Oct 23

Mystery AMD executive in insider-trading case

By jason IT News World No Comments »

An unnamed executive at Advanced Micro Devices is cited repeatedly in the Galleon Funds insider-trading case, presenting a potentially awkward situation for the chipmaker as the case goes forward.

It’s not clear if the AMD executive cited in the U.S. Attorney’s complaint would be charged or even implicated by name, but government charges of insider trading have rattled Silicon Valley. Rajiv Goel, a managing director of strategic investments for Intel’s treasury group, was arrested and charged in the case and put on leave, forcing Intel CEO Paul Otellini to publicly address the case.

And a high-level executive at IBM, senior vice president Robert Moffat, was placed on leave Monday after he was charged. Moffat is accused of supplying details about IBM and Sun Microsystems earnings to Danielle Chiesi, who worked for the New Castle hedge fund.

"If it’s the top two (executives at AMD), that would be significant. But it could be anyone. Mid-level executives. We don’t know," said David Wu, an analyst at GC Research.

"We are currently reviewing the situation and we have no further comment," AMD spokesman Michael Silverman said.

The case revolves around Raj Rajaratnam, who founded the Galleon Group, a New York-based hedge fund that manages $7 billion in funds. Federal prosecutors charged Rajaratnam and five others on Friday with securities fraud, alleging they were involved in insider trading of well-known tech companies, including Intel, Google, AMD, and IBM.

In the wake of the allegations, the Galleon Group said it will close, though the firm is exploring alternatives for its business that could allow parts of the hedge fund to survive, according to the Wall Street Journal.

AMD was prominent in the complaint, filed by the U.S. Attorney for New York’s Southern District on Friday, which alleges Rajaratnam and others engaged in insider-trading activity when AMD was trying to reorganize and spin off its manufacturing operations last year–which eventually became a multibillion-dollar deal.

The U.S. Attorney’s complaint makes the first references to an AMD executive in June of 2008. At that time, AMD, seeking a buyer for its manufacturing operations, entered into negotiations with investors based in Abu Dhabi.

Throughout the AMD section of the complaint, references are made to the executive, usually in the context of an unnamed person who had spoken with the executive. For example, Rajaratnam asked whether the AMD executive would give the unidentified person "the full low down" on the reorganization, and the person replied, "Oh, yeah. Plus IBM too." IBM was involved in the deal because AMD was using intellectual property from IBM in its chip design and manufacturing processes.

And as the announcement of the spin-off got closer, the unnamed person told Rajaratnam that the "AMD executive said that the deal would be announced during the first week of October," adding that the AMD executive had described the deal as "unbelievable."

The spin-off was ultimately announced on October 6 when an investment was secured from Advanced Technology Investment and Abu Dhabi-based Mubadala Development. At that time, AMD said the new company had secured about $5.7 billion of "confirmed, pledged investment."

Though AMD’s stock price rose briefly–about 25 percent–the price then dropped precipitously because of the financial crisis on Wall Street. AMD’s stock price fell from $7 in June 2008 to $2.10 on December 8.

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Oct 17

Intense Intel-AMD rivalry set for light laptops

By jason IT News World 2 Comments »

The chief executives of Intel and Advanced Micro Devices indicated this week that competition will heat up in the market for sleek, inexpensive laptops running Windows 7.

Both CEOs addressed this new market during conference calls after their companies reported earnings this week. Ultrathin laptops are inexpensive, light laptops–typically between $500 and $800–that are sold in a market segment just above less expensive Netbooks.

Intel CEO Paul Otellini on Tuesday said his company is gearing up to supply more power-efficient chips that contain two processing cores for better performance. "The bulk of the units that have shipped to date were single-core versions of the products," Otellini said. "You’ll see a number of laptops show up in retail with the dual-core versions for the holiday season…more ergonomically designed, thinner, lighter," Otellini said.

HP's Pavilion dm3 starts at $549 with an AMD processor and $649 with an Intel processor.

HP’s Pavilion dm3 starts at $549 with an AMD processor and $649 with an Intel processor.

And AMD’s CEO Dirk Meyer chimed in on Thursday. "You’ll hear more…next month about the product lineup that we’ll be rolling out over the next two years, which will include increasing focus on those small form factor notebooks," Meyer said during AMD’s conference call. In the more immediate future, Meyer said AMD will have a "broader assortment of (ultrathin) platforms walking into the Christmas cycle."

To date, this new category of laptops has had a minuscule market-share impact because there was little perceived difference between a Netbook and an ultrathin, according to Bob O’Donnell, IDC research vice president. "A lot of people said this is not actually that much faster, so you’re going to see a very rapid transition to all dual-core," he said.

Windows 7 should accelerate sales too. "I think we will see better sales next year," O’Donnell said, as HP, Dell, and others bring out ultrathins with Windows 7.

The category received a boost recently with the rollout of HP’s Pavilion dm3, which starts at $549 with an AMD processor and $649 with an Intel processor. The dm3 is expected to be available starting October 22 with the launch of the Microsoft Windows 7 operating system.

Other high-profile ultrathins include the $548 Acer Aspire Timeline (at Wal-Mart) and the $549 Dell Inspiron 13.

Because ultrathins are more expensive than Netbooks, they are more profitable for Intel. "Part of Intel’s strategy is to pull people up from a Netbook," said O’Donnell.

AMD, on other hand, is focusing solely on the space "between Netbooks and mainstream notebooks," Meyer said, adding that AMD, in effect, created the ultrathin category with the introduction of the 12-inch HP Pavilion dv2 back in January. "We created that category really in partnership with the HP," Meyer said.

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Jun 02

Intel launches chips for low-cost, thin laptops

By jason IT News World No Comments »

Intel is launching its line of processors for thin, inexpensive laptops at the Computex tech conference in Taipei. Intel marketing chief Sean Maloney talked about this in a phone interview.

Intel marketing chief Sean Maloney

"It’s clear that people like devices to be thin and light," said Maloney, who was speaking from the Computex conference in Taipei where he will be giving a keynote on Tuesday.

"We’ve really taken that to heart and come out with a complete top-to-bottom range of microprocessors that enable radically longer battery life and much smaller designs," said Maloney, referring to Intel’s new lineup of consumer ultra-low-voltage (CULV) processors.

Maloney continued. "There are a lot of computers being announced here (Computex) that look like conventional notebooks in terms of how wide the screens are, but they’re super-thin, the performance is very good, and they get up to nine hours battery life without a big, fat battery at the back," he said.

MSI X340 X-Slim laptop is one of the first CULV laptops

"It’s a big change for industry. It means the technology weaves its way into your life more because you’re going to have all-day notebooks," Maloney said.

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Jun 01

AMD answers Intel with six-core processor

By jason IT News World No Comments »

AMD launched its first six-core processor, which will compete against Intel’s "Dunnington" chip.

The "Istanbul" Opteron processor is for high-end server computers that use two, four, and eight processors or "sockets." Intel has been shipping a six-core processor for this market since September of last year and will bring out a processor based on its new Nehalem architecture for this segment later this year.

Among other new features, AMD is touting an Istanbul technology called HT Assist. The previous way of retrieving data from the processor’s memory was "like checking every room in your house for your car keys," said Pat Patla, AMD’s general manager of the server workstation group, in a phone interview last week. With HT Assist, "You know where your car keys are," he said. "It’s much more efficient and takes out a lot of traffic," Patla added.

Patla also said that AMD is ahead of schedule with this chip, in stark contrast with the company’s ill-fated quad-core Barcelona processor, which saw repeated delays. "Within almost a 15-month period of time we were able to design the product, tape out the product (final stage before production), verify the product and launch," Patla said about Istanbul. 

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