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AMD-Opteron-A1100

AMD reported its second-quarter results today and they came in extremely well, relative to the general country of the PC market. Revenue was $1.027 billion, upwards 23% from Q1 and 9% compared to the same period in 2015. The company'southward non-GAAP (More often than not Accepted Accounting Principles) operating income was $3 one thousand thousand, while it recorded an $viii million loss by GAAP standards. Net income was $69 million this quarter.

The company'southward overall fiscal position improved cheers to a number of factors. First, it recognized pre-tax gain of $150 million related to the sales of its exam and packaging facilities to its new Chinese joint venture (JV). The full value of that bargain was $351 million; AMD has recognized the revenue over multiple quarters.

Q2-2016

This chart shows AMD's segment information and overall breakdown. APU sales slipped slightly from Q1, falling to $435 one thousand thousand from $460 million, merely were still up significantly from last twelvemonth'due south low of $379 million. Meanwhile, sales in AMD's other segment — that's basically the PS4 and Xbox One at the moment — grew 60% compared to Q1 and v% compared to last year. Q1 tends to exist the weakest quarter for console sales, only both Microsoft and Sony are going to exist gearing upward for the launch of the Xbox One S and (possibly) the PlayStation Neo. Every bit chiefly, AMD's operating income was a much college per centum of its revenue this quarter than a yr ago — $84 million on $592 million in sales is a much improve position than $27 million on $562 meg in sales.

In her prepared remarks, CEO Lisa Su reported that AMD's GPU sales increased by double-digit percentages in the first half, while Polaris' launch late in Q2 pushed AMD desktop GPU shipments to their highest level in 2 years. The company believes its 7th generation APUs are as well ramping well with 25 new design wins expected to exist available "in the coming months." Bristol Ridge really seems to exist running backside schedule — we expected systems to exist in-market already. It'due south possible AMD held the launch for the dorsum-to-school flavour, however, which ways we should encounter the first rigs in the very near future.

AMD headquarters

Zen Update

Su also gave a Zen update (Zupdate?), noting that priority sampling began this quarter and dual-socket validation is now underway. She did, nonetheless, say that "We remain on track for volume shipments of our "Zen" server CPU in the first half of 2017."

There are a few things to annotation regarding AMD's timing. First, information technology matches what Su said earlier this year, when she noted that AMD intended to begin sampling its priority customers in the 2nd quarter. Q2 rolled around, priority customers got sampled. So far, and so good.

The "first one-half 2017" statement is a specific reference to the server platform, non Zen itself. In the Q&A sessions, Su elaborated:

"We have been very focused on the server launch for first one-half of 2017. Desktop should launch earlier that. In terms of true volume ability, I believe it volition exist the first quarter of 2017. We may ship some express volume towards the terminate of the fourth quarter, based on how bring upward goes and the customer readiness."

So what does this hateful for Zen's launch timing? Information technology's genuinely hard to say. We've previously speculated that the fleck could appear as early on as CES 2017, and that's still possible, merely it would be unusual for AMD to launch Zen's desktop version in January but delay the server part until late Q2. Unusual, yet, isn't the same matter as "unheard of," — and AMD could be finalizing other aspects of the server blueprint. Information technology's possible that any difference betwixt Zen's desktop and server launch windows is related to additional validation and bring-up for the server chipset and platform rather than the CPU architecture itself. For now, nosotros'll accept to wait and run across.

Console sales remain AMD's major strong conform and the master commuter of much of its positive news. A potent Zen launch five-6 months from now could modify that, but Bristol Ridge'southward pocket-size performance improvements aren't going to dramatically reverse AMD's fortunes in the CPU and APU market. AMD has had a strong 2016 thus far with the RX 480's launch, its new Chinese joint venture, and new console refreshes from Sony and Microsoft, but it needs to demonstrate that it tin can bring its new CPU to market if it wants to reverse years of market share losses. The company did confirm that information technology expects to scroll Zen-based APUs in 2017 — presumably based around a Polaris or Vega-derived graphics cadre and DDR4 memory. Based on current trends, information technology seems unlikely that nosotros'll see HBM2 in desktop APU price points in 2017.