Reducing costs and "focusing" its workforce on key opportunities will boost AMD's competitiveness, AMD President and CEO Rory Read said in a statement.

The restructuring plan, which includes the layoffs, should save US$200 million in operating expenses next year, the company said. The company plans to use most of that money to fund AMD's strategies for lower power, emerging markets and the cloud, it said.

The layoffs will hit workers across all functions globally and are expected to happen by the first quarter next year.

The restructuring will cost AMD some money too. In the fourth quarter, it expects restructuring expenses of $101 million with an additional $4 million in expenses occurring next year.

AMD has had trouble recently since its manufacturing partner, GlobalFoundries, which was spun out of AMD in 2009, had problems manufacturing a new kind of chip for AMD. The issues led to a short supply of AMD's Fusion chips and .