AMD Reportedly Laying Off Hundreds

Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) is reportedly laying off 5 percent of its workforce ahead of lower than expected first-quarter financial numbers, according to The Inquirer.

The report by Charlie Demerjian appeared on the UK-based technology Web site Wednesday and cited no source for the news that layoffs at AMD "are going to be across the board, not targeted at any specific group."

Sources at Sunnyvale, Calif.-based AMD would not confirm that layoffs are occurring. One source opined that rumored layoffs was "not a story worth reporting."

The Inquirer further reported that, "Whispers also say that this is because the chip maker is going to badly miss numbers this quarter, and it is taking pre-emptive moves to get costs under control."

AMD CEO Hector Ruiz predicted a return to profitability for the financially troubled chip maker in the third quarter of this year. AMD suffered a disastrous fiscal year in 2007, highlighted by the company's failure to ship its new quad-core Opteron server chips in volume due to a glitch and a $1.68-billion Q4 impairment charge related to its 2006 acquisition of graphics chip maker ATI.

AMD has about 16,500 employees in its global operations, meaning a layoff of 5 percent would leave more than 800 without a job if the rumors prove real.

Meanwhile, in a day of rumors and denials of same, Nvidia denied a report that it has been sizing up low-voltage CPU maker VIA Technologies for an acquisition.

Santa Clara, Calif.-based Nvidia and Taipei-based VIA have long been the subject of M&A speculation, with Taiwan's DigiTimes recently reporting serious discussions between the two companies. But Mike Hara, Nvidia VP of investor relations, on Wednesday put the kibosh on those rumors.

"Why would we need them? We're a GPU company, and we don't see any need soon to burden it with a CPU because [a CPU] doesn't do anything we need," he told InternetNews.com.