The Inquirer claims that AMD has quietly started cutting 5% of workforce across-the-board, tying the reported downsizing to speculation that the company will miss this quarter badly and characterizing the layoffs as a preemptive attempt to get costs under control.

So we called AMD and AMD said it isn't quietly cutting 5% of its workforce and hasn't handed pink slips like the Inquirer said it had.

AMD picked its words very carefully, a fact we pointed out.

AMD admitted it was picking its words very carefully.

Sounds like the only thing wrong with the Inquirer's story was the tense of its verbs. Sounds like AMD will be making layoffs.

Such news will naturally overshadow the fact that its bollixed-up Barcelona is about to start appearing in boxes and that its quad Phenom desktop chips will be shipping.