14 DAY TRIAL // Chip manufacturer Advanced Micro Devices is quite a spender for a year that almost led the company to ruin. It seems that the AMD treasurers have not reached the bottom of the sack yet, and the company is ready to open its $270 million Lone Star business campus.
The campus is comprised of five buildings with a surface of 80,825 square meter. The 58-acre hillside complex is located in Austin, Texas and will host all of AMD's 2,600 employees to activate in Southwest Austin. AMD spokespersons have confirmed that the complex is to be populated until April next year.
Building 400 is an engineering facility and features a bar where the employees can elaborate on their ideas in a relaxed and informal environment. AMD says that the building architecture is aimed at inspiring collaboration between workers. The company's senior analyst, Shiree Schade has just moved in and was pleased with the Building 400 working conditions. Some other employees have moved in in order to lay the ground for the arrival of their colleagues in January.
"People are going to be ecstatic about how fresh it is and how beautiful it is," Schade said. "Every time you get up and walk anywhere, you get a view. It is everywhere. You get a magnificent sense of space and quietude."
AMD executives decided to gather all their employees in a single facility. The campus is a workplace that focuses on functionality, entertainment and interaction. Austin is not the company's headquarters, but is the largest base of engineering workers and home base for most of AMD's senior management team.
"This is an open work environment," said Tom Cornelius, principal architect for the project with Austin-based Graeber, Simmons & Cowan. "There are literally zero offices. We made every effort to take a fresh approach to this."
This might be the company's strategy of recovering after a hard year in business. The move was initially scheduled for March this year, but the chip manufacturer decided to postpone it in order to keep its employees focused on the launch of its flagship chip, Barcelona, scheduled for launch in September.