The California-based company has struggled with the delay of a key server chip, Barcelona that is now shipping and "has also faced a resurgent Intel in the last couple years, as well as plenty of bad news of its own", including losing up to 90 per cent of its value according to the report.

Last Thursday, it announced a wider-than-expected loss -- its seventh consecutive quarterly loss -- and the CEO change. "It has been losing market share to Intel and remains a generation behind its Silicon Valley rival in chip-making technology", says the Reuters report.

Meyer, who had been president and chief operating officer, said he "would focus on execution and returning to profit in his new job", the report notes.

AMD had a second-quarter net loss of $US1.19 billion compared with a year-ago net loss of $US600 million. The latest loss included an charge for the write-off of some of the value of its 2006 purchase of graphics chipmaker ATI Technologies.

AMD is also developing a low-power processor for mobile devices and ultra-light notebooks, the company confirmed Friday, although release dates are at best, sketchy.

The chip will compete with Intel's Atom processor and potentially supplant AMD's low-power Geode x86 system-on-chip.
And according to other reports, plans are apace to develop a low-power chip, code-named Bobcat which the company says is "designed for maximum energy efficiency and performance-per-watt for next-generation mobile devices, scaling as low as 1 watt."