14 DAY TRIAL // During a recent conference call with financial analysts, Advanced Micro Devices revealed some things about its operations, beyond the financial losses suffered during the first quarter of the year.
As it happens, the Kabini accelerated processing unit has finally started to bring money to the coffers of the CPU, APU, and GPU maker.
The A-Series and E-Series chips have up to four Jaguar cores, AMD Radeon HD graphics (GCN-based) and, supposedly, 50% better performance in PCMark Vantage than Brazos 2.0.
Sadly, the Sunnyvale, California-based company continued to hold back on the details. We suppose that means we have to wait for laptops, desktops, and convertible tablets to appear first.
“We have started volume shipments of Kabini in the first quarter and have a strong portfolio of high volume entry-level design wins based on its substantial performance and battery life improvements,” said Rory Read, chief executive officer of AMD, during the quarterly conference call with financial analysts.
It is surprising that Kabini is said to be making money even though Richland (mid to high-end) is bound to be more lucrative.
Not to say that series isn't doing well. According to AMD, there are lots of “premium” design wins, as there are for Temash tablet chips.
Most of the mobile products will have touch support, in keeping with recent reports about the technology becoming standard by year's end.
All in all, while AMD might still post a loss for the second quarter of 2013, it might actually go back to being profitable in the second half of the year.
“This year we will have the broadest range of mobile processors in our history spanning from sub-4W to 35W. We have introduced our newest A-series ‘Richland’ APU for the mainstream client market and have secured innovative and premium design wins,” said the CEO.
“Temash beat the competition and is ideal for tablets, hybrids and convertibles. We have a strong portfolio of customer offerings coming to market and we expect this will spur demand as a back half of 2013 and provide us with an opportunity to grow share.”