AMD had a decent quarter and close to a profitable year as a whole. For the quarter ending on December 28th, the company managed $89 million dollars in profits. This accounts for interest payments on loans and everything else. The whole year averaged to a $103 million dollar gain in operating income although that still works out to a loss of $74 million (for the year) all things considered. That said, a quarterly gain of $89 million versus an annual loss of $74 million. One more quarter would forgive the whole year.
This is a hefty turn-around from their billion dollar operating loss of last year.
This gain was led by Graphics and Visual Solutions. While Computing Solutions revenue has declined, the graphics team has steadily increased in both revenue and profits. Graphics and Visual Solutions are in charge of graphics processors as well as revenue from the game console manufacturers. Even then, their processor division is floating just below profitability.
Probably the best news for AMD is that they plan the next four quarters to each be profitable. Hopefully this means that there are no foreseen hurdles in the middle of their marathon.
AMD has many great products
AMD has many great products in the pipeline, docport, nanoPC and tangoPC are fantastic products.
Mobile Kaveri, Beema, Mullins and 64-bit ARM SOC can help AMD in Q2/Q3/Q4 2014.
Putting more resources in drivers and SDKs for HSA should be AMD’s top priority.
Anyway, AMD is on a right track. It needs to pushing ahead one step at a time.
I think not having the game
I think not having the game bundles that they had in the past has helped them make money. They are not having to eat the cost of the games.
Were AMD can really excel in,
Were AMD can really excel in, with Kaveri mobile APUs on laptops, is the Ability to crossfire the APU graphics with an AMD mobile descrete GPU, without having to switch to a just one or the other mode, that any descrete AMD or Nvidia GPU has to do with Intel’s CPUs. AMD is in a good position to benifit from its x86 based mobile kaveri APUs crossfiring with an AMD descrete mobile GPUs, as Nvidia has no laptop grade CPU/GPU product yet, and Intel does not sell descrete GPUs for the laptop market, or any market.
AMD needs to bring laptop refrence designs to the market that can take advantage of Kavari’s HSA and graphics ability and boost that with their descrete mobile GPU/s, and let the consumer know that Kaveri’s HSA ability can let the kaveri APU’s descrete GPU act as the equlivent of extra CPU cores, for physics and other gaming work, as well as offering a graphics boost to any AMD descrete mobile GPU, Via crossfire with an AMD mobile GPU on a laptop.
AMD Mullins APU powered nano
AMD Mullins APU powered nano PC + Dockport video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SAgu7Civegc
Tango PC: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OuhPlhICG2I
In PCMark 8, 15W Beema (2312) is 24% faster than 25W Kabini A6-5200 (1861).
In many situations, Mullins and Beema APUs with $70 dollars AMD Dockport will be unbeatable.
sorry need a true desktop
sorry need a true desktop variant – or an apu that can crossfire with a really good apu and not a low end part.
currently that will not happen. even if it will not crossfire -but allow the apu to function in cpu mode with the gpu parts available for cpu calculations that may be nice.
but until i hear better new AMD is looking to be in the past.
so though it might make money for the moment it will have to shrink again to adjust to the much smaller market it will have in the future
Maybe AMD needs to raise
Maybe AMD needs to raise their GPU prices $5, or $10 and use the money for software/driver development, laptop APU wise AMD would be able to sale a lot more APUs if they could be made to efficiently work along side an AMD descrete mobile GPU, even if the APU’s integrated GPU was handling general compute/physics acceleration at first, and then more graphics workload shareing with the laptop’s descrete GPU as the driver software/updates became available! If AMD coud do this and do it soon enough with the Kaveri Mobile laptop SKUs, AMD would have a combination that any current Intel based laptop could do not would not do, Use both the Integrated and Descrete GPU resources at the same time. Kaveri’s HSA ability is going to take a while to be fully implemented in software, but once the software ecosystem catches up, the hardware should really begin to come into its own. Nvidia is not standing still with their tegra k1 and its compute “cores” and Maxwell GPUs with ARM denver core/s, and Nvidia could make A K1 style Denver ARM core chip with 4 denver cores and kepler graphics that could run in a low end laptop, or chromebook type device. AMD desktop APUs will still be behind Intel, at the top end (CPU side ONLY), Intel had so much more money to win in the CPU high end market, but Intel for high end gaming does not happen without AMD or Nvidia in the PCIe slot! AMD needs to fix is channel partners retail over pricing of its high end GPUs, or AMD needs to open up a direct sales channel for the Bitcoin/otherCoin market, as AMD does not profit from the retail demand pricing fluxuations, and AMD could sure use the extra revenues.
I don’t think so. I really
I don’t think so. I really hope that changes this year though.
They are seriously slacking on the software side. Driver development is so slow it’s a joke now. How long ago did they promise those Crossfire fixes? DX9 frame pacing is still nonexistent, multi-monitor frame pacing is still nonexistent.
Their solution to the G-Force Experience is truly atrocious. They tried force you to download it with a driver. Then they bribed people with a win BF4 contest if you let the app track your games. Which they didnt even make. They just bought or licensed Raptr, and re-named it to “AMD Gaming Evolved Control Center (beta)” (Yeah, that’s a better name). They then added the “optimize”. Which it can only “optimize” 11 games, out of my 60+ game library. It also does not seem to take Crossfire into account when you do “optimize”.
They have no solution to ShadowPlay at all. Which they really, really, really, do need. Even Intel has GPU accelerated recording.
Have you been to the “support” forums? With nobody from AMD responding to anything.
At this point it is actually AMD that is pushing me into the other camp with the complete lack of support, and decent software. I don’t care if they have the best GPUs on the market in every price range. The support sucks, and that will be the nail in the coffin IMO.
+1
Nail on head.
+1
Nail on head.