Mid-late last month, AMD announced its quarterly report for the fourth quarter, the results show the performance of the company continues to be frustrated, especially depressed PC market to AMD causes more harm, even in the larger game of semi-custom chip business has a certain grace, still hard to hide the fact that AMD is in trouble. Flawless iPhone plus case
However, despite the poor performance of AMD, its management remains optimistic about the company's future. So, what exactly is the reason why AMD is so confident? Simple talk about the 5 reasons below.
Semi custom business success
In recent years, AMD semi-custom chip business, main driving force lies in the field of console and PC-related business was always in a floating State. In 2015, AMD can't customize the business revenues generated by more than the computing and graphics business, probably maintained operating margins of around 10%. AMD CEO Sue Boyle (Lisa Su) in 2015, AMD semi-custom business very successfully.
"In 2015, our semi-custom chip shipments hit record, semi-custom APU chips shipped more than 50 million, Sony and Microsoft is a reliable partner. We think the 2016 games demand remains strong, semi custom business is expected to generate new and additional revenue in the second half. "
Indeed, in 2015, AMD semi-custom revenue has fallen by 15%, only US $ 488 million, this section includes a games machine, low-power chip custom business servers and embedded devices. Meanwhile, AMD obtained from each game console into is gradually reduced, but AMD is confident claims semi-custom business can contribute to revenue in the second half, beyond description in addition to the game host, AMD also won the other semi custom chip orders.
Earnings recovery in the second half
AMD expects 2016 is still bad in the first half, 14% revenues continue to decline in the first quarter, a figure far higher than industry analysts expected. However, AMD think second half of overall sales, market share, profit will improve in the second half.
Aunt Sue said, although is expected in 2016 revenues fell, mainly PC and game machine business restricted to seasonal factors, but in the second half, based on the AMD most exciting product portfolio and technology roadmap, profit and profit momentum will grow all year round.
It is clear that on the technology roadmap, AMD will launch in the middle of this year, "North Star" architecture of graphics products, and also released a completely new framework later in the year "Zen" CPU. It is not difficult to understand, precisely because of these two major products that come out of the time in the second half of AMD do not consider real point in time returned to profit in the first half.
Funds at hand to improve
2015, AMD's net loss was still growing, from $ 404 million in 2014, $ 660 million. Is in need of attention, last quarter of 2015, AMD held $ 785 million in cash and saddled with debt of us $ 2.26 billion. In this case, AMD will continue to burn in the first quarter of this year, invested about $ 100 million years or so, the goal is to maintain a minimum of $ 600 million in cash.
However, the good news for AMD, in 2016 will be an influx of cash last October, AMD Malaysia and bulk packaging and testing factories in Suzhou, China to Chinese "Tong Fu micro" company, and the $ 320 million net income in the first half of 2016 will be bagged.
AMD CFO Devinder Kumar said: "is waiting for the approval of the regulatory authorities and relevant expected after deduction of taxes and other charges, is expected in 2016 will have the cash proceeds of US $ 320 million in the first half. "
An additional $ 320 million in cash will help AMD greater flexibility in the implementation of policy, at least for a period of time will not break the goal of the minimum cash holdings in the bottom line.
Graphics cards will bring benefits Flawless iPhone 6s plus case
In the past 18 months, AMD graphics card market share fell by a mile, nearly 10 months mainly because AMD does not have any response to competitor Nvidia. The third quarter of 2015, AMD graphics card 20% of industry shipments only, almost the collapse phase, but wanted to share how crazy it is when Nvidia video cards. More sad is that AMD HBM revolutionary graphics best game no one played, not enough to turn the tide.
Sue Boyle believes that thanks to the next generation of "Polaris" architecture of next-generation graphics card, 2016 AMD will be able to recapture some of the market share.
"I think we can keep going because the new product portfolio, including software and hardware, particularly investment in graphics. Polaris series cards very excellent performance per watt from a hardware perspective, software we have in the past few months has released a major update, and has been moving in the right direction according to schedule, which helps our momentum to reverse of the card business. "
Have to say, in terms of hardware, Nvidia and AMD Polaris Pascal will be introduced this year to a similar direction. AMD software is the most backward areas in recent years, now finally able to be developed. Past Nvidia GameWorks software tool suite to optimize games for more special effects, games loudly declared support for Gameworks, and AMD is leaning to one side of the situation. Most recently, AMD announced the GPUOpen open source project, is struggling to catch up with Nvidia.
"Zen" CPU will play a role in the data center
Server CPU market, AMD used to be major players in 2006, AMD Opteron processors accounted for x86 22% in the server processor market share market share. But today, AMD's market share in the server market is negligible, x86 Server chip Intel has a market share of up to 99%.
AMD to "Zen" processor high hopes revive Server CPU business, aunt Sue said, "Zen" Server CPU architecture has won the key support of some of the world's leading OEM manufacturer, believed to regain back quickly in the data center business presence. However, the related server chips may have to wait until 2017.
As early as 2011, AMD released the "bulldozer" when schema made an irreparable mistake, when Intel's chips in a single threaded well ahead of AMD, AMD executives acknowledge before bulldozers are full failure of products within the company, did not really find a solution to the core problem, causing AMD Server business was dealt a great blow.
On the "Zen" full confidence in AMD, the new agency has brought about great improvements in terms of performance, as opposed to the "bulldozer" schema on each clock instruction set implementation rate rose more than 40%. Intel decided to delay the cases of 10 nm manufacturing process, AMD is expected to also ship 14nm chip, same process process is equivalent to giving the AMD reducing chip performance and energy-efficiency gap between opportunities with their rivals. Therefore, in 2017, AMD quickly regain some market share is not an impossible thing.
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Tags: mobile phone , PC and hardware