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Tuesday, January 27, 2009- AMD sees loss of over $3 billion in fiscal 2008
AMD has been struggling for years now with profitability and competing with rival chipmakers. The world's second largest chipmaker has seen hard times and things still aren't looking up for the company.
AMD has posted its Q4 2008 and fiscal 2008 earnings reports, and things don’t look good. For Q4 2008 AMD reports revenue from continued operations was $1.162 billion. While that sounds like a lot of revenue, the number is down 35 percent from Q3 2008 and down 33 percent from Q4 2007.
The chipmaker reported a net loss of $1.424 billion for the quarter or $2.34 per share. The loss for continuing operations for the quarter was $1.414 billion. Q4 2008 revenue was down 28 percent sequentially with Q3 process technology license revenue of $191 million excluded.
AMD reports that for its fiscal 2008 year ending on December 27, 2008 it produced revenue of $5.808 billion and posted a massive net loss of $3.098 billion. The end of fiscal 2008 marks the second straight year where AMD posted a net loss in excess of $3 billion. The net loss in fiscal 2007 totaled $3.379 billion.
The chipmaker notes that the results for its continuing operations include a negative impact of $996 million resulting from the write-down of ATIs value, formation of The Foundry Company, restructuring charges and other items.
AMD President and CEO Dirk Meyer said in a statement, "Although industry visibility is poor, our priorities remain clear and achievable. We remain focused on further reducing our breakeven point through targeted restructuring actions while ensuring we execute our highly-competitive product and technology roadmaps. We made significant progress toward the creation of ‘The Foundry Company’ in the quarter, and anticipate closing the transaction in February. We expect our ongoing restructuring actions and asset smart strategy, combined with the strength of our innovative product offerings, will leave us well positioned for a global market recovery."
AMD's main rival, Intel, announced yesterday that it would close some of its fabrication plants and consolidate manufacturing to improve its financial outlook.
Why should I overclock?
The Need for More Performance
There comes a time when your PC no longer has the grunt to run software comfortably due to lack of performance. Older or low end PCs suffer this problem when a demanding piece of software is installed. It is important to locate what the problem is before resorting to overclocking. The problem may well be lack of RAM, which overclocking cannot fix.
To Relieve a Bottleneck
Bottlenecking is the term used to describe a component in your PC which is restricting other components due to lack of performance or efficiency. Overclocking can relieve a bottleneck if the problem lies with the CPU, RAM or GPU clock speeds. Bottlenecking is impossible to overcome completely, but it can be minimised with careful planning. Remember that a PC is as fast as its slowest component.
To Exercise a Known Safe Clock Speed
Some low to mid-end devices are underclocked versions of higher-end models. These lower-end models can then be overclocked by the end user to get similar (or possibly better) performance than the higher-end models. This is common with CPUs which use a binning process to determine what clocks CPUs get. This is great for the consumer because it allows us to spend less and then overclock to get significantly higher speeds. Some of these lower-end models have a safe known clock speed which they can perform stably on stock voltages. Voltages and stability will be discussed further on in the tutorial.
For Fun, Hobby or Competitive Reasons
Some people enjoy getting the most out of their system without spending a cent. Others spend money on complex cooling setups such as water cooling and vapour phase change units. Cooling is important when overclocking and will be discussed later in the tutorial. Overclocking competitions are becoming popular and allow skilled overclockers to showcase their talent.
To Learn More About your System
Overclocking allows you to understand how components communicate and function. It also allows you to learn what some of those jargon words mean such as DDR (double data rate).
`updated on- 6:40 AM
