Filed under: Desktops, Laptops

Don’t say the writing wasn’t already littering the walls, because it was. Just months after AMD hacked its workforce by 10% and let its CTO walk away without being replaced, the company’s second CEO after Jerry Sanders has spent his last day in AMD’s biggest corner office. Hector Ruiz has decided to walk away from his role in the flagging outfit, leaving his right hand man (that would be Dirk Meyer) to take over whatever there is to take over. Of note, Mr. Ruiz will still have ties with the company as he remains on its board of directors as “executive chairman,” though it’s hard to say how much influence he’ll have from there. Really though, what’s next?

[Thanks, nehemoth]

Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

Filed under: Cellphones, Misc. Gadgets, Handhelds, Portable Audio, Portable Video

There weren’t a whole lot of firm details on the reasons behind Apple’s acquisition of chip designer P.A. Semi to be had back when the deal was announced last month, but it seems that a bit of the veil of mystery may now be lifting, at least if the word EETimes is hearing from its unnamed source is to be believed. Apparently, Apple was keen to have P.A. Semi’s crack chip-making team design a new chip for them, but P.A. Semi had “more or less burnt through its venture capital funds,” leaving them unable to take on the project. According to EETimes source, that meant that the only way to get P.A. Semi involved was for Apple to pay off all of P.A.’s investors and bring the company in-house, something they were able to do for a mere $280 million or so. Of course, as EETimes points out, the big question remaining is exactly what it is that Apple wants P.A. Semi to help it out with, and that’s a detail we’d expect to take considerably longer to trickle out.

[Via Mac Rumors]

Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

Filed under: Desktops, Laptops

Last week, we reported that Hector Ruiz — CEO of chipmaker AMD — had received a 7.4-percent raise even though the company has been struggling as of late and its stock has dropped considerably over the past year. Now, according to reports, the rumors of the pay increase have turned out to be the product of a misinterpreted SEC filing — or so say the public relations people at Advanced Micro Devices. Apparently, the confusion stems from a pay raise that the honcho received in 2006; somehow the change in figures halfway through the year led to a proxy statement of $1,046,358 — the supposed new salary. The “clarification” still leaves a few questions unanswered, but at least for now we can sleep soundly knowing that Hector Ruiz, the highest paid CEO in the semiconductor industry, will only be earning a paltry $1,124,000 this year.

Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

Office Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!

Filed under: Desktops, Laptops

In most jobs, if you cost the company money and generally screw up, you can expect a solid dressing-down from the management and then a swift boot out the door. Unless you run a major corporation like AMD. If you’re Hector Ruiz, CEO of the ailing chipmaker, you can freely and openly admit to fouling up the works and still get yourself a tidy raise, it seems. “We blew it and we’re very humbled by it and we learned from it and we’re not going to do it again,” Ruiz said on Thursday, just before the board of directors raised his $1,046,358 salary to $1,124,000 — a 7.4-percent gain. Oh, did we mention the nearly $13 million in stock options too? Hey, just because you tacked on $3.7 billion dollars in long term debt and your stock plummeted 56.2-percent doesn’t mean you’re doing a bad job… although we can’t think of another way to describe it.

Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

Office Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!

Filed under: Desktops, Laptops

In most jobs, if you cost the company money and generally screw up, you can expect a solid dressing-down from the management and then a swift boot out the door. Unless you run a major corporation like AMD. If you’re Hector Ruiz, CEO of the ailing chipmaker, you can freely and openly admit to fouling up the works and still get yourself a tidy raise, it seems. “We blew it and we’re very humbled by it and we learned from it and we’re not going to do it again,” Ruiz said on Thursday, just before the board of directors raised his $1,046,358 salary to $1,124,000 — a 7.4-percent gain. Oh, did we mention the nearly $13 million in stock options too? Hey, just because you tacked on $3.7 billion dollars in long term debt and your stock plummeted 56.2-percent doesn’t mean you’re doing a bad job… although we can’t think of another way to describe it.

Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

Office Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!

Filed under: Desktops, Laptops

iSuppli — the market research firm that keeps us up to speed on exactly how much each iPod pads Steve’s wallet (among other things) — has recently published its list of top players in the 2007 semiconductor market, and lo and behold, AMD isn’t even in the top ten. It’s noted that while Intel’s chip revenue is expected to rise 7.7-percent in 2007, AMD’s sales are predicted to sink some 22.7-percent for the year. Of course, AMD had only risen into the upper echelon of this list for the first time last year, but now it has fallen back to 11th, trailing the likes of Samsung, Toshiba, STMicroelectronics, Infineon, Sony, NXP, Intel and Texas Instruments. If you’re interested in seeing the details behind the numbers, be sure and hit the read link below. Oh, and please do keep the fanboy comments respectable, will ya?

[Via PCWorld]

Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

Office Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!

Filed under: Misc. Gadgets

Sure, you had a paper route when you were a kid; heck, we bet you were even good at it. Well listen up buddy, your fond memories of childhood success are about to be completely disintegrated by Carson Page, an eight-year-old from Austin, Texas who really works for a living… evaluating chips for Actel. The boy, who’s been working with the company since he was seven, apparently has a knack for the technical side of things, so much so that the chipmaker has been using him on a regular basis to suss out bugs, test software, and generally act like a super-genius at the drop of a hat. Apparently, the interest in technology comes from his father, a tinkerer who owns an electronic design company. Mark Nagel, a field applications engineer for Actel says about the kid’s work, “We would ask what he liked and didn’t like about it and he could explain it on a very high-end level,” adding, “It’s amazing; when you talk to him it’s like you’re talking to a regular guy doing design.” A regular guy, indeed. [Warning: read link requires subscription]

[Via CNET]

Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

Office Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!