Posted on Friday, July 17 2015 @ 14:21 CEST by Thomas De Maesschalck
During AMD's conference call yesterday evening, Ian L. Ing from MKM Partners LLC asked AMD what's going on with the supply of the Fury series. AMD's Lisa Su responded the initial ramp is going as expected and claims the cards being out-of-stock is not a bad thing because it "signals customers are appreciating the product". She also confirmed the launch of the Radeon R9 Nano cards is planned for August:
Ian L. Ing - MKM Partners LLC
Hi, yes, my first question is in GPU refresh. I mean, it's only been days and weeks, but it looks like on the retail sides, the Fury X and Fury is out of stock. So being out of stock is just a demand issue or more of a supply constraint issue?
Lisa T. Su - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director
Yes, Ian, thanks for the question. So we did just launch our Graphics products towards the end of the second quarter, so in the late June timeframe. I think our initial ramp-up has been as expected. We're pleased with the Fury X ramp-up, certainly the fact that it's out of stock is not a bad thing, because it gives us good confidence that the customers are appreciating the product. Fury just launched actually this week and we will be launching Nano in the August timeframe. So I think, overall, the high-bandwidth memory ramp-up is going as expected, and we have a number of products coming out.
Questioned about whether the ARM-based Seattle chip is still on track, Su confirmed Seattle will launch in the second half of this year:
Ian L. Ing - MKM Partners LLC
Great. And then my last question, I think you covered a lot of the second half catalysts and product cycles, but one thing I didn't hear about was the Seattle launch, the ARM-based Seattle launch, I think that's second half this year. Is that still on track or is there any other catalysts or product cycles we're missing?
Lisa T. Su - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director
Yes, Ian, so for the key products for the second half, certainly Carrizo on the APU side, the Fiji family of products on the GPU side, and then Seattle will continue to launch in the second half of this year.
Kevin E. Cassidy from Stifel, Nicolaus & Co., Inc. asked about Seattle design and what kind of a percentage of the market this product could target. Su admitted overall Seattle revenue will be modest as the ARM ramp will take a bit of time and stressed the importance of building the ecosystem.
Kevin E. Cassidy - Stifel, Nicolaus & Co., Inc.
Thanks for taking my question. My question is related to Seattle. Have you announced design wins or can you give us an idea of what that product ramp looks like?
Lisa T. Su - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director
Yes, so I think Seattle is a good offering for 64-bit ARM servers, and if you look at what we've said up until now, we have a number of companies both in the ecosystem, as well as users developing software on Seattle and looking at how it operates in the environment. I would say that the overall revenue of Seattle will be modest, as ARM ramps will take a bit of time, but the importance of building the ecosystem is there. So that's our focus with Seattle and working with key customers.
Kevin E. Cassidy - Stifel, Nicolaus & Co., Inc.
Okay. Thanks. As just as a follow-up, what percentage of the market do you think that can address, Seattle?
Lisa T. Su - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director
I think we've said before and my view on this is that the overall ARM server market or let's call it ARM in data center markets will take some time to develop. So let's call it the three-year to five-year timeframe. So in terms of today's market, we actually believe that the x86 will be the majority of the market.
David M. Wong from Wells Fargo Securities LLC inquired about the status of the semi-custom activities pipeline. Su reminded the analyst that AMD has two new semi-custom designs worth roughly $1 billion in lifetime revenue that would start ramp in the second half of next year, and added that AMD has started a new design this quarter that should expand their base for the semi-custom business. Presumably one of these upcoming designs could be the chip for Nintendo's NX console.
Lisa T. Su - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director
Sure, David. Thanks for the question. So on the Semi-Custom business, we've certainly been active in our work with various customers across target markets. So last year, we had announced two new Semi-Custom designs that were roughly $1 billion in lifetime revenue that would start ramp in the second half of 2016. We've started a new design this quarter that we believe expands our base for the Semi-Custom business, and we're very pleased with that. And then we still have a fairly active pipeline in Semi-Custom as well. So we view it as very much an area where there's a strategic interest in integrating our Graphics and CPU IP going forward.
Transcript courtesy of Seeking Alpha
