AMD reports fifth-straight quarterly loss
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Advanced Micro Devices reported a heavy loss for its fourth quarter, due mostly to charges connected to its acquisition of graphics chip maker ATI.
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Advanced Micro Devices Inc.  , the No. 2 microprocessor maker, warned on Monday that  it will likely miss its quarterly revenue target as it loses  market share among computer resellers, a traditional bulwark of  its business.
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Advanced Micro Devices reported a larger-than-expected loss but showed progress in curbing its expenses and capturing a share of strong demand for personal computers.
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As this year comes to a close, AMD executives won&#39;t be sorry to put 2007 behind them. Battered by rising debt, shrinking market share and mounting financial losses, AMD is counting on a comeback in 2008. But can the struggling chip maker make good on its promises to customers and investors that better times lie ahead?Many of AMD&#39;s current troubles are tied to Barcelona, the first version of its Quad-Core Opteron processor.&#160;Repeated delays of this chip weakened AMD&#39;s finances and undermined confidence in the company&#39;s ability to deliver new products as promised. Rebuilding that lost confidence among corporate users and the financial community won&#39;t be easy and the company can ill afford further missteps.Over the next six months, there are several milestones that AMD must hit in order to get back on track. The first, and arguably most important, involves volume shipments of Barcelona, scheduled to happen during the first quarter. AMD desperately needs this chip to shore up flagging revenue from its commercial business and to take back ground lost recently to Intel in the server market.With a bug that was recently discovered in Barcelona fixed, AMD expects the latest version of the chip to start coming out of its manufacturing plants in January. Barcelona shipments are expected to rise throughout the first quarter, reaching &quot;full volumes&quot; and widespread availability of servers based on the chip during the second quarter, according to Phil Hughes, an AMD spokesman.Another early milestone to look out for involves Shanghai, the second version of the Quad-Core Opteron chip that&#39;s set for volume production during the second half of 2008. AMD will produce Shanghai with a 45-nanometer manufacturing process that is one generation ahead of the 65-nanometer process used to make Barcelona.The numbers used to describe chip manufacturing processes refer to the average size of the smallest features that can be created on a chip. The smaller these features can be made, the better. Making these features smaller gives chip makers the ability to shrink the overall size of a chip, thereby reducing unit manufacturing costs, or to add new features. Chips made using a more advanced process may also consume less power and run faster than other versions. But semiconductor production is as much art as it is science, and moving to a more advanced process is fraught with risks.In the case of Shanghai, AMD will take advantage of the 45-nanometer process to triple the size of the Level 3 (L3) cache, from 2M bytes in Barcelona to 6M bytes. The L3 cache is a shared pool of memory that can be accessed by all four cores on the chip. Each core has 512K bytes of Level 2 (L2) cache. When data is moved out of the L2 cache, it moves into the L3 cache instead of main memory, meaning that the core can access this information more quickly than would otherwise be possible.Like AMD&#39;s existing server lineup, Barcelona and Shanghai also include an on-chip memory controller that further helps to increase performance.The memory structure used in the Quad-Core Opteron is different from Intel&#39;s server chips, which do not use an L3 cache and do not have an on-chip memory controller. Instead, Intel&#39;s quad-core Xeon 7300 server chips have 8M bytes of shared L2 cache. Since Intel processors actually pack two dual-core chips inside a single package, the L2 cache is divided into two parts, with 4M bytes on each silicon chip. Intel&#39;s processors do not use an on-chip memory controller.Boosting the Quad-Core Opteron&#39;s L3 cache with Shanghai should give AMD&#39;s quad-core chips the opportunity to stretch their legs, but the company has to make them first. The first working samples of Shanghai are due out of AMD&#39;s factory in Dresden, Germany, in January, according to recent remarks by Mario Rivas, executive vice president of AMD&#39;s Computing Products Group. If these samples arrive late or suffer from unexpected technical problems, this could delay volume production of Shanghai to late 2008 or even early 2009. Conversely, working samples that arrive on schedule and meet or exceed expectations would give AMD an added boost.Besides the server segment, there are a couple of key product milestones on AMD&#39;s roadmap for desktop and mobile processors that bear watching as well.For example, the company plans a first-quarter rollout of Perseus, a package of chips aimed at PCs for the corporate market and centered on a quad-core or triple-core processor and an RS780 or SB700 chipset. A dual-core version will also be rolled out. During the second quarter, AMD plans to roll out Puma, a chip package designed for notebooks. Puma is based on a new processor, called Griffin, expected to offer better performance and power efficiency than AMD&#39;s existing line of mobile processors.AMD plans to offer additional details of its plans and upcoming products at the Consumer Electronics Show to be held in Las Vegas during January, Hughes said.
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Worldwide&#160;lawsuits against Intel&#160;and&#160;four straight quarterly losses&#160;have distracted AMD during its integration of ATI Technologies, but the merger remains on track, according to industry analysts.AMD&#39;s acquisition of ATI&#160;for $5.4 billion, announced in July 2006 and completed one year ago Thursday, was viewed as a potent weapon in AMD&#39;s attempt to dent Intel&#39;s domination of the x86 processor market.The lawsuits against Intel and&#160;financial losses&#160;came at a critical time, when AMD&#39;s management needed help in integrating the ATI acquisition and making ATI employees understand AMD&#39;s culture, said Jon Peddie, president of Jon Peddie Research.AMD filed antitrust lawsuits alleging monopolistic behavior against Intel in the U.S. and Japan, and lodged complaints with the European Commission, the Korean Fair Trade Commission and Japan Fair Trade Commission.The distraction was compounded by the departure of key executives, including David Orton, former president and CEO of ATI, who resigned as executive vice president of AMD in July after only 10 months.AMD didn&#39;t have any internal problems, Peddie said, and Orton left on his own accord. &quot;A little redundancy will always occur in all organizations. It&#39;s not surprising to see people shift,&quot; Peddie said. However, outside speculation about the departure may have distracted AMD during the integration, he said.AMD also took an acquisition-related charge of $76 million, or $0.14 per share, in the third quarter of 2007 ending Sept. 29. That added to the quarterly net loss of $396 million.Despite the distractions, AMD is pulling its resources together to ensure the ATI merger goes smoothly.&quot;The merger has allowed AMD to merge its plans with ATI, which were very similar prior to the acquisition.&quot; Peddie said. Both companies wanted to amalgamate the CPU with the graphics processor, and the acquisition puts them in a position to do so.A successful merger could help AMD reach profitability in a few quarters and position it for success in the future, wrote Doug Freedman, an analyst with American Technology Research, in a research report.&quot;We believe ATI is turning the corner, which is likely material to AMD&#39;s quest for profitability,&quot; Freedman wrote.The acquisition of ATI hasn&#39;t shown an immediate benefit, but could help&#160;AMD in the long term&#160;when the company&#39;s &quot;Fusion&quot; project comes to fruition, Peddie said. Fusion is the code name for is AMD&#39;s next-generation processor design that is expected to combine high-performance graphics and CPU processing on a single die. The project was announced when the merger was completed. AMD is not prepared to talk about Fusion yet, but it is intended to bring the cost of PCs down and reduce power consumption, Peddie said.AMD also announced the &quot;Spider&quot; platform, which will include AMD&#39;s upcoming Phenom chips and high-end graphics processors to provide users with the &quot;ultimate visual experience&quot; in computing, said Dirk Meyer, AMD&#39;s president and chief operating officer, on the company&#39;s third-quarter earnings call last week.With all the attention focused on Phenom and Spider, ATI&#39;s involvement in other businesses gets sidetracked, said Phil Hester, senior vice president and chief technology officer for AMD. AMD&#39;s ATI unit is a big player in supplying graphics to consumer electronics, set-top boxes and gaming consoles, Hester said. ATI supplies graphics processing units (GPUs) for Microsoft&#39;s Xbox 360 and Nintendo&#39;s Wii consoles, Hester said.&quot;Discrete GPUs will continue to be a good business for us,&quot; Hester said. AMD&#39;s graphics segment revenue grew 29 percent to $252 million sequentially, driven by the success of the ATI Radeon HD 2000 series of graphics processors.However, ATI&#39;s market share in the discrete graphics market has been hit by manufacturing problems and bad timing in bringing chips to market, Peddie said. Competitors such as Nvidia and Silicon Integrated Systems stepped up by shipping graphics chips on a timely basis, taking market share away from ATI.&quot;Market share could begin to swing back towards ATI even if it introduced simply comparable products to Nvidia in the near-term,&quot; wrote Doug Freedman in a research report. ATI&#39;s RV670 graphics card is competitive in the mainstream market with current Nvidia products, Freedman wrote.But AMD still has work to do to make the merger a success. Its biggest threat remains Intel, which maintains a stranglehold on the chip market.&quot;AMD must rebuild its brand value in the enthusiast market in order to garner better mainstream adoption and consumer recognition,&quot; Freedman wrote.
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Lobbing olive branch to Wall Street Sometimes, experts don't know what they're talking about. Just ask AMD, which over the past 12 months has had to endure second-guessing from financial analysts and industry pundits about slumping market share, a string of financial losses, and costly distribution and design gaffes.â¦
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Computer chip maker Advanced  Micro Devices Inc. AMD.N on Thursday posted a third-quarter  profit compared with a loss a year earlier and predicted a  fourth-quarter pickup in sales.
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STMicroelectronics NV  reported a quarterly loss compared with a year ago profit on Tuesday, citing about $906 million in impairment and restructuring charges.
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Blog: AMD announces price cuts for its desktop processors
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AMD appears to be headed in the right direction with improvements in both revenue and gross margin during the fourth quarter, but that still wasn't enough to generate a profit, even excluding the effects of a hefty one-time charge.
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Agere Systems Inc., which makes computer chips and software for cell phones and other devices, Tuesday said it fell to a loss for its latest quarter, hurt by charges for its restructuring plan and declining revenue.
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Struggling chip-maker Advanced Micro Devices Inc. said Thursday its fourth-quarter net loss widened, partly due to a huge goodwill impairment charge related to its $5.6 billion acquisition of graphics chip-maker ATI Technologies Inc.
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Loved and lost AMD's obsession with top server and PC makers has proved costly. The chip maker claims to have focused on so-called Tier 1 OEMs at the expense of its longtime channel partners and now blames declining channel sales for its expected first quarter revenue miss.â¦
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The chipmaker gets another downgrade on Friday.
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Advanced Micro Devices (NYSE: AMD) continues to plug away at microprocessor rival Intel&#39;s (Nasdaq: INTC) lead, which once seemed insurmountable.
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(InfoWorld) - As price competition takes its toll, AMD Thursday posted its third consecutive quarterly loss, saying that although revenue was relatively solid, it suffered a sharp second-quarter drop in income. Revenue for the quarter was $1.38 billion, an improvement from $1.22 billion a year earlier. But the company reported a net loss of $600 million, or a loss of $1.09 per share, a big drop from net income of $89 million, or $0.18 per share, a year earlier. A big part of the loss was due to restructuring costs and a $130 million, or $0.24 per share, charge related toÂ the acquisition of graphics-chip maker ATI last year. One piece of good news was that in the face of stiff price competition from Intel, AMD said its second quarter gross margin was 34 percent, excluding one-time charges, an improvement over its 31 percent margin in the first quarter of 2007. "We achieved a 12 percent sequential revenue increase, improved the gross margin, and won back microprocessor unit and revenue market share," said Robert J. Rivet, AMD's CFO, in a statement accompanying the company results. Looking ahead, AMD forecast that third-quarter revenue would increase in line with traditional seasonal growth rates. Though that does not point to a big increase in profit in the near future, traders reacted positively to the upbeat news on revenue and margins, driving up company shares by $0.32 to $15.78 in after-hours trading. Nevertheless, the second-quarter gross margin, for example, was still a far cry from AMD's 57 percent gross margin in the second quarter of 2006. Rivet acknowledged that to instill confidence in the company, "we must improve our financial results." AMD faces an uphill battle. After gaining ground, in terms of market share and technology, on Intel two years ago by coming out with dual-core processors, AMD suffered last year as Intel battled back with its own line of multicore chips. In the longer term, AMD is pinning its hopes to a great degree on its "Barcelona" quad-core Opteron server chip, due out in August. That chip will compete with Intel's dual-core "Woodcrest" and quad-core "Clovertown" Xeon processors launched last year. AMD also needs to stay on track and hit its 2009 goal to bring its new Fusion chip -- made with ATI technology -- to market.
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For 35 years, Advanced Micro Devices Inc. (AMD ) stood in the shadow of archrival Intel Corp. (INTC ) AMD churned out lower-priced clones of the tech leader&#39;s chips and occasionally enjoyed a hit that helped boost its meager profits.