New Ryzen CPUs and Graphics Processors Boost AMD's Profit
Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) reported quarterly revenue fueled by sales of the new Ryzen CPUs and the company's graphics processors.
Revenue in AMD's business, which manufactures chips for the server industry and also gaming consoles, rose 5 percent to $391 million.
AMD also posted robust performance in its computing and graphics business, driven by demand for its latest Ryzen processors and its graphics chips.
"We achieved 18 percent year-over-year revenue growth driven by strong demand for our high performance Ryzen CPUs as well as graphics processors," said Dr. Lisa Su, AMD president and CEO. "We are positioned for solid revenue growth and margin expansion opportunities across the business in the year ahead as we bring innovation, performance, and choice to an expanding set of markets."
AMD also forecast second-quarter revenue to rise about 12 percent year-over-year at the midpoint.
The company's new Ryzen processors, aimed at the personal computer market, have helped rekindle its rivalry with Intel, which has long dominated the industry.
AMD's graphics processors, used in gaming consoles have also gained a foothold in the low- to mid-range market for PC chips that are used to power video games. Rival Nvidia has long controlled the high-end of the market.
AMD's net loss narrowed to $73 million in the first quarter ended April 1, from $109 million a year earlier.
Revenue rose 18.3 percent to $984 million.
AMD also confirmed that more Ryzen chips are coming in the second half of this year. New chips for desktops, called Ryzen 3, will come in the earlier part of the second half, while Ryzen mobile chips-code-named Raven Ridge-will come out around the end-of-year holiday season.
The Ryzen 3 is expected to be for low-end desktops, while the Ryzen 5 and 7 chips are faster. Late last week, Acer announced its Aspire GX desktop with Ryzen chip options.
In the coming months, AMD will also launch Vega GPUs for the gaming, professional workstation and data center markets. Some Vega GPUs will launch this quarter.
Vega GPUs will be priced higher than Polaris, the existing GPU architecture, because of advanced technologies, Su said.
The Vega GPUs will have a new memory subsystem, a faster computing engine and a "new geometry pipeline to dramatically improve performance and energy efficiency for the next generation of GPU workloads," Su said.