AMD warns it may take charge for Q4

Documents AMD has filed with the US Securities and Exchange Commission are warning that the firm may be forced to take a restructuring charge for its fourth quarter. According to news service CNN, AMD has managed to reduce expenses but is still failing to make enough money from sales of its microprocessors. That is despite demand for its Athlon and K6-III parts being strong. Last week we reported that it had run out of the K6-III/400 part. As well as making CPUs, AMD also does sound and very profitable flash memory business, but earlier this year sold off its programmable logic division and also made a relatively small number of employees, mostly administrative, redundant. AMD has around 13,000 staff across different worldwide locations. Although AMD's Athlon microprocessor has been greeted to acclaim by many reviewers, in order to push the technology to the limit it has been forced to strike a complex deal with the government of Saxony and a consortium of banks to finance its Dresden, Fab 30 factory. That state-of-the-art factory will come onstream in the first half of next year and will manufacture faster Athlons using copper interconnect technology. There have been persistent rumours that AMD is looking for partners to help share the load of the expensive Dresden Fab. Motorola, which is AMD's copper partner, is the most favoured candidate but others, including Infineon (formerly a Siemens subsidiary), has also been in the frame. ® See also AMD and its Dresden sandpit I AMD and its Dresden sandpit II