AMD could power yet another gaming device – chief financial officer

An accelerated processing unit from Advanced Micro Devices could power yet another gaming device, chief financial officer of the company implied this week. The high-ranking executive did not provide any details, but given the revenue opportunities the company outlined with the deal several weeks ago, we are talking about a high-volume device.

AMD announced two new semi-custom design wins back in October. The design wins are expected to bring the company combined total lifetime revenue of approximately $1 billion over approximately three years starting 2016. Previously the company revealed that both semi-custom chips would integrate Radeon graphics, one would be based on ARM architecture, whereas another one would feature x86 general-purpose cores. Apparently, one of the semi-custom APUs is projected to power a “beyond gaming device”, which means that another will power a device that could fit into the “gaming” category, something AMD denied previously.

“I will say that one [design win] is x86 and [another] is ARM, and at least one will [be] beyond gaming, right,” said Devinder Kumar, chief financial officer of AMD, at the Raymond James Financial technology conference. “But that is about as much as you going to get out me today. From the standpoint [of being] fair to [customers], it is their product, and they launch it. They are going to announce it and then […] you will find out that it is AMD’s APU that is being used in those products.”

AMD sold its semi-custom APUs for Microsoft Xbox One and Sony PlayStation 4 for around $100 per chip early in the lifecycle, according to IHS iSuppli. Eventually the price of the system-on-chips should drop, so the average selling price of the SoCs throughout their lifetime will be considerably lower than the initial price.

Given that the company expects to earn a billion of dollars over three years by selling the chips announced in October, it projects to sell around 14 – 15 million of SoCs over three years, assuming that the average price of the chips will be around $70. Given that only one device will power a device that could fit into gaming category, it is unlikely that AMD is talking about a new game console since they are sold in larger quantities and over longer periods of time.

It remains to be seen what exactly AMD will power with its forthcoming semi-custom APUs, but given three years active product lifecycle, the company could be talking about some kind of a media centre with gaming capabilities.

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KitGuru Says: While we cannot guess what kind of products AMD plans to roll-out out in the coming years, it is very surprising how much AMD is talking about its 2016 product lineup, not its plans for next year. It is tremendously interesting to know what are the reasons for that…

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