AMD’s Bet On ARM Does Is Not Working

Buried in the AMD results was a note which seemed to hint that AMD’s plan to flog ARM based server chips was not going very well.

AMD Misses Again

Fabless chipmaker AMD has come up with a mixed set of results for the second quarter. The company managed to make as much cash as the cocaine nose jobs of Wall Street expected, but missed revenue expectations.

In fact its revenues were below the psychologically important billion figure at $942 million.

We knew it was going to be bad. Last week we were warned that the results would be flat. The actual figure was $942m, an 8.5 per cent sequential decline and a 34.6 per cent drop from the same period a year ago.

As you might expect, there are some measures of this not being AMD’s fault. The company is almost entirely dependent on PC sales. Not only have these fallen but don’t look like they are going to pick up for a while.

AMD’s Computing and Graphics division reported revenue of $379m, which was down 54.2 per cent, year-on-year. Its operating loss was $147m, compared to a $6m operating loss for last year’s quarter.

Lisa Su, AMD president and CEO, in a statement said that strong sequential revenue growth in AMD’s enterprise, embedded, and semi-custom segment and channel business was not enough to offset near-term problems in its PC processor business.  This was  due to lower than expected consumer demand that impacted sales to OEMs, she said.

“We continue to execute our long-term strategy while we navigate the current market environment. Our focus is on developing leadership computing and graphics products capable of driving profitable share growth across our target markets,” she added.

In the semi-custom segment, AMD makes chips for video game consoles such as the Nintendo Wii U, Microsoft Xbox One, and Sony PlayStation 4 consoles. That segment did reasonably well, up 13 percent from the previous quarter but down 8 percent from a year ago.

But AMD’s core business of processors and graphics chips fell 29 percent from the previous quarter and 54 percent from a year ago. AMD said it had decreased sales to manufacturers of laptop computers.

Figures like this strap a large target on AMD’s back with a sign saying “take me over” but AMD is not predicting total doom yet.

For the third quarter, AMD expects revenue to increase 6 percent, plus or minus 3 percent, sequentially, which is a fairly conservative outlook given the fact that Windows 10 is expected to push a few sales its way.

AMD supplies chips to the Nintendo Wii U, Microsoft Xbox One, and Sony PlayStation 4 consoles and these seem to be going rather well.

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Did AMD Commit Fraud?

AMD must face claims that it committed securities fraud by hiding problems with the bungled 2011 launch of Llano that eventually led to a $100 million write-down, a US court has decided.

According to Techeye US District Judge Yvonne Gonzales Rogers said plaintiffs had a case that AMD officials misled them by stating in the spring of 2011 and will have to face a full trial.

The lawsuit was over the Llano chip, which AMD had claimed was “the most impressive processor in history.”

AMD originally said that the product launch would happen in the fourth quarter of 2010, sales of the Llano were delayed because of problems at the company’s chip manufacturing plant.

The then Chief Financial Officer Thomas Seifert told analysts on an April 2011 conference call that problems with chip production for the Llano were in the past, and that the company would have ample product for a launch in the second quarter.

Press officers for AMD continued to insist that there were no problems with supply, concealing the fact that it was only shipping Llanos to top-tier computer manufacturers because it did not have enough chips.

By the time AMD ramped up Llano shipments in late 2011, no one wanted them any more, leading to an inventory glut.
AMD disclosed in October 2012 that it was writing down $100 million of Llano inventory as not shiftable.

Shares fell nearly 74 percent from a peak of $8.35 in March 2012 to a low of $2.18 in October 2012 when the market learned the extent of the problems with the Llano launch.

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Disney To Lay Off Workers

Walt Disney Co is making plans to lay off several hundred people in its interactive unit, the division that includes gaming products and the Disney.com website, The Wall Street Journal reported earlier this week.

The job eliminations are expected to begin after Disney releases its quarterly earnings today, the Journal said. Playdom, a social gaming business Disney acquired in 2010, is one division expected to see cutbacks, the newspaper said.

Disney is trying to turn around the interactive unit, which has about 3,000 employees. Its new Infinity video game enjoyed strong initial sales after its release last August, helping the division report a $16 million profit for the quarter that ended in September, an improvement from the $76 million loss a year earlier.

A Disney spokeswoman had no comment.

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Should Investors Dump AMD?

If you have any old AMD shares lying around you might like to sell them as fast as you can, according to the bean counters at Goldman Sachs.

Despite the fact that the company is doing rather well, and its share price is has gone up rapidly over recent months, Goldman Sach analysts claim that the writing is on the wall for AMD. It thinks that AMD shares will be worth just $2.50 soon. The stock’s 50-day moving average is currently $2.98.

The company said that while AMD could clean up in the gaming market even if you take those figures into account the stock is trading at 22 times its 2014 CY EPS estimate. In other words the company’s core PC business is still shagged and still will generate 45 per cent of the company’s 2013 revenue.

“We therefore believe this recent move in the stock is just the latest in a long history of unsustainable rallies, and we are downgrading the stock to Sell. We believe the current multiple is unjustified for any company with such significant exposure to the secularly declining PC market,” the firm’s analyst wrote.

Analysts at Sanford C. Bernstein think that the share price will settle on $2.00 and FBR Capital Markets thinks $3.00. In other words if you want to know what is really happening at AMD you might as well ask the cat, than any Wall Street expert.

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AMD Touts Its Memory Architecture

AMD has said the memory architecture in its heterogeneous system architecture (HSA) will move management of CPU and GPU memory coherency from the developer’s hands down to the hardware.

While AMD has been churning out accelerated processing units (APUs) for the best part of two years now, the firm’s HSA is the technology that will really enable developers to make use of the GPU. The firm revealed some details of the memory architecture that will form one of the key parts of HSA and said that data coherency will be handled by the hardware rather than software developers.

AMD’s HSA chips, the first of which will be Kaveri, will allow both the CPU and GPU to access system memory directly. The firm said that this will eliminate the need to copy data to the GPU, an operation that adds significant latency and can wipe out any gains in performance from GPU parallel processing.

According to AMD, the memory architecture that it calls HUMA – heterogeneous unified memory access, a play on unified memory access – will handle concurrency between the CPU and GPU at the silicon level. AMD corporate fellow Phil Rogers said that developers should not have to worry about whether the CPU or GPU is accessing a particular memory address, and similarly he claimed that operating system vendors prefer that memory concurrency be handled at the silicon level.

Rogers also talked up the ability of the GPU to take page faults and that HUMA will allow GPUs to use memory pointers, in the same way that CPUs dereference pointers to access memory. He said that the CPU will be able to pass a memory pointer to the GPU, in the same way that a programmer may pass a pointer between threads running on a CPU.

AMD has said that its first HSA-compliant chip codenamed Kaveri will tip up later this year. While AMD’s decision to give GPUs access to DDR3 memory will mean lower bandwidth than GPGPU accelerators that make use of GDDR5 memory, the ability to address hundreds of gigabytes of RAM will interest a great many developers. AMD hopes that they will pick up the Kaveri chip to see just what is possible.

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AMD’s Richland Coming In June

Richland is set to replace AMD’s Virgo platform, powered by Trinity processors, and this change will happen in June 2013, most likely coinciding with Computex 2013.

AMD has just launched the first batch of Richland mobile APUs and we still have to see some notebook designs hitting the market. We wrote about mobile Richland APUs.

As of late last year Desktop Richland was always set to launch in June 2013 and the fastest of them is the A10 6800K, clocked at 4.1GHz and 4.4 with Turbo. It also features Radeon HD 8670D graphics that run at 844 MHz. This is the fastest Richland part and it comes unlocked, ready to replace the current AMD A10 5800K. In Europe, the A10 5800K currently sells for 112, while in US the same CPU sells for $129.00 (boxed).

The alpha dog A10 6800K is followed by A10 6700, A8 6600K (Unlocked) and A8 6500. AMD has a mix of 100W and 65W quad-core Richland desktop SKUs. There will be a single A6 6400K (Unlocked) SKU and the A4 6300, both dual-cores with 65W TDP.

Production ready samples were churned out in late January, while volume production is scheduled for late March 2013. The announcement was always scheduled for June 2013 and Richland last through most of 2013, until Kaveri with 28nm Steamroller comes on line.

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AMD Goes Richland

There have been more than enough leaks dealing with Richland, AMD’s successor to the Trinity powered Virgo platform, and we even had a chance to see some leaks regarding its successor, codenamed Kaveri. As you may already know, Richland is planned to last through 2013 and it is clear that this is very important chip for AMD.

Based on the Piledriver architecture and built using 32nm technology, Richland will feature an integrated GPU that will be upgraded to Radeon HD 8000 series, a generation ahead of Trinity. As you know, there has been a lot of leaks regarding the Richland parts and the quad-core A10-6800K with Radeon HD 8670D graphics is expected to pack quite a punch. Best of all, Richland will still use the same FM2 socket.

According to our sources, the NDA will be lifted on 12th of March, 8am EST, and we are sure that we will see at least a couple of reviews as well as some additional info regarding the price and the availability date.

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AMD Debuts R5000

AMD has released its Firepro R5000 graphics card that has video over IP capabilities.

AMD typically promotes its workstation class Firepro cards using CAD/CAM software, however this time the company is relying on remote viewing as the big selling point for its latest workstation graphics card. AMD’s Firepro R5000 has a GPU that uses its Graphics Core Next (GCN) architecture and Teradici PC video over IP technology to send graphics output over the network.

AMD used its Pitcarin GPU coupled to 2GB of GDDR5 memory in the Firepro R5000. However it isn’t AMD’s GPU that is the big selling point of the Firepro R5000 but rather Teradici’s Tera2240 chip that encrypts display output before sending it out on the network, while supporting up to 60fps (frames per second).

AMD’s Firepro R5000 is intended to be used in render farms, with each final image being sent over an IP network to the end host, and the firm claims that the technology can be used in education, financial and media environments.

The Firepro R5000 is a single slot graphics card that has two mini Displayport outputs that can drive two 2500×1600 displays, however it can also drive a further four remote displays at 1920×1200 resolution by sending data over its RJ45 Ethernet port.

Both AMD and Teradici talked up the low configuration overheads of the Firepro R5000.

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AMD 2014 GPU Shaping Up

It looks like AMD has changed its mind about 8000 series graphics, part of the Solar System range of products are slowly showing up in the market.

We got an idea that at some point in the latter part of 2013 there will be some new Sea Islands based graphics line from AMD. What we refer to as the HD 8000 series will come at some point, but AMD can actually end up branding some of these new parts as HD 7000 series products as well.

We were more interested in the big picture, when and whether we will see an entirely new generation in 2014, let’s call it 9000 series for now. Multiple sources have told us that AMD will stick with discrete graphics for the foreseeable future. In 2014, we should see the new HSA generation as well as a steady roadmap for the future beyond 2014.

Remember, AMD still makes quite a bit of money on graphics. It doesn’t makes a lot, but it doesn’t build GPUs at a loss either. Its graphics integrated in CPUs, APUs if you will, also help AMD sell more cores and this is why AMD will stick with making new graphics cores in the future. Technology developed for high-end discrete graphics will trickle down to APUs over time.

Winning all three consoles, including the already launched Nintendo Wii U as well as the soon to launch Xbox 720 (next) and Playstation, 4 will definitely help AMD to perform even better in the future and build closer relations with developers.

Nvidia will have someone to fight in this market and AMD will continue to make discrete graphics cards, as well as notebook chips. Both companies will fight for as much market share as they possibly can and analysts who claim either of them is about to ditch the discrete market is dead wrong.

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