very highly manipulative company, still to this day offering a deliberately confusing array of chips with various abilities disabled so as to create an artificial "tiering" of the "market"- a practice which started back in the days of the 386 SX vs 386 DX and their disabled floating point chip...
What do you think is going to happen to prices and options if Intel is left alone on stage? They're going to make GP computing a niche market for millioniares while the rest of us can connect via dumb terminals to "the cloud" on what amounts to a pentium chip for a few hundred bucks a month courtesy of our "cloud provider" which will look a lot like our "cable provider" whilst our data, we're informed, no longer has the presumption of privacy.
Computing is too important to the progress of society be left in the hands of a corporation which has proven itself time and again, most enduringly, to be basically sociopathic.
No, seriously, it is.
Everyone who has a smartphone and/or tablet STILL has a PC and/or Mac.. ALSO, AFAIK, companies don't have their workforces using tablets or mobile devices to do their daily work. This seems like a fishing attempt by AMD. If AMD sold out, it would be detrimental to the PC industry.
Why not the Acer group - in particular, ALi? Or SiS? Already, there are Intel and NVIDIA in the markets, although NVIDIA doesn't make x64 CPUs. Via has the old Cyrix & Centaur - whatever they've digested and retained. ALi and SiS are the 2 other chipset companies out there. Already, AMD has spun off Global Foundries, and so now, they might as well sell off the remainder of the company to a Taiwanese or Singapore based corporation, and let them make the best use of their IP assets.
IMO, Acer is the best candidate - since it has an US presence as long as AMD's (unlike SiS), and with it, it can control AMD's production and supply according to both its own needs as well as that of other vendors. Those who are Intel only houses can stay that way, while those who are AMD customers would still have a stable supply.
In the days of Windows NT, I used to suggest that Microsoft should buy DEC and own the Alpha, but now, I think they should definitely buy AMD. The ARM is a misfit as far as their plans go, since Wintel apps won't run on them, and they'd be at a disadvantage to Linux, which is how bad it would be. Above, I had suggested Acer, but aside from them, Microsoft is a good option as well. They get to own the hardware basis of their reference platform Windows, which is increasingly a 64-bit OS, and regardless of how their relationship w/ Intel continues, they would have designs for chip manufacturers, CEMS, ISVs and so on. Essentially, Microsoft has a lot to gain if they avoid being blindsighted by ARM and take up this offer.
MSFT already moved once from Coppermine (Pentium based) to Xenon (POWER based). Are they really unhappy w/ Xenon that they'd consider a new CPU again? As per Wiki, the XCGPU that MSFT uses in the X-Box 360 integrates the Xenon CPU and the Xenos GPU onto the same die, and the eDRAM into the same package. It is manufactured by Advanced Technology Investment Company and x86 competitor AMD's GlobalFoundries on a 45 nm process. That is the extent of its AMD connection, although since AMD has nothing to do w/ Global Foundries any more, it has nothing to do w/ X-Box either. Unless MSFT is actually moving from Xenon to the quad x64 that you mention.