AMD Closes Linux Kernel Development Lab to Reduce Costs

From X-bit Labs: As a part of its initiative to cut its expenses by reducing its staff, Advanced Micro Devices has shuttered its Dresden, Germany-based operating system research center (OSRC), which is a part of AMD Research organization, according to a media report. The laboratory focused on development of Linux kernels optimized for AMD microprocessors.

The OSRC was founded in April 2006 and was acting as a bridge between the OS development community and the worldwide AMD processor design community. The OSRC played a particularly important role in ensuring support of next-generation AMD products and solutions by Linux operating system. OSRC was specialized in OS virtualization, memory management, multi-core scheduling and performance measuring to make better use of future multi-core architectures. In general, the laboratory was overseeing patches to support AMD’s server processors’ features in Linux operating systems.

The OSRC had around 25 employees who helped integrate important changes for new AMD platforms into Linux distributions such as Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) and Suse Linux Enterprise. Some of the OSRC developers also worked on open source virtualisation solutions such as the Xen hypervisor, reports Heise Open web-site.

Some of AMD Linux developers from AMD Research are located in Austin, Texas. From now on, the U.S. team will have to incorporate support for all functionality of AMD code-named Steamroller and Excavator high-performance as well as Jaguar low-power cores into Linux operating system in the mid-term future.

AMD plans to lay off 15% of its workforce this quarter to reduce operating costs so to reach $1.3 billion break-even point in 2013.

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