AMD confirmed during its earnings call the Q3 launch of its next-generation processors, built using the Zen 2 architecture and TSMC's 7nm manufacturing process, and new GPU architecture, Navi.

AMD said that server-oriented EPYC-branded chips (codenamed Rome) will be shipping to customers in the third quarter of this year, and so too will Navi-based video cards.

The Zen 2 design brings architectural improvements inlcuding native 256-bit floating point units to handle AVX2 instructions. Zen 2 also uses multiple chips, but these chips will be more specialized that the previous Zen implementations. There will be 7nm chiplets, each containing CPU cores, cache, and Infinity Fabric links, and a 14nm I/O die, containing memory controllers, Infinity Fabric connections, and SATA and USB controllers. The 7nm parts should be able to achieve higher clock speeds and lower power consumption than their 14nm predecessors. On the other hand, parts on the I/O die generally don't benefit from higher clock speeds and will be made on 14nm.

The Rome processor will have up to eight core chiplets, for a total of 64 cores and 128 threads, and it will support up to two sockets. These parts will be ready for a third-quarter launch.

AMD did not clarify whether its new 7nm Navi GPUs will offer any kind of ray tracing acceleration comparable to that found in Nvidia's RTX parts. These GPUs are lainching next quarter.

Q1 2019 earnings

AMD announced revenue for the first quarter of 2019 of $1.27 billion, operating income of $38 million, net income of $16 million and diluted earnings per share of $0.01. On a non-GAAP(*) basis, operating income was $84 million, net income was $62 million and diluted earnings per share was $0.06.

Revenue was $1.27 billion, down 23 percent year-over-year primarily due to lower revenue in the company's Computing and Graphics segment. Revenue was down 10 percent quarter-over-quarter primarily due to lower client processor sales.

Gross margin was 41 percent, up 5 percentage points year-over-year, primarily driven by the ramp of Ryzen and EPYC processor and datacenter GPU sales.

For the second quarter of 2019, AMD expects revenue to be approximately $1.52 billion, plus or minus $50 million, an increase of approximately 19 percent sequentially and a decrease of approximately 13 percent year-over-year. The sequential increase is expected to be driven by growth across all businesses. The year-over-year decrease is expected to be primarily driven by lower graphics channel sales, negligible blockchain-related GPU revenue and lower semi-custom revenue. AMD expects non-GAAP gross margin to be approximately 41 percent in the second quarter of 2019.