Layoffs are pretty much a given among large corporate entities these days, some for good reasons and others are a little suspect. The newest contributor in the layoff market is Nvidia – coming in at a 6.5 percent chop.
Roughly 360 people worldwide will be shown the door by the end of this October. Nvidia has commented that the layoffs will allow them to continue to invest in strategic growth movements. Developments such as Computer Unified Device Architecture (CUDA) parallel computing technology and Tegra mobile single-chip computer.
"Our action today is difficult, but necessary considering current business realities. Despite our reduction, we will continue to invest in selective high-growth opportunities like our revolutionary CUDA parallel computing technology and our Tegra mobile single-chip computer," said Jen-Hsun Huang, president and CEO of Nvidia. "We are taking fast action to enhance our competitive position and restore our financial performance. All of us at Nvidia are determined to emerge from these challenges an even stronger company."
The movement will also help Nvidia to become more competitive and add a bit of spice to its financial performance. Nvidia will take a US$7 million to US$10 million charge in the third quarter of fiscal 2009 to cover severances and other costs related to this reduction.
For the record these lay-offs surfaced about one month after Nvidia took a US$196 million kick in the pants in its second quarter to cover the cost of replacing bad chips used in Hewlet-Packard and Dell notebooks. Nvidia has not indicated that these current layoffs are related in any way to the recent financial loss.