14 DAY TRIAL // AMD is reportedly planning to reduce its workforce by 5 percent until the end of the first quarter. It seems like the advent of the long-awaited Phenom processors will come with massive layoffs across the company's staff. Rough estimations say that the company will send home between 800 and 850 workers of AMD's current 16,719 employees.
The chip manufacturer has not yet disclosed the exact layoff plans, but the same rumors report that the job cuts will take place across the entire company rather than target a specific branch. At the moment, there is no official explanation for AMD's actions, but it is alleged that AMD is way behind its quarterly estimations.
The processor business has been highly affected by the fact that Pehnom and Opteron chips have not made it to the market in due time, because of the Transitional Lookaside Buffer erratum. Shipments of Barcelona-based processors, that were alleged to bring the company back on track were also canceled during the first quarter of the year. AMD may be preparing the analyst community for another quarter with missed expectations, so, in order to cut down on costs, the company decided to keep only 15,000 people of its staff.
The situation is not likely to change anytime soon, as Intel's senior vice president Pat Gelsinger stated earlier this week that the Tigerton Xeon MP processor is currently becoming more and more popular, and the company expects it to bring "the biggest market share swing in years".
However, AMD will start shipping its quad-core Phenom 9850, 9750, 9650, 9550, and 9150 processors in April, which should also increase the company's profits on the CPU market. The chips slated for release will be B3 stepping parts, stamped with the "50" branding scheme, which means that the silicon will come without the infamous TLB erratum bug.