Diamond Multimedia Systems Inc has shed a fifth of its workforce – 120 full-time positions and 60 temporary ones – as part of a cost reduction exercise. The company says it has also eliminated low margin product lines, closed several small offices and moved its manufacturing offshore. President and CEO William Schroeder says Diamond remains committed to its core business in graphics and modems, as well as to its more promising new lines, the HomeFree home networking products and Rio portable internet music player (CI No 3,513). The Recording Industry Association of America tried to prevent Diamond releasing the Rio player, but a legal win for the company means the product should be on shelves in time for Christmas. Part of the restructure is an exclusive agreement with IBM to supply graphics accelerators based on Big Blue technology to the Windows NT workstation market. Diamond has promoted its Professional Graphics Business Unit to full division status and has decided to focus all development and marketing on the IBM architecture. The chipsets will be marketed under the Fire GL brand.
