SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
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.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 24 2016, @09:16AM
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.