Stories
Slash Boxes
Comments

SoylentNews is people

posted by cmn32480 on Saturday April 23 2016, @11:48AM   Printer-friendly
from the less-crappily-than-last-year dept.

AMD's first quarter results are out, and the company did report a loss, but results were better than last year:

Looking at the overall quarter, AMD had revenues of $832 million, which is down a significant 19% from last year. But the good news for AMD is that their gross margin is up to 32%, an increase over last quarter and having it come back to the same level as a year ago. AMD reported an operating loss of $68 million for the quarter, which is an improvement over the $137 million loss last year.

AMD predicted 15% revenue growth for the second quarter, and its shares surged 52%:

AMD also announced an x86 and SoC licensing agreement with Tianjin Haiguang Advanced Technology Investment Co., Ltd that will make the company at least $293 million:

However what those products will be remains to be seen. While AMD is announcing the formation of the joint venture, their participation, and what they stand to gain, any actual product announcements are the responsibility of the joint venture. What AMD is emphasizing at this time is that this is a joint venture for high performance processors, that it is designed to complement AMD's existing server efforts, and that the SoCs will be leading-edge products. Just what a high performance processor is – and whether that means a multicore-heavy design or something using fewer, higher performing cores – will definitely be a burning question between now and the joint venture's own product announcements. Overall, at this point what AMD is describing does not sound like the joint venture will simply be developing cheaper, lower performing processors for the Chinese market.

AMD's Zen CPUs and Polaris GPUs will be out this year, and its K12 ARM server chips are expected next year.


Original Submission

This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.
Display Options Threshold/Breakthrough Mark All as Read Mark All as Unread
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
  • (Score: 2) by ilPapa on Saturday April 23 2016, @12:32PM

    by ilPapa (2366) on Saturday April 23 2016, @12:32PM (#336184) Journal

    "...less worse..."

    This offends my eyes and ears.

    --
    You are still welcome on my lawn.
    • (Score: 5, Funny) by maxwell demon on Saturday April 23 2016, @12:44PM

      by maxwell demon (1608) Subscriber Badge on Saturday April 23 2016, @12:44PM (#336187) Journal

      Maybe it would hurt much more less worse if you more better train your brain to less stronger reject those more less correct grammar constructions by reading more many of them. ;-)

      --
      The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
      • (Score: 2, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 23 2016, @01:08PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 23 2016, @01:08PM (#336202)

        Maybe it would hurt much more less worse if you more better train

        Such exposure therapy. Much grimacing. Wow.

    • (Score: 2) by ilPapa on Sunday April 24 2016, @12:49PM

      by ilPapa (2366) on Sunday April 24 2016, @12:49PM (#336522) Journal

      I noticed the editors changed the summary to remove the offending construction. Thank you.

      --
      You are still welcome on my lawn.
  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 23 2016, @01:05PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 23 2016, @01:05PM (#336200)

    But the good news is they expect their sales to rise 15 pct!

  • (Score: 3, Interesting) by Hairyfeet on Sunday April 24 2016, @12:05AM

    by Hairyfeet (75) <reversethis-{moc ... {8691tsaebssab}> on Sunday April 24 2016, @12:05AM (#336375) Journal

    is that once they went from MHz to cores? They quickly surpassed what the average user needs by a rather large margin. Hell even mainstream gamers can play most games at 1080P with lots of bling with a Phenom II quad or C2Q from 7 years ago, and simply adding an SSD will make most systems more than snappy enough for the majority. A perfect example is the laptop I just got finished cleaning and updating, its a C2D laptop old enough it has a WinXP sticker on it but by just going from 2Gb to 4Gb of RAM and slapping in an SSD? the customer is quite happy with it and sees no reason to replace it and Win 7 runs great on it.

    That said what is gonna give AMD a hell of a boost is having a total monopoly on the console market, which will mean just about all games will be optimized for their chips, and their server deal which will give them a nice chunk of the growing Chinese market. If the Zen rumors are true and its between Sandy Bridge and Skylake while having more cores at a better price? Then the future of AMD is looking up.

    --
    ACs are never seen so don't bother. Always ready to show SJWs for the racists they are.
    • (Score: 3, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 24 2016, @02:18AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 24 2016, @02:18AM (#336410)

      Until AMD puts out a compiler optimized for their chips, they will still be at the mercy of any software compiled through Intel's compiler. I have said for years that AMD should work with the gcc compiler group.

      • (Score: 3, Interesting) by Hairyfeet on Tuesday April 26 2016, @12:47AM

        by Hairyfeet (75) <reversethis-{moc ... {8691tsaebssab}> on Tuesday April 26 2016, @12:47AM (#337199) Journal

        Ask and ye shall receive [amd.com], and what is more its based on GCC just as you asked for so full source is available. No cripple compiler bullshit like with Intel here, as you can check the source yourself.

        --
        ACs are never seen so don't bother. Always ready to show SJWs for the racists they are.
  • (Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 24 2016, @09:16AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 24 2016, @09:16AM (#336481)

    It's interesting to observe. Racing in Gran Turismo, the player always starts out in last place these days. They got rid of qualifying. I guess they got tired of people winning just because their lap time was better than the computer's. So, they moved the goal posts. Now, I start out -30 from pole position, always a rolling start. In a 5 lap race, that means I need to gain 6 seconds each lap on the lead car to even hope to cross the finish line at the same time. That's a fixed sized pie. If I only gain 5 seconds on the lead car on one lap, I need to make up 7 seconds on the next lap if I want to have a chance at finishing first. If I can't do that, then I only come in 3rd or 4th place, since the computer drivers usually have the lead cars in a 2-3 car cluster.

    That's sort of hilarious to think about on its own since a computer is driving the way real drivers drive. Always flocking. Anyway.

    What is the end goal for AMD? How do they win the race? If their gross margin is up 32% this lap, does that mean they can relax and only shoot for 30% next lap or do they need to punch it and get to 34% on the next lap?

    Nobody gives a shit what anything is really worth. I've always bought AMD processors because I think they're better than Intel. Sure, Intel's processors excel at certain tasks. But I've always been happy with AMD. If AMD completely fucked up and only increased their gross margin 20% on the next lap, what does that mean?

    Does that mean they need to perform the inhuman task of increasing their lap time from 20% this lap to 42% next lap to even maintain the same distance from the lead car?

    This seems like a fundamentally flawed way of doing economics to me. Modern Gran Turismo seems to bear a striking resemblance to debt-based currencies.