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Before this month, nosotros reported AMD would reorganize and restructure its entire graphics unit, as well as rumors that Silverish Lake, a individual disinterestedness firm, was interested in acquiring a substantial share of the company. Nosotros had reason to think a bargain like this might well take been in the cards, but at present reports indicate that the meeting may have fallen apart due to a failure to agree on a strategy that was acceptable to the private equity firm.

AMD was in talks to sell roughly 25% of itself to Silver Lake Direction, but that negotiations are currently on-hold due to differences in strategy and overall price, Bloomberg reports. AMD has good reason to push for as loftier a cost as information technology tin can become, seeing equally the company's time to come largely depends on securing a lifeline until the launch of Zen, its next-generation CPU architecture that'south not expected until 2022. AMD wasn't willing to comment on the current specifics of its situation, and neither was Silver Lake, for obvious reasons.

The fact that the talks are described equally "stalled," rather than dead, could signify that both companies still promise to head back to the table or that one is bringing pressure on the other. It's still possible that AMD will come to an agreement with Silver Lake.

Everything hangs on AMD's Zen

Everything hangs on AMD'south Zen

It'south not surprising to the states, however, that the two companies might exist having difficulty coming upward with a solid plan forward. Every bit we discussed earlier this year, whatsoever try to carve up AMD's graphics and CPU divisions is going to come across serious trouble. The companies are intertwined in a manner that volition make it very difficult to spin one side off from the other, and AMD's ability to continue equally a manufacturer of x86 chips is anything but guaranteed in the event of an external acquisition. Y'all could, perhaps, carve off the GPU assets entirely — but simply at the cost of abandoning the CPU partitioning.

When Rory Read resigned from AMD nearly a year ago, information technology looked every bit though he'd gear up the company on a path to further success. Increasingly, this appears not to be the case. Keller has left, the ARM-based K12 CPU is nowhere to be constitute (AMD has stated that the Zen architecture is complete, merely no one is talking virtually K12), the SeaMicro blew $281 1000000 in cash and did absolutely nothing for the company'south bottom line, and Project Skybridge was canceled — and with it, the 20nm version of Jaguar that might have helped breathe new life into AMD'south low-ability product segments.

While Kabini and Jaguar were not huge earners for AMD, the company did a solid business concern in low-finish processors. Unlike GPUs or big-core fries, 20nm might accept been a decent fit for a low-power x86 function. Either due to limited funds or because the 20nm node couldn't back up the blueprint, that never happened. The finish consequence leaves AMD in a very hard position. Zen isn't expected to ship for revenue until Q1 2022, which ways AMD has to survive the next 18 months until information technology begins recognizing revenue from sales in continuing results. Even if Sunnyvale delivers an splendid GPU refresh cycle in 2022, information technology faces an uphill fight.