AMD achieves highest quarterly profit in seven years and on track with 7nm
AMD had revenue of $1.76 billion in the quarter and made a profit of $116 million. That is the highest quarterly profit in seven years. AMD emphasizes that the production of CPUs and GPUs on the 7nm process is on schedule.
According to AMD CEO Lisa Su, the good quarterly figures are due to the good sales of Ryzen CPUs and Radeon GPUs. Revenue of $1.76 billion was 53 percent higher than in the same quarter last year. Compared to the previous quarter this year, it is an increase of 7 percent. A year ago, AMD made a $42 million loss in the comparable quarter, now that has been reversed to $116 million in profit. Converted that is currently about 99 million euros.
The vast majority of revenue comes from the Computing and Graphics segment. That was 1.09 billion euros, an increase of 64 percent compared to last year. Revenue in the segment that includes CPUs and GPUs was 3 percent lower than in the previous quarter, according to AMD due to reduced revenue from GPU sales as fewer video cards are sold for crypto mining.
The Enterprise, Embedded and Semi-Custom segment, which includes the Epyc server processors and custom socs that AMD makes for consoles, for example, had quarterly revenue of $670 million. That is 37 percent more than a year ago.
When discussing the quarterly figures, the CEO of AMD repeatedly states that the production of processors and GPUs on the 7nm process is on schedule. The company started supplying samples of its Vega GPU in the past quarter, which is made at 7nm and should be released at the end of this year. It is a GPU that is intended for servers and workstations; consumer video cards with a 7nm GPU probably won’t come this year.
Lisa Su says she is satisfied with the long-term roadmap. In the second quarter, AMD received its first 7nm chip for the Epyc 2 processor. The processor codenamed Rome should be released next year. According to the AMD CEO, the quality of the chip is already high and the manufacturer has started sending early samples of the Rome processors to a select number of partners. AMD has its cpus and gpus made at 7nm by TSMC and GlobalFoundries. The current samples of the Epyc 2 processor are made by TSMC, says Su.
When the next generation of Ryzen consumer processors will come, which will also be made at 7nm, the CEO does not want to say yet. In response to a question about that, Su only says that the Ryzen variants come after the Epyc processors. It is not yet clear how long it will take for consumer processors to arrive after the server CPUs appear.
Su also says that Microsoft and Sony have jointly shipped more than a hundred million current-generation consoles with AMD chips. Sony announces its PlayStation 4 deliveries every quarter and in April the counter stood at more than 76 million copies. Microsoft does not disclose figures on Xbox deliveries, but the AMD CEO’s statement shows that the share of PS4 consoles is much higher. EA claimed in May that Microsoft has sold 29.4 million Xbox One consoles.