AMD's President and CEO, Lisa Su, revealed at yesterday's earnings call that AMD has already completed its first couple of FinFET designs. She also stressed that FinFET is going to be incredibly important across all markets for the company in 2016.

Shares of chipmaker Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) are up 7 cents, or 3%, at $2.41, after PC and gaming gear enthusiast site KitGuru this afternoon said the company is attracting buyout interest from Microsoft.

Any split of AMD would result in two smaller companies, heavily interdependent, taking on larger, entrenched, and determined competitors.

In the data center, where Intel has handily trounced AMD in sales of server microprocessors, there is still a need for x86-compatible chips, of which AMD holds the only cards outside Intel. That could make AMD a target in the data center for Xilinx or for Chinese state-owned investment vehicles.

The faster time to market for Samsung's 14nm process as well as potentially slightly bigger performance or power consumption benefits on TSMC's 16nm process must have convinced Apple that it's worth going back to Samsung.

Morgan Stanley analyst Joseph Moore commented on the rumor that BLX IC Design is interested in acquiring Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) and outlined some obstacles that may face a potential suitor for the company.