Good sales of game console chips limit AMD loss

AMD struggled with declining sales of CPUs and APUs in the past quarter, but good sales of chips for consoles and GPU sales ensured that the loss was limited to $ 20 million.

The Computing Solutions division, which includes the CPUs and APUs, saw its revenue fall by 12 percent compared to last year and 8 percent compared to last quarter. Not only were fewer of these chips sold, but the average price of the chips also fell.

The Graphics and Visual Solutions segment significantly outperformed, with sales up 118 percent. According to AMD, this is mainly due to the good sales of the new generations of consoles from Sony and Microsoft. Sony has now sold 7 million units of its PS4, while Microsoft has shipped 5 million. In addition, the high demand for AMD Radeon R7 and R9 video cards also contributed to the good numbers.

AMD is in a transition to become less dependent on CPUs and APUs, where it is difficult to compete with Intel, while the PC market has been underperforming for a long time. The chip design company is therefore focusing more on so-called semi-custom x86 SOCs, such as those for game consoles. In addition, energy-efficient chips for servers should provide better results. This year, among other things, 64-bit chips based on the arm architecture for servers should appear.

AMD’s total revenue rose 28 percent to $1.4 billion. The loss came to $20 million, compared to a loss of $146 million last year. During the discussion of the quarterly figures, CEO Rory Read gave a sneer at Intel, which gives companies hefty subsidies to make tablets with Intel chips and refers to it with the term counter revenue. “We don’t know that concept at AMD,” he said.