AMD turns from PC to console market

[admin]

AMD turns from PC to lucrative console market

AMD says that custom APUs will earn them more money than PC’s in the future.

[bokka1]

Making the APU's for both next gen consoles must be very lucrative on the long run.

That is a huge install base and you are guaranteed an income for the next ten years.

[reedOsama]

AMD says that custom APUs will earn them more money than PC’s in the future.

I'm not saying that AMD are wrong but that does sound like something coming from an out-competed CPU manufacturer, also Intel seem to be upping their game... and they improve their technology fast. The Core, Nehalem and Sandy Bridge microarchitectures came out pretty soon after each other and at the time I couldn't help but think each warranted an upgrade from the previous.

So again in 2012 95% plus PC business; by the end of 2013 we will have over 20% of our revenue outside of PCs

If this is true

This means that AMD only sees less than $100 for every APU made for external clients before factoring in other costs after the chip is fabricated (by definition, Gross margin is the difference between revenue and cost before accounting for certain other costs). Before the hardware in the Playstation 4 and Xbox One was fully detailed, Nvidia said that it opted out of the console business because there wasn’t enough money in it.

and so is this, then AMD must be making a TON of console chips

[Wesley]

I'm not saying that AMD are wrong but that does sound like something coming from an out-competed CPU manufacturer, also Intel seem to be upping their game... and they improve their technology fast.

Indeed, they're not going to be competing against Intel on the CPU market for much longer. In fact, that's half the reason why I'm expecting the FX and socket AM3+ technologies to be deprecated next year and their production ceased by the end of 2014.

Intel, by comparison, is actually not doing much to improve performance from generation to generation, shooting for more efficiency instead. While that isn't good news for enthusiasts, lower power use is definitely welcome, especially in the server space.

The Core, Nehalem and Sandy Bridge microarchitectures came out pretty soon after each other and at the time I couldn't help but think each warranted an upgrade from the previous.

Definitely, moving from a Core 2 Quad to the Core i7-920 alone was a huge jump in performance and capability. Sandy Bridge presented a night-and-day difference in terms of speed and power efficiency. It may look like Intel's resting on their laurels, but Bay Trail is proof that they can dominate the market whenever they feel like it.

and so is this, then AMD must be making a TON of console chips

APUs make up 70% of AMD's business today. Not only are they shipping tons of graphics cards and APUs, the Xbox One deal alone was worth $3 billion. Whether that figure is for a year or more isn't clear, but AMD's making and shipping a lot of APUs for consoles and embedded markets. Its a pity that the income from Nintendo and the Xbox 360 is through license fees only, else they could be making more money off there as well.

I personally feel that they're going to be back on their feet by 2015. They only lost $70 million in the last quarter and their debts are dropping steadily. After that, its anyone's guess where they're going next. By that time DDR4 for the desktop will be available on Intel's Broadwell processors and we're going to see an explosion of 14nm processors.

[reedOsama]

Intel, by comparison, is actually not doing much to improve performance from generation to generation, shooting for more efficiency instead. While that isn't good news for enthusiasts, lower power use is definitely welcome, especially in the server space.

I'll have to try and find the article but I read this review that pointed out that the Ivy bridge wasn't much of a jump from Sandy Bridge in terms of speed, but it did show that the graphical improvement was quite large (the same with Bay Trail in comparison to Clover Trail) even though it's still quite far from AMD. However, with Intel being the innovation powerhouse that it is, I don't think it will take them all that long to catch up.

Definitely, moving from a Core 2 Quad to the Core i7-920 alone was a huge jump in performance and capability. Sandy Bridge presented a night-and-day difference in terms of speed and power efficiency. It may look like Intel's resting on their laurels, but Bay Trail is proof that they can dominate the market whenever they feel like it.

I badly wanted to replace my Q6600 with a 920 , only managed to upgrade to a 2500 (I got over overclocking) this year and I'm quite happy with it .