AMD Postpones Americas Partner Summit Due to Coronavirus

'We postponed our Americas Partner Summit due to factors related to COVID-19 and wanting to help ensure the health and safety of our employees, customers and partners,' AMD says of the annual partner event, for which the chipmaker is 'exploring other options as well.'

AMD has postponed its Americas Partner Summit that was set to happen next month in New Orleans due to concerns about the coronavirus outbreak.

The Santa Clara, Calif.-based company confirmed to CRN that the event, which was scheduled for April 28–30, was postponed indefinitely as the company "explores other options for the event." A new date has not been determined yet for the annual partner conference.

[Related: Researchers Uncover New Vulnerabilities In Intel, AMD Processors]

"We postponed our Americas Partner Summit due to factors related to COVID-19 and wanting to help ensure the health and safety of our employees, customers and partners," an AMD spokesperson said in an email. "We have not announced an updated date for the event. We are exploring other options for the event as well, but have not announced any plans at this point."

The AMD Partner Summit for the Americas region is the latest tech event to get impacted by the coronavirus outbreak as hundreds of cases get confirmed in the U.S. While some companies like AMD and HP Inc. have decided to postpone their events, others, like Dell Technologies and Nvidia, have opted to cancel the physical portions of their conferences and hold digital events instead.

In the U.S., the number of people with confirmed cases of novel coronavirus COVID-19 has reached 607 while 22 people have died from the virus and eight have recovered, according to a real-time tracker maintained by Johns Hopkins University. Worldwide, the total number of cases has reached 113,579, the number of deaths 3,995 and recoveries 62,496.

The news of AMD's decision comes after the company's CEO, Lisa Su, told investors last week that the chipmaker expects a "modest" impact on revenue from the ongoing coronavirus crisis, but it hasn't impacted the company's short-term and long-term revenue forecasts.

"From the demand standpoint again, this is a very fluid situation, so there are lots of puts and takes," she said Thursday during AMD's Financial Analyst Day, where the company revealed its CDNA data center GPU architecture and updated roadmaps for its Ryzen and EPYC processors.

In discussing the impact of the coronavirus, Su said the company has been taking precautions to protect the health of AMD's employees, partners and customers.

"Our first priority, of course, like all of our colleagues, is to ensure the health and safety of our employees and our partners and our customers," she said. "And so that is our focus, and we have taken steps to minimize potential exposure at our global sites and with travel, like most of our peer companies have."