Advanced Micro Devices reported its financial results for the second quarter of the year last week, and although sales were up quarter over quarter, they were down year over year, resulting in a loss of $74 million during the quarter.
While microprocessor sales are on the up, graphics chip shipments were down. But the company said that it hopes to be profitable in Q3 2013 as it brings new solutions to the market.
And although, AMD has licensed ARM Cortex-A50 cores for its upcoming AMD Opteron based solutions for micro-servers, the famous processor maker has not made public its plans to design consumer class solutions powered by ARM technology. Until now, that is.
Recent comments from an AMD vice president show that the company is interested in this direction.
Lisa Su, AMD’s senior vice president and general manager of global business units said during the latest financial conference call that ARM has its advantages when it comes to new operating systems:
“We view ARM and x86 as two important eco-systems that are out there in the industry. So x86 will always continue to be very important in both the PC and the server market but we see ARM being important with the new market especially new operating systems as well as some of the high volume data center application.
So yes, there will be a market for both ARM and x86 and I think that’s one of the unique things that we can bring over the next few years to the marketplace.”
And even though Microsoft is pushing all its weight behind Windows RT, the future of Windows on ARM is still up in the air. The next year or so is deemed downright crucial for the platform, as Microsoft seems to be on track to unleash new tablets powered by Windows RT 8.1 in just a couple of months.
With 64-bit ARM solutions poised to hit the market in the near future, the battle for processor supremacy on the mobile front will soon heat up.
