Its plants spun off, AMD now wants to fuse the units developing its microprocessors and its graphics chips together and has handed the job to the graphics guy Rick Bergman - acquired with its $5.4 billion ATI acquisition - presumably because it's supposed to fuse graphics onto its processors.

Randy Allan, who's been handling MPUs, is leaving the company.

As part of Bergman's group, Jeff VerHeul gets processor engineering, responsible for near-term products, with orders to improve time-to-market.

The company has also created an Advanced Technology Group under Chekib Akrout, an ex-IBM Cell guy, to develop future chips; a marketing group under Nigel Dessau; and a sales group under Emilio Ghilardi.

Speaking of graphics companies, ATI rival Nvidia Thursday reported a 42% drop in revenue to $664.2 million from $1.15 billion in its first quarter and a loss of $201.3 million, or 37 cents a share, where last year it earned $176.8 million, or 30 cents a share.

Seems it took a $140.2 million charge related to a cash tender offer to purchase employee stock options.

The revenues were more than Wall Street figured they'd be but then so was the loss. Analysts had modeled a loss of 10 cents a share on revenue of $514.7 million.