Interview about AMD-ATI deal

Q: If you look at the figures that have been given, the ATI acquisition is being funded by the US$2.5 billion loan, plus cash and cash equivalents and short-term investment balances of approximately US$3.0 billion. That’s total funding of US$5.5 billion. That covers a basic acquisition valued at US$5.4 billion. I think the suspicion, here, among the general public and among your shareholders, might be that AMD is taking too much of a risk with this acquisition, that you’re betting the farm on a deal that might be very questionable.

A: I don’t think we have the feeling that we’re betting the farm. We’re very enthusiastic about this transaction because we think that it’s a necessary step in our quest to break the monopoly. Having the opportunity to innovate, in an equal way, at the platform level, more so than we could in the past, is certainly part of our strategy. As well, we have always been recognizing that there’s a certain amount of balance needed in system performance, between all the various components. Now we have two of the key components, two of the key technologies, the CPU and the GPU, and we’re going to be able to continue to move forward in terms of innovation to balance out, for the best interests of our end users and customers, these two key technologies. That’s something we couldn’t do before. So there’s no trepidation from our side, and certainly not from the management team, in terms of, “Is this a transaction we can’t afford?” If we had felt that way, we wouldn’t have done it.