While it may not all be his doing, newly-minted AMD CEO Dirk Meyer seems to be at the center of more than a bit of confusion in his first few days on the job. First, he detailed AMD's plans to take on Intel's Atom processor this fall, which was apparently news to AMD's Chief Marketing Officer, and now AMD is denying a report that AMD is set to spin off its manufacturing operations into a separate company, which arose out of an interview Meyer gave to the Austin American-Statesman. In it, Meyer reportedly said that AMD was "just months away" from spinning off its fabrication business, which would let it concentrate on designing, marketing and selling chips, and allow it to compete more effectively against its two big rivals: Intel and NVIDIA. As eWEEK reports, however, an AMD spokesperson now says that Meyer was referring simply to "how the company manufactures its wafers," which could possibly be a reference to the company's planned shift to a 45-nanometer manufacturing process. That's quite a difference, and we're guessing we'll be hearing yet more "clarification" on the matter before all is said and done.

Read - Austin American-Statesman, "New AMD chief sees clear path to recovery"
Read - eWEEK, "AMD Denies Fab Sell-Off"

[Thanks, Chris]

Fighting hard to stay alive after the BenQ Mobile fiasco, BenQ has switched things up by deciding to spin off its BenQ brand and hold onto its manufacturing business, instead of doing things the other way around as most analysts expected. According to BenQ chairman K.Y. Lee, it was a bit of a no-brainer: "The scale of the branded business has become relatively small compared to our integrated manufacturing service business. Therefore, it is a straightforward decision to spin-off the branded business." Lee will be leading both companies, with the manufacturing arm -- which does contract work for heavyweights such as Dell and HP, and accounts for 60 percent of BenQ revenue -- taking on the new name of "Jia Da Corp." after the spin-off. The new, fabless BenQ will stick to product design and engineering, while Jia Da Corp. will try to make its buck in the cut-throat world of ODM, something which Lee once dismissed as a viable way to survive. Arguably, BenQ couldn't be doing much worse than it's doing right now, so we're content to sit and watch how it all plays out.