Pocket change?
AMD has at long last announced the sale of its handheld graphics division to Qualcomm, half a year after it first put it on the market.
The price of $65 million seems pretty small when you consider it was part of ATI - a company AMD bought for $5.4 billion two and a bit years ago. However, this must be viewed in the context of AMD having written down the value of the ATI acquisition by $3.4 billion since then.
Also it doesn't look like Qualcomm bought all of the handheld division. The press release says: "Qualcomm has acquired certain graphics and multimedia technology assets, intellectual property and resources that were formerly the basis of AMD's handheld business."
"With the sale of these handheld technology assets and resources to Qualcomm, we are better able to focus on our core business and leverage our unique position as a leader in both x86 computing and high-end graphics," said Robert J. Rivet, chief operations and administrative officer of AMD. "We believe the talented AMD handheld employees will be a great asset to Qualcomm."
As well as the $65 million, Qualcomm has agreed to employ some people from the design and development teams of the handheld division.