The new AMD Lone Star campus, located in Southwest Austin at William Cannon and Southwest Parkway, is approximately 80 percent complete. Employees will begin moving in at the end of the year. Since breaking ground in spring 2006, construction of the five buildings, three parking garages, and a Central Utility Plant has remained on schedule, despite a rainy year. Two of the buildings and two parking garages are built, and furniture will start being moved in this month. Native plants and grass salvaged from the site more than a year ago have been cared for by experts at the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center and will be replanted over the next few months.

AMD is coordinating a phased move beginning the last week in December through the end of March, which will help minimize disruption to AMD’s business and the nearby Oak Hill community. By carefully preparing for the transfer of operations to the new campus, AMD hopes to ensure a smooth move-in process for the 2,600-plus employees and contractors who will soon be working at the site.

For a successful first day of occupancy, AMD formed a Day One Team comprised of key representatives from several departments within the company. This team is compiling an online move kit with pertinent information for employees, including details on the move process, packing instructions, recycling and records retention, maps of the campus and buildings, various driving routes and speed limits, commuting options, local restaurants, exercise facilities, and more.

Of the campus' seven office buildings, two - AMD Buildings 600 and 700 - were pre-existing structures located on William Cannon, adjacent to the new construction. AMD Finance, Corporate Services, HR, and IT moved in to these offices in July and August. Approximately 500 AMD engineers will temporarily remain at AMD Building 3 in southeast Austin. AMD is also converting a portion of a warehouse at the Penn Field office complex on South Congress Avenue into a specialized research center. There, a small team will study manufacturing processes to find ways for AMD to gain efficiencies in the production of extremely complex and highly specialized chips. AMD's main manufacturing facility is in Dresden, Germany, but the majority of its computerized factory control software is developed in Austin.

AMD led eight tours of the new Lone Star campus in the late spring and early summer for more than 70 members of Austin's business, education, government, environmental, media, and non-profit communities. The purpose was to show the rapid construction progress and innovative environmental design features of the campus, and to continue open dialogue with key community members.

To learn more about the new AMD Lone Star campus in Austin, and to see recent photos of the construction site and a video highlighting environmental features of the campus, please visit www.amdlonestar.com.

AMD has a deep, long-standing commitment to resource conservation and climate protection, evident in the company's energy-efficient product designs and operations management. So even prior to selecting a site for new Austin offices, the environment was top of mind. Early in the site planning and design stages, AMD enlisted the help of environmental experts at the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center, green-building consultant Gail Vittori, and architecture firm Graeber Simmons & Cowan, which specializes in environmentally sustainable building design.

"We have taken an opportunity to learn from nature at the beginning of the project when it can make the most difference," said Gail Vittori, co-director of the Center for Maximum Potential Building Systems and member of the AMD Lone Star campus design team.

AMD wanted a way to measure itself in the building process, so the company chose a management tool offered by the U.S. Green Building Council called LEED™, which stands for Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design.

AMD is aiming for gold-level LEED certification for the Lone Star campus, and could be the first large enterprise business in Austin to achieve such a high rating.

LEED rates the design, construction, and operation of high-performance green buildings by recognizing performance in five key areas of human and environmental health, listed below, along with highlights of AMD's plans under each category.

1. Sustainable site development

AMD selected the Lantana site at the corner of William Cannon and Southwest Parkway to consolidate more than 2,600 employees at a location near many of their homes, shortening commute distances. An internal study found that nearly 60 percent live within 10 miles of the new campus. In fact, traffic is expected to be reduced on Austin's congested roadways by more than one million vehicle miles per year as a result of AMD's move to Oak Hill.

Once the site was selected, the Lone Star campus design team researched and developed plans for the layout of buildings on the site, building-design features, and many other aspects of the campus, including:

• Buildings positioned close together to reduce environmental footprint, leaving nearly half the site undeveloped and natural habitat zones intact
• Campus-style building layout chosen to promote foot traffic between buildings and reduce additional car travel
• Above-ground storm water re-irrigation system, which better mimics natural water flow and greatly reduces disturbance of soil and vegetation that can occur during the installation of traditional sprinkler systems
• AMD commuter benefits program expanded to encourage and provide incentives for employees who use alternative commuting options, such as biking, carpooling, vanpooling, or mass transit

2. Water savings

• Largest rooftop rainwater collection and recycling system in the world, featuring innovative V-shaped rooftops to capture storm water
• Rainwater stored and used for irrigation and cooling system
• 100 percent native landscaping, requiring minimal irrigation

3. Energy efficiency

• High-performance, energy-efficient building design
• Lighting system that harmonizes efficient electric lighting with natural lighting; fixtures will automatically turn off when there is adequate sunlight transmitted through the numerous windows
• An on-site Central Utility Plant (CUP), which is the beneficiary of the surplus water stored in a one million gallon underground tank and used in the evaporative cooling process to chill water for the campus' efficient heating and cooling system
• 100 percent renewable energy used at the site; this electricity is generated by 165 huge wind turbines located in West Texas through the City of Austin's GreenChoice® program

4. Materials selection

• Building materials and vendors' manufacturing processes selected for low impact on the environment and beneficial to human health
• Contracts with suppliers and vendors who have LEED-accredited professionals on staff
• 75 percent of construction waste generated by the project is being recycled

5. Indoor environmental quality

• Building design allows employees to work in healthy, natural-lighting settings with glare-free views of the outdoors
• Reflective ceiling panels and light shelves capture sunlight, reducing the need for electric lighting
• Raised flooring allows individual air flow adjustment for temperature control

"Going through the process to become LEED-Gold certified has formalized our company's decision-making steps in considering what makes sense for AMD, for the environment, and for our community," said AMD Director of Environmental Health and Safety Steve Groseclose. "AMD will take the information gleaned through the development of the Lone Star campus and apply it to other projects around the world."

AMD also commissioned Vittori to document the Lone Star construction process so the company can share key learnings of the green-building process with industry peers, corporate neighbors, and other interested parties.

To learn more about the U.S. Green Building Council and LEED certification, go to www.usgbc.org/leed. For information on sustainable development of the Lone Star campus, please visit www.amdlonestar.com.

On Sept. 10, AMD marked another innovation milestone with the launch of the world's most advanced x86 processor, the Quad-Core AMD Opteron™ processor, code-named "Barcelona." This just two years after AMD led the industry to a new class of computing when it launched the world's first dual-core 64-bit processor for servers and workstations.

AMD's quad-core x86 processor is the first to have four processing cores on a single piece of silicon. This means that servers based on Quad-Core AMD Opteron processors can handle more while processing it more efficiently. The technology infrastructure of most businesses and the power behind most websites are usually based on servers.

With Quad-Core, AMD provides customers unprecedented price for performance and performance-per-watt leadership for better energy efficiency in the data center.

Hundreds of Austin-based AMD engineers spent more than three years designing and testing to create Barcelona. Portions of AMD's sales, marketing, and public relations teams who launched the product are also based in Austin.

There is significant demand for servers based on the Quad-Core AMD Opteron processor, which will be available from Dell, Gateway, HP, IBM, Sun, Appro, Egenera, Rackable Systems, Supermicro, and Verari.

AMD was the only company to win two top awards – in Environment and Education – at the 7th Annual Greater Austin Chamber of Commerce Business Awards ceremony in August.

The "Greenbelt" Environmental Award went to AMD for a deep overall commitment to the environment, demonstrated in various resource conservation and climate protection efforts such as:

• Aggressive greenhouse gas and energy reduction goals for AMD operations
• Global Climate Protection Plans published annually since 2001
• Industry leadership in energy-efficient product design

AMD's partnership with the Ladybird Johnson Wildflower Center and employee volunteer plant salvaging program was featured in a video at the awards ceremony. This program entailed 49 AMD employee volunteers and community partners rescuing and temporarily relocating 9,000 trees, shrubs, and grasses from the site. The native vegetation is being replanted on the Lone Star campus over the next few months.

"This award signifies the power of AMD Green, which integrates our operations, our products, and the green-minded behavior of all of our employees worldwide," said AMD Director of Global Corporate Services Craig Garcia. "We are honored that a leading civic organization like the Austin chamber recognizes our commitment to sustainable development at the Lone Star site as an indicator of AMD's ongoing commitment to environmental stewardship."

AMD also won the "Star of Texas" Education Award for ongoing support of education initiatives in Austin, including two new innovative programs launched in 2007:

• The Mobile Go Center program, sponsored by AMD in partnership with the State of Texas, Austin Community College (ACC) and the AT&T Foundation. Operated by ACC, the Mobile Go Center is a large trailer that travels throughout Central Texas bringing college information, enrollment and financial assistance to high school students and their parents. Equipped with 14 AMD Turion™ 64 mobile technology-based HP notebook computers, the trailer visits schools and non-traditional locations such as shopping malls, community centers, fairs and festivals to encourage college enrollment among students who might not otherwise attend college.
• The AMD Music and Arts Institute at the Austin Area Urban League. An after-school music instruction program for disadvantaged youth, the AMD Music and Arts Institute offers musical instruction in piano, theory and digital music production, recording and composition – all disciplines which, studies prove, help overall academic performance. This AMD LIVE!-branded studio features "Digital Audio Workstations," which are powerful AMD Athlon&0153; 64 X2 Dual Core processor-based PC Audio Labs™ desktop and mobile notebook computers running Cubase Studio 4 audio recording software.

"Supporting education is our priority in local communities and crucial to AMD's long-term success," said AMD Public Affairs Vice President Allyson Peerman. "We especially look for opportunities where our technology can help students learn in innovative ways. We are proud to be recognized for AMD's role in supporting programs like the Mobile Go Center and the AMD Music and Arts Institute that are opening doors for individuals and strengthening our communities."

The theme of this year's Business Awards was "Our Austin, Our World," representing the far-reaching efforts underway in Austin.