Corporate Responsibility Overview 

At AMD, corporate responsibility is integrated into our daily business practices. It is a reflection of our culture, our values, and the way we do business. More than 40 years ago, AMD was founded on the core value of respect for people. That value forms the base upon which we continue to build our corporate responsibility programs. From our employees around the world, to the communities where we operate-people come first.

We encourage your feedback on AMD's corporate responsibility programs, progress and plans.

Material Issues, Strategy and the Corporate Responsibility Council

"Strategy is the direction and scope of an organization over the long-term: which achieves advantage for the organization through its configuration of resources within a challenging environment, to meet the needs of markets and to fulfill stakeholder expectations."
- Johnson and Scholes (Exploring Corporate Strategy)¹

AMD has a long record of leadership in corporate responsibility. This report marks our 16th consecutive corporate responsibility report and, over these years, our programs have matured and changed with the company. This year, we re-evaluated our fundamental strategy for corporate responsibility to align with AMD's new business model and goals. 

Looking back, a major focus of our corporate responsibility programs had been improving the environmental footprint of our silicon manufacturing factories. Today, after the transfer of these manufacturing assets to GLOBALFOUNDRIES, AMD is a very different company, and we set out to answer the question: How should our corporate responsibility program be integrated within our new business model?

In the paper, Strategy and Society-The Link Between Competitive Advantage and Corporate Social Responsibility,² Michael Porter and Mark Kramer make the argument that "CSR can be much more than a cost, a constraint or a charitable deed-it can be a source of opportunity, innovation and competitive advantage." This philosophy-the integration of corporate responsibility with business for shared value-became our guiding principal for the development of our new strategy. Please read more about our strategy in the 2010 Annual CR Report.

Stakeholder Input

Starting in 2011, AMD will engage with Ceres to facilitate dialogue with a team of external stakeholders to review our priorities and strategies. Ceres is a national network of social investment analysts, environmental organizations and other public interest groups working with companies to address sustainability challenges such as global climate change.  Ceres is currently selecting the stakeholder team, which will be made up of an independent group of experts drawn primarily from the Ceres coalition, and representing a range of constituencies that have expertise in environmental, social and governance issues in our industry. Through this review process, the Ceres stakeholder team will provide feedback to AMD, which we will consider in refining, developing and implementing our strategies and communications on corporate responsibility.  Learn more about AMD's approach to stakeholder engagement here.

Awards and Recognition

While our commitment to being a responsible corporation is not dependent on recognition, it is great validation of our work when external organizations rank us with the top sustainable companies on recognized indices or bestow awards on AMD. These awards and rankings are based on standards of performance that are developed by each conferring organization. We were proud to be honored with the following recognition in 2010:

• Read about other awards presented to AMD.

Transparency

Scope

Our web site provides information on AMD programs addressing environmental protection, social responsibility, and economic performance. Operational data for 2010 is for AMD majority-owned and operated facilities located in Sunnyvale, California; Austin, Texas; Markham, Ontario; Penang, Malaysia; Singapore; and Suzhou, People's Republic of China for the period January 1, 2010 through December 31, 2010. Where noted, we have also included data from some of our smaller sites.

Measurement and Verification

Where practical, the data we present is measured directly or empirically derived. In some cases we rely on data from external parties, such as utility and waste management providers. Restatements for our 2009 corporate responsibility data are shown in our performance indicator data tables.

With the exception of financial information, the data provided in this report has not been independently verified by a third party auditing firm. These data are collected from many different sources using well-established processes that include a rigorous review. Internal processes are periodically assessed to ensure that accurate, consistent, and reproducible information is reported.

GRI

The Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) has become the predominant international standard for corporate responsibility reporting. To ensure that we report the most comprehensive corporate responsibility information feasible, we have used the GRI G3 Guidelines as an index to our disclosures in our GRI Table. For 2010, we revised our materiality analysis (the indicators that are of material importance in the context of corporate responsibility) and added new information in areas where we had previously not reported.

Over our 16 years of corporate responsibility reporting, we have undergone many changes and continue to adapt to the evolving communication needs of our stakeholders. We welcome your input and comments about AMD's Corporate Responsibility program. Please contact us.

For more details about our Overview, view our 2010 Annual CR Report.