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Shares of Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) just had a big pop in heavy volume, lifting off of earlier gains and rising 40 cents, or over 14%, to $3.22, and as high as $3.28 just before that.

Shares are experiencing cumulative volume today of 73.7 million shares, versus a 30-day average of 16.74 million.

There's not a lot of news flow today to which to peg the sudden rise.

Wells Fargo's David Wong, who has an Outperform rating on the shares, and a $5 to $7 "valuation range," wrote this morning that the company today debuted two new microprocessors in its "FX" series, the "FX-6350" and the "FX-4350," two 4.2-gigahertz processors selling for $132 and $122, respectively.

Wong notes that AMD also listed some changes to processor prices, but that it seems prices overall have stabilized for the company:

On its website, AMD has made pricing changes for various performance desktop offerings including A-Series, FX-Series, and Phenom chips. The changes include: A6-3600 (2.1/2.4GHz QC 4M) from $95 to $77; A8-3800 (2.4/2.7GHz QC 4M) from $105 to $91; A8-3820 (2.5GHz QC 4M) from $115 to $101; A6-5400K (3.6GHz DC 1M) from $67 to $57; A8-5500 (3.2GHz QC 4M) from $101 to $91; A8-5600K (3.6GHz QC 4M) from $101 to $91; FX-4300 (4.0GHz, 4C, 1MB L2, 4MB L3) from $122 to $108; FX-6300 (4.1GHz, 6C, 1MB L2, 8MB L3) from $132 to $112; FX-8320 (4.0GHz, 8C, 1MB L2, 8MB L3) from $169 to $153 ; Phenom II X4 965 BE(3.4GHz QC 8M) from $91 to $81 […] These adjustments do not result in any changes to AMD's list pricing ranges for its various desktop chip families, and we expect the microprocessor pricing environment will remain benign.

Update: Calls in to sell-side folks have at this point turned up a couple of rumors. One is a persistent rumor that Intel (INTC) will buy AMD, which, according to one source who could not be quoted by name, might suddenly be possible because the field of computing is now being defined more broadly than just the PC, which means "there aren't as many anti-trust isues," perhaps. Although the rumor is not a new one, "It's in circulation again today."

Another item is leaked word this morning, before market open, that Taiwan's Acer (2353TW) is going to use AMD's "Temash" chip in forthcoming laptops. However, a source said that given Acer is already a customer, it would seem hard to imagine that bit could contribute such a jump in the shares.

Then, of course, there is the impending arrival of Sony's (SNE) PlayStation 4, which has been confirmed to use AMD's part. Microsoft's (MSFT) next Xbox game console, which will be unveiled on May 21st, is also expected to use AMD's chip, although that has not been confirmed formally at this time.

The fact that short interest is about 20% of AMD's common is certainly a factor that could affect today's move.