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Mergers are never a good thing for workers. Layoffs are an imminent thing to cut out redundant work and cut costs. The Inquirer talks about the  rumored AMD layoffs after the AMD+ATI merger/acquisition. It would seem that 2000 jobs are at stake which follows a ratio of 1,200 from ATI and 800 from AMD. AMD states that They will not be targeting individuals per se, but rather individual positions throughout the spectrum of the company's operations. Sounds dodgy to me as this things never sound good no matter how you word it.

they say:...

We expect announcements shortly after the merger closes, certainly before the end of the month, and they will most likely take effect in mid-November like we said earlier. Rumour has it that the severance packages will not be as generous as Intel, but far from the outright screwings of HP. Things are never dull at the combined AMD/ATI nowadays.

AMD's new quad-core Opteron processor code-named Barcelona is slated to deal with the problems of virtualization performance issues when it comes out in mid 2007. That would spell bad news for Intel that has already had a VSS this year due to less than encouraging financial results.

Intel is not sitting still and it is also coming out with a quad-core processor called Intel's "Clovertown" version of Xeon that has two dual-core Xeon 5100 "Woodcrest" processors into a single package.

source

This AMD people are really a busy bunch of people. They've already made Intel lose some market share in CPU market and run a VSS exercise to consolidate their financial position. And now they've got some new 65nm and 90nm Athlons, coming up to end the 2006 with a bang.

Here's the channelregister report :

November is a key month in the quarter. Then, AMD will introduce the Athlon 64 X2 5400+, 5600+ and 6000+, all all 90nm dual-core parts based on the company's 'Windsor' chip design, according to allegedly leaked information posted by German-language site Planet3DNow.

By YC from the Technocrat Soapbox,
Guest Blogger

One would think that this would be the logical partnership for Apple. After all, AMD has consistently produced the highest-performing CPU (the Athlon 64 FX-60 was released yesterday) in the market for over 3 years now, and with a 'nonconformist' mentality to go with Apple's "Think Different" philosophy, who would be a better suitor?


Apple and AMD.
Just perfect, like milk and Oreo cookies.
But alas, this is not to be.

Sadly, it all boils down to Economics.

Apple dominated the PC Market in the first decade of the last 30 years, differentiating itself from its competitors by delivering creative and even fashionable products like the Apple ][, the Lisa, the Macintosh, and the Newton MessagePad.

But Apple's arrogance and political infighting culminated to the exodus of its spiritual leaders (Jobs was ousted in a boardroom coup and Wozniak resigned in frustration). The once proud and mighty operated in the red for almost another decade, withering down to a single-digit market share today (despite Jobs' eventual return in the mid-90's).