AMD Q4 Sees Strong 2013 Revenue Growth In GPUs and Console APUs, PC Financials Weak
AMD has released its annual earnings report, and the news for the chipmaker is mixed but looking up. For the year, AMD saw revenue drop 2% from 2012 (from $5.42 billion to $5.3 billion), but the company had a solid fourth quarter in 2013 with $1.59 billion revenue which marked a 38% year-over-year jump from 2012.
Much of that revenue came from sales of Microsoft’s Xbox One and Sony’s PlayStation 4. (Lest anyone forget that both of those very popular consoles run on AMD semi-custom hardware, that was a big win for the company.) AMD says that altogether, the Microsoft and Sony sold 7 million gaming consoles in two months.
In addition, AMD did well in its Graphics and Visual Solutions segment, seeing a net revenue of $2.2 billion for the year. Along with their big get with gaming consoles, AMD scored a design win with the Apple Mac Pro, which runs AMD FirePro professional graphics. There was also a strong demand for new discrete GPUs, which AMD met with new Radeon R9, R7, and R5 M200 Series chips, which include Graphics Core Next (GCN) architecture and the Mantle API.
AMD lost some ground in 2013 with its Computing Solutions revenue, which includes all of its standalone x86 processors, APUs, chipsets, embedded processors, and dense servers. AMD chalks that up to decreased chipset and notebook shipments, which isn’t a surprise, as the industry as a whole is seeing declines there. The company's chief rival, Intel, however, is projecting flat year on year revenues in this arena.
AMD is projecting a further decline on the PC side for Q1 2014, although just “in line with seasonality”, and the company also believes its graphics segment will take a dip in the first quarter coming off of a great Q4 2013 for a total revenue decrease of 16%.
However, AMD still expects to see an overall year-over-year boost in revenues. It’s likely that the new Kaveri APU (review here) design wins, which include support for true heterogenous computing, will bolster AMD’s revenues in the second half of the year.
In other AMD news, its server solutions division will debut new x86 and ARM 64-bit solutions, with sampling of the latter beginning in late Q1 2014. This will be AMD's first effort with an ARM solution and it should interesting to see the implementation and uptake in the market when it's released later this quarter.
Much of that revenue came from sales of Microsoft’s Xbox One and Sony’s PlayStation 4. (Lest anyone forget that both of those very popular consoles run on AMD semi-custom hardware, that was a big win for the company.) AMD says that altogether, the Microsoft and Sony sold 7 million gaming consoles in two months.
In addition, AMD did well in its Graphics and Visual Solutions segment, seeing a net revenue of $2.2 billion for the year. Along with their big get with gaming consoles, AMD scored a design win with the Apple Mac Pro, which runs AMD FirePro professional graphics. There was also a strong demand for new discrete GPUs, which AMD met with new Radeon R9, R7, and R5 M200 Series chips, which include Graphics Core Next (GCN) architecture and the Mantle API.
AMD lost some ground in 2013 with its Computing Solutions revenue, which includes all of its standalone x86 processors, APUs, chipsets, embedded processors, and dense servers. AMD chalks that up to decreased chipset and notebook shipments, which isn’t a surprise, as the industry as a whole is seeing declines there. The company's chief rival, Intel, however, is projecting flat year on year revenues in this arena.
AMD is projecting a further decline on the PC side for Q1 2014, although just “in line with seasonality”, and the company also believes its graphics segment will take a dip in the first quarter coming off of a great Q4 2013 for a total revenue decrease of 16%.
However, AMD still expects to see an overall year-over-year boost in revenues. It’s likely that the new Kaveri APU (review here) design wins, which include support for true heterogenous computing, will bolster AMD’s revenues in the second half of the year.
ARM 64-bit Server Solutions On The Way
In other AMD news, its server solutions division will debut new x86 and ARM 64-bit solutions, with sampling of the latter beginning in late Q1 2014. This will be AMD's first effort with an ARM solution and it should interesting to see the implementation and uptake in the market when it's released later this quarter.
