While AMD may be giving more attention to the tablet space, the company will continue to focus on current plans, particularly with its Fusion initiative, according to interim CEO Thomas Siefert.
A week after Dirk Meyer's resignation as CEO
of Advanced Micro Devices, the company's position going forward is essentially
to stay the course in the short term, while creating expansion plans farther
down the road.
Executives
at AMD, speaking during a conference call
with analysts and journalists Jan. 20 to announce fourth-quarter and full-year
financial results, said that the immediate goal is to deliver on promises
around the company's Fusion offerings, including the upcoming launch this
summer of its "Llano" product line, which is aimed at notebooks,
ultrathin laptops and desktop PCs.
That
will follow the release earlier this month at the 2011 Consumer Electronics
Show of AMD's
"Brazos" chips for lightweight laptops and netbooks. AMD's Fusion
initiative brings high-end graphics capabilities and x86 CPUs onto a single
piece of silicon. AMD calls the chips APUs (accelerated processing units).
Thomas Siefert, AMD's CFO and interim CEO, called Fusion "arguably the
most significant advancement in processor architecture in decades."
For
the quarter, AMD saw revenues come in at
$1.65 billion, flat from the same period last year. Income was $413 million, a significant
drop over the $1.29 billion of the fourth-quarter 2009, though that was
bolstered by a $1.25 billion payment from Intel to settle legal disputes
between the two companies.
For
the full year, AMD generated $848 million in
profit on $6.49 billion in revenue, both increases over 2009 figures.
Siefert
said the work done in 2010 has set the company up for a strong 2011. "I've
never been more confident in this company and its capacity to succeed," he
said.
Despite
numbers that exceeded analyst expectations, issues that were raised by Meyer's
resignation permeated the analyst call. The company's board of directors
reportedly was unhappy with Meyer's reluctance to move the company into the
booming smartphone and tablet markets, and was concerned about the direction of
AMD's server business.
Siefert
said that Meyer, who was given $12 million upon his resignation, had done a
good job setting up the company for success, adding that AMD
will build on current plans while "accelerating" efforts into new
areas. However, he said there would be no wholesale shift.
"To
reduce it to just a tablet statement would be wrong and was certainly not the
case, and it's certainly not an indication that we are going to let the focus
shift away from what the priorities are in terms of delivering what we
promised," Siefert said.
However,
tablets are an area that AMD is interested
into expanding into, he said. While the company may not have processors
designed specifically for ultramobile devices, Siefert said that as AMD
continues to drive up the performance and energy efficiency of its processors
while shrinking the size, it will open up new markets.
For
now, AMD executives said they are seeing
good demand from OEMs for their Fusion APUs, and expect the PC market to grow
10 to 11 percent in 2011. They expect revenue for the first quarter to come in
flat to a little down.
AMD
is going to find competition for its Fusion APUs. Intel at CES rolled out its "Sandy
Bridge" second-generation
Core-i processors, which also integrate graphics and CPU onto the same die. In
addition, Nvidia, AMD's key competitor in
graphics, is teaming up with chip design company ARM
Holdings to create its own integrated processors.
Email
Print
