The Sandbox

AMD’s stock was up this morning temporarily with rumors that surfaced late yesterday that IBM might be considering a “deeper partnership” with the microprocessor challenger or even an outright merger. But alas, by noon eastern time, things had settled down and stock was trading at about $7.50/share. Surely the daytraders had fun with this one.

In November, another rumor circulated temporarily regarding Apple acquiring AMD, but it was short-lived. 

While that one seemed only somewhat plausible, thinking seriously about IBM rescuing AMD makes more sense for AMD from one perspective alone: cash.

AMD would definitely be stronger under Big Blue’s umbrella, and has definitely had cash problems, partially helped by the $622 million infusion from Abu Dhabi in November.

The companies have done R&D on strained-silicon transistor technology going back to 2004, designed to augment processor performance and power efficiency. 

In November 2005, the companies broadened the scope of their technology alliance through 2011 to include early exploratory research of transistor, interconnect, lithography, and die-to-package connection technologies.

Sunnyvale, Calif.-based AMD, along with partner IBM, has a large presence in upstate New York and in 2006 was lured by almost $1 billion in incentives to build a $3.2 billion fab there, as part of the Albany NanoTech at the State University of New York's University at Albany, which is an R&D collaboration between the university and dozens of semiconductor partners such as IBM, Philips, Tokyo Electron and AMD.

Also in 2006, IBM said it was using AMD chips in five incremental servers for mainstream business applications.

IBM and AMD are not commenting.

What are your thoughts? Chime in with comments.

--Ann Steffora Mutschler, Senior Editor