A former Intel Corp. engineer has been charged with stealing trade secrets worth $1 billion from the chip maker while he worked for its main rival, Advanced Micro Devices Inc.

Federal prosecutors in Massachusetts alleged this week in a five-count indictment that Biswamohan Pani, 33, illegally downloaded more than a dozen confidential documents from Intel’s computer system in California during a four-day stretch in June. He had already resigned from Santa Clara, Calif.-based Intel, but remained on the payroll and still had access to the company’s computers while he burned unused vacation days.

What Pani’s supervisors didn’t know then is that instead of taking the time to investigate a hedge fund job Pani claimed he was considering, he had actually started working for AMD and for a brief period was on both companies’ payrolls.

Prosecutors say AMD had no knowledge of Pani’s actions and did not benefit. But they say the information Pani downloaded was worth more than $1 billion in research and development costs, and included details about methods for designing microprocessors.

The indictment alleges that Pani “planned to use this information to advance his career at AMD or elsewhere by drawing on it when the opportunity arose, whether with his employer’s knowledge or not.”

Source: AP – Read more…

AMD CO FOUNDER, Ed Turney, has died of brain cancer at his old age home in Cupertino, aged 79.

Turney, one of seven AMD founders, was born in Brooklyn, New York in 1929. After a stint in the US Navy during the Korean War as an electronics technician, Turney turned his hand to chips in 1963, becoming a salesman for Fairchild Semiconductor.

He left Fairchild and in May 1969, along with seven other ex Fairchild execs, founded Sunnyvale-based AMD. One of his first roles at the firm included buying up equipment and overseeing the construction of the firm’s first chip fab.

Turney was also instrumental in setting up AMD’s sales organization and laying out a network of electronics distributors.

He left AMD in 1974, opting to do some work for smaller semiconductor firms, where he mainly acted in the capacity of a consultant to start-ups, helping them pull in funding.

According to a statement by his brother, George Turney, Ed will be buried tomorrow in Los Altos, CA, next to his mother.

Source: The Inquirer

The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) won’t file criminal charges over the pricing and marketing strategies of graphics chipmaker ATI Technologies, now owned by Advanced Micro Devices, the company said Monday.

The DOJ told AMD on Friday the entire investigation is closed, said Michael Silverman, AMD spokesman.

The DOJ subpoenaed vendors AMD and Nvidia in late 2006 as part of an antitrust investigation into the market for graphics processors and graphics cards. The investigation came a month after AMD finished its acquisition of ATI for US$5.4 billion.

The news is good for AMD, which has struggled financially in part due to its acquisition of ATI.

In July, AMD said it would take a charge in its second quarter of 2008 for $880 million related to ATI’s former business units. The charges were related to impaired assets in ATI’s former handheld and digital TV business units, which were merged into AMD’s consumer electronics group after the acquisition.

Source: PCWorld

Advanced Micro Devices Inc. will announce Tuesday it is spinning off its manufacturing operations as part of its cost saving strategy, The Wall Street Journal reported.

Sunnyvale-based AMD said it will make a “significant corporate announcement” and hold a conference call with industry analyst Tuesday hosted by Chief Executive Dirk Meyer. It did not give details on the announcement.

The Journal, citing people familiar with the matter, said the chip maker will say it is spinning off its manufacturing operations into a new joint venture that will make chips for AMD, as well as other companies.

With funding from investment groups associated with the government of Abu Dhabi, the new venture will take over AMD manufacturing facilities, including large plants in Germany, the Journal reported.

Last year, the Abu Dhabi government’s investment arm, the Mubadala Development Co., took an 8.1 percent stake in AMD.

This would be a good move, but it’s far from the truth. AMD is dealing with poor earnings and preparing for major changes. With the recent news about AMD’s CEO, the embattled Ruiz stepping down, what’s AMD planning to do to get out of this deep financial hole?

AMD’s recent downfall has certainly benefited Intel in a big way, not that Intel needs any help.

One of his biggest jobs will be to help craft AMD’s strategy for slashing its manufacturing expenses, a major concern for any semiconductor company but one of particular importance for AMD as it burns through cash and struggles in a fierce battle with Intel.

Replacing the top may not be the best thing for AMD to come out of this downward slide. They’re replacing Ruiz with Dirk Meyer, 46, an engineer and chip designer who has been helping Ruiz run the company since 2006. That means he knows AMD’s operations intimately but also shares some of the responsibility for the company’s financial distress.

I don’t see this move helping AMD. AMD should have searched for someone with a flawless track record from an established hardware company. This would have brought in fresh blood with a different vision and possibly a better chance of survival against Intel.

ADV MICRO DEVICES
(NYSE: AMD) 4.61 Down 0.69 (13.02%) 12:59PM ET 7/2008

What are your thoughts? Do you think AMD will turn it around under Meyer?

AMD has provided both basic and ultra fast versions of its desktop processor line with three new Phenoms. The chips have the same basic architect, but are designed intentionally for different users by frequency, power consumption and price. The Phenom X4 9950 Black Edition–now AMD’s fastest quad-core desktop CPU at 2.6GHz–is designed for enthusiasts and gamers. On the extreme side of the scale, the Phenom X4 9350e and Phenom X4 9150e are much slower (2.0GHz and 1.8GHz, respectively).

AMD has been promising faster clock speeds since September of 2007, but has been met with challenges that clearly slowed their execution. They have tried to reach 2.6GHz, AMD has boosted the TDP, a measure of the maximum power draw, to 140 watts. By comparison, the 2.5GHz 9850BE has a TDP of 125 watts.

HotHardware has posted some of the first numbers on the 9950BE, and the results are what you’d expect. It is slightly faster than the 9850BE, and offers similar performance to Intel’s 2.4GHz Core 2 Quad Q6600, but it still doesn’t match the performance of Intel’s faster Core 2 Quad and Core 2 Extreme chips, which extend to 3.2GHz. Like all BE versions, the 9950 is designed for easy overclocking using AMD’s OverDrive utility. HotHardware said it was able to crank the 9550BE to 3.1GHz using standard cooling.

You can get both the new 9550BE and 2.5GHz 9850BE at $235. AMD is expected to drop their prices for the 9850BE to $205.

Advanced Micro Devices next generation Graphic Card with GDDR5 memory.

AMD announced that its next-generation ATI Radeon graphics cards will be the first commercial implementation of GDDR5 memory. According to AMD, the new memory will allow for faster, smaller, and cheaper graphics cards.

The GDDR5 has 5x higher data rates than that of GDDR3 and 4x that of GDDR4. The GDDR5 is capable of delivering an astonishing amount of bandwidth over a narrower memory interface, which delivers superior performance delivered from smaller, more cost-effective chips.

The GDDR5 memory provides other benefits that include increased accuracy in calculations by way of new error detection mechanisms and more power-efficient graphics cards, according to AMD.

This graphic card is faster than the speed of light, well almost, but it certainly will have every gamer drool as they fire up their PC and begin to play Warcraft or any of the latest games offered today.

This graphic card is not only the latest and greatest, but it’s affordable as well according to AMD.

www.amd.com
Based on AMD internal testing that demonstrates 30% lower DRAM memory bus power when comparing GDDR5 to GDDR3. GDDR3 at 2Gbps runs at 2.0V and GDDR5 at 4.0Gbps runs at 1.5V in 3DMark01 Nature test. Specs demonstrate that GDDR5 is capable of up to 12.8Gbps vs. GDDR4’s 3.2Gbps and GDDR3’s 2.4Gbps.

What’s new? Who would think that Microsoft would release a new update that is flawless and frictionless? Since the release of SP3, also known as Service Pack 3, HP computers with AMD processors are having major issues.

The root of the problem appears to be a power management driver. Microsoft says it’s working on the issue quickly. Users are experiencing endless reboots and shut downs. The sad part, your system will not even boot in safe mode. Microsoft once again releases another piece of shit!

How to fix this issue?

The HP issue can be solved by disabling the intelppm.sys driver, the second fix requires the user to plug in a USB flash drive before booting.

You would have thought that Microsoft would have woke up after the SP1 issue that also caused endless reboots. Microsoft needs to focus on their QA efforts better.

Tip:

1. Disable automatic updates, but check Microsoft’s web site for any news on critical updates.

2. Time is a smart thing. You should wait at least 30 days before applying any updates from Microsoft just in case there’s any issues. Let someone else be the guinea pig.