AMD Exiting SeaMicro's High-Density Server Business

Advanced Micro Devices said Thursday that it will be exiting its high-density SeaMicro microserver business as part of a strategy "to simplify and sharpen the company's investment focus," according to a release.

The company announced the news as it reported its first-quarter earnings results. Shares for the company slipped 8 percent, to $2.64, in after-hours trading.

AMD acquired specialist server maker SeaMicro in 2012, with the intention of pushing its presence in the low-power server space and pushing for a cloud-centric data-center business. The acquisition cost the company $334 million, according to Forbes.

[Related: AMD Overhauls Partner Program, Adds Top 'Hero Builder' Status]

AMD's SeaMicro SM15000 product is a server pushing compute, networking and storage in a 10 RU system, through delivering 64 sockets of AMD's Octal-core Opteron or Intel's quad-core Xeon processors.

"Intel will still see more competition in the server space," said Todd Swank, senior director of product marketing at Equus, an Intel partner based in Minnetonka, Minn. "We're still in this big industry paradigm shift from the client server architecture of the past to a push to the cloud, and there are different things that clients require in the cloud environment. Intel, AMD and others are trying to figure out how to live in that world."

AMD did not state whether it is looking for a buyer for SeaMicro. The company's investments in its other server solutions, including cloud, virtualization and high-performance computing, will continue.

PUBLISHED APRIL 16, 2015