Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD) shares soared as much as 26 percent in early trading yesterday after it sold its licensing technology to a Chinese, state-backed joint venture that is to produce server processors for the Chinese market.
The company also predicted strong growth in the current quarter. Second-quarter revenue is likely to increase 15 percent, plus or minus 3 percent, from the preceding three months, AMD said in a statement on Thursday.
That translates into sales of US$931.8 million to US$981.8 million and compares with analysts’ average estimate of US$890.8 million, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.
Chief executive officer Lisa Su (蘇姿豐) is trying to turn around the Sunnyvale, California-based company by seeking new markets for its graphics chips and processors and licensing the rights to technology it has already developed. It is part of her strategy to diversify AMD away from areas where it has struggled to compete against larger rivals Intel Corp and Nvidia Corp.
The company believes it clawed back some share in the first quarter in both product areas and projects greater demand for graphics and new orders for custom chips to propel growth in the second quarter, Su said at a conference call with analysts.
AMD will get US$293 million as part of the licensing agreement with Tianjin Haiguang Advanced Technology Investment Co (天津海光先進技術投資), a joint venture overseen on the Chinese side by the Chinese Academy of Sciences. The entity will get processor and system-on-chip technology and design server chips only for the Chinese market.
AMD said the agreement would not affect its efforts to resurrect its presence in the lucrative server market, where Intel has grabbed more than 99 percent share.
AMD’s first-quarter loss was US$109 million, or US$0.14 a share, compared with a loss of US$102 million, or US$0.13, a year earlier. Revenue fell 19 percent to US$832 million, failing to reach US$1 billion for a second quarter in a row.
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”
TRANSFORMATION: Taiwan is now home to the largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, thanks to the nation’s economic policies President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) yesterday attended an event marking the opening of Google’s second hardware research and development (R&D) office in Taiwan, which was held at New Taipei City’s Banciao District (板橋). This signals Taiwan’s transformation into the world’s largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, validating the nation’s economic policy in the past eight years, she said. The “five plus two” innovative industries policy, “six core strategic industries” initiative and infrastructure projects have grown the national industry and established resilient supply chains that withstood the COVID-19 pandemic, Tsai said. Taiwan has improved investment conditions of the domestic economy
Sales in the retail, and food and beverage sectors last month continued to rise, increasing 0.7 percent and 13.6 percent respectively from a year earlier, setting record highs for the month of March, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday. Sales in the wholesale sector also grew last month by 4.6 annually, mainly due to the business opportunities for emerging applications related to artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing technologies, the ministry said in a report. The ministry forecast that retail, and food and beverage sales this month would retain their growth momentum as the former would benefit from Tomb Sweeping Day