Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. (AMD) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Welcome, and thank you for joining us today. I also want to thank Tytra for the invitation to keynote COMPUTEX 2022 and Chairman Wang for the very kind introduction. Every year, I look forward to COMPUTEX as the opportunity for our industry together in Taiwan, and highlight the deep partnerships throughout the ecosystem and our work together to shape the future. from system design and manufacturing to motherboards, graphics cards and other critical components like memory and storage, our partners in Taiwan play a critical role helping AMD push the envelope in high-performance computing. This is the most exciting time for the semiconductor industry, whether you're talking about cloud, supercomputing, AI or intelligent-end devices, high-performance and adaptive computing solutions are playing a larger and larger role in every aspect of our daily lives. And we see this trend only accelerating in the coming years. We've recently closed our acquisition of Xilinx, the largest semiconductor transaction in history. And AMD now has the broadest portfolio of leadership compute engines in the industry, building on our high-performance CPUs and GPUs with the industry-leading FPGAs and adaptive SoCs. Now AMD is all about pushing the envelope on technology. Wherever our partners have a need for more computing capability, you will find AMD. And you can see our products and technologies everywhere from PCs to game consoles, smartphones, the cloud and now industrial and telecom as well. Today, though, is all about our next generation of PC products for gamers, creators and enthusiasts. Now as we've seen over the last several years, the PC has never been a more essential part of how we live, work and play. With 349 million PCs shipped in 2021 and more than $900 million shipped in the last 3 years. At AMD, we're all about building the best. Today, we're going to focus on the best in PCs, including new leadership, Ultra thin, commercial and gaming notebooks, and new details on our next-generation Ryzen desktop processors and platforms. Let's start with the latest and ultrathin notebooks powered by our Ryzen 6000 processors. Here is Jason Vanta, General Manager of our OEM PC business.

Thank you, Lisa. At CES earlier this year, we brought you the incredible Ryzen 6000 mobile powered by the Zen 3 CPU core RDNA 2 graphics and 6-nanometer TSMC technology. Ryzen 6000 also brought an entirely new notebook platform delivering DDR5 PCIe Gen 4 and USB 4 in the most premium notebooks. We promised leadership performance per watt, battery life and graphics performance in Windows 11. The initial reviews were a resounding reflection that we delivered on our promises. The ASUS G14 was consistently awarded for its combination of gaming performance, innovative form factor and exceptional battery life. And 72 Ryzen 6000 base systems have either launched or been announced to date. But our Ryzen 6000 portfolio is only just beginning. Ryzen 6000 will establish leadership in additional segments, including Ultra Thin consumer and commercial enterprise notebooks. Our goal with Ryzen 6000 Ultra thin is to partner on notebooks that are ready to work, create, collaborate and even game on the go. Just like our gaming notebooks, we want our Ultra thins to offer the perfect balance between performance and mobility. With the incredible efficiency delivered by Zen 3+, our U series processors enable some of the thinnest, lightest, highest performing ultra-mobile PCs in the market, outperforming our competition's P-Series. By combining our RDNA 2 graphics core DDR5 memory and Fidelity FX, we can enable new experiences on the thinnest systems in the market today. The recently launched ZenBook 13s OLED is only 14.9 millimeters a and was only 2.2 pounds. This slim sleek system can easily run Godfall, 1080p and over 60 frames per second. The recently launched Yoga Slim 7 ProX delivers discrete level gaming performance in a chassis less than 16 millimeters thick. We partnered with PC OEMs on some of the most exciting premium Ultra-thin notebooks launching this year. Now in the commercial segment, Ryzen 6000 delivers the ultimate productivity and collaboration experience to the new increasingly hybrid workforce. The way we work and communicate has fundamentally changed in the past few years. The amount of time spent on video collaboration has more than doubled in the past year. Over 70% of workers want flexibility between office and remote. Yet the average system today is over 4 years old, leading workers ill equipped for this transition to hybrid. Our innovative partner platforms based on Ryzen 6000 deliver on the full set of hybrid workforce needs. Exclusive platforms like the all-new ThinkPad Z-Series and the award-winning EliteBook line seamlessly blend collaboration, productivity and mobility. Over 60 commercial notebooks will launch this year based on Ryzen, an increase of over 25% year-on-year. Ryzen Pro has become synonymous with performance on productivity applications. The latest Ryzen Pro commercial notebooks outperformed competitive processors by up to 17% on combined Microsoft Office and team's productivity. The efficiency optimization enable continuous collaboration from the office, the coffee shop or the cash. Ryzen 6000 delivers a 45% battery life advantage on Microsoft Teams when compared to notebooks powered by a comparable competitive mobile processor. Ryzen 6000 Pro has also taken the commercial battery life crown based on third-party analysis. The HP EliteBook 865 G9 ranks as the #1 laptop in the world on the Mobile Mark 2018 benchmark with 26.1 hours of mixed usage battery life. While Ryzen is known for premium notebooks, we want to ensure that the modern mainstream market experiences rising innovations as well. During the past few years, millions of people have found their way back to the PC. It has become an everyday device for everyone. But most mainstream notebooks are not ready to deliver a full featured responsive Windows 11 or Chromebook experience. Today, we are announcing a new APU code name Mendocino that will launch in the second half of this year. Mendocino is ideal for do-it-all Windows 11 notebooks and Chromebooks between USD 399 and USD 599. Built on the same low-power, high-performance 6-nanometer technology as our award-winning Ryzen 6000 mobile product family, Mendocino offers up to a quad core 8 thread Zen 2 CPU true RDNA 2 graphics, LP DDR5 memory and cutting-edge video codecs to enable seamless collaboration across Zoom, Teams and Google Meet. The number of systems announced using Ryzen continues to grow rapidly. Over 72 Ryzen 6,000 notebooks have been announced by OEMs thus far in 2022 and the options will continue to grow throughout the year. The full Ryzen mobile portfolio includes 50 gaming systems, 90 ultra-thin systems and 60 commercial systems shipping during this year. This portfolio brings more options to enjoy the superior performance, exceptional mobility and captivating experiences delivered by Ryzen. Now let me hand it off to Frank Azor to talk to you about the latest on AMD Advantage

Thanks, Jason. Imagine a gaming computer where every core component is designed to work seamlessly with one another, where every performance and efficiency metric is optimized in the CPU and GPU since their inception for the purpose of delivering to you the absolute best computing experience technologically possible. That is our vision for the future of gaming at AMD. About a year ago at COMPUTEX, we announced the AMD Advantage framework. These solutions feature AMD high-performance components, including our family of exclusive smart technologies. AMD advantage laptops are developed to follow stringent desired guidelines and processes to deliver systems with state-of-the-art performance beautiful, high refresh rate displays, fast load times, great battery life and so much more. Our mission with AMD Advantage systems is to raise the bar of what defines the industry's best gaming laptops, and it starts with our smart technologies. Where AMD CPUs and GPUs work cohesively together to help eliminate system bottlenecks with technologies like smart access memory, but at the same time, delivering power where and when it's needed most, with Smart Shift Max. AMD Smart Access Graphics intelligently optimizes your system for maximum performance and efficiency. And for delivering outstanding gaming on battery sessions, we created Smart Shift ECO. Today, I'm excited to announce our next smart technology. Smart access storage gets you out of the load screen and into your gameplay faster than ever. Traditional game loading takes a significant amount of compute power to decompress the games data, requiring the CPU to do the decompression and data transfer, which introduces latency and takes up considerable system resources. To help bypass these bottlenecks AMD has created smart access storage, a suite of technologies supporting Microsoft direct storage that utilizes smart access memory along with new AMD platform technologies and Radeon GPU asset decompression to improve both game load times and texture streaming. We're so excited about this new technology. Stay tuned for more news on Smart access storage in the coming months. Now let's talk about some of the awesome AMD advantage gaming laptops we have coming to market, built with the latest drives in 6000 series processors, the latest Radeon 6000 M and S Series graphics and AMD's Smart Technologies. As Jason mentioned earlier, the first AMD Advantage solution we launched this year was a 14-inch ROG zephyrus G14. At only 18.5 millimeter spin has quickly become one of the industry's favorite gaming laptops. The system is already available by most retailers and e-tailers worldwide for you to experience yourself. So go check it out. For gamers looking for a desktop-like experience in a gaming laptop the Alienware m17 R5 offers supreme performance on a beautiful 17-inch low blue-light emitting display with up to 500 nits of brightness featuring Dolby Vision and refresh rates up to 4k at 120 hertz. Lenovo recently announced Legion Slim 7. This is the thinnest AMD advantage laptop yet, offering 100 frames per second gaming performance in 16-inch laptop, that's just 17-millimeter spin. The system features powerful and efficient AMD processors and graphics and a massive battery capacity up to 100-watt hours. So much performance in battery in such a thin and light form factor makes the system an incredible engineering achievement. For performance-demanding gamers, the new Lenovo Legion 7 AMD Advantage Edition gaming laptop features new WASD keys equipped with precise force center technology. This technology allows players to scale their input through different levels of pressure applied to their keyboard. Imagine being able to control the speed your character moves in game based on how hard or soft you press on the WASD keys of your keyboard. Force Center technology literally adds new dimensions to how you game. Meta MacBook and Origin are 2 of our first AMD Advantage system integrator designs. These systems will be available starting this summer on originpc.com and JD.com, and they'll come with the latest Ryzen 6000 series processors and Radeon graphics and will each be enabled with the family of AMD Smart Technologies. Gamers who want to play on plug, the new OMEN 16 HP is the first system to launch with AMD SmartShip Eco-enabled, giving you up to 60% longer gaining time on battery and a game like League of Legends at 1080p. This system also features OMEN Tempest cooling technology, which keeps your system cool and quiet, along with an Ice Lake Flow Blue Light certified display. And finally, I'm excited to announce that this summer, Corsair will be launching their first ever gaming and streaming laptop exclusively with AMD Advantage. The Corsair Voyager features the latest Ryzen processors and Radeon graphics. It's enabled with the entire family of smart technologies, and it features a 16-inch resin premium 240-hertz WQHD plus display. Voyager is the first laptop ever designed to be a truly mobile streaming solution. It features an integrated 10 key streaming command center powered by Elgato's popular Stream deck software, and a 1080p high fidelity webcam powered by the Elgato integrated camera Hub software, allowing you to do things like dial in your field of view or change video inputs, putting studio-level controls at your fingertips. Equipped with Corsair's DDR5 memory and smart technologies like Smart chip MAX, users can automatically unlock the full potential of the laptop, whether gaming or streaming. We're very excited to have Corsair Voyager join the award-winning AMD Advantage portfolio of laptops. Voyager is available this summer from Corsair and retail partners worldwide, including customizable versions from Origin PC. Thank you for your time today. Let me hand it back over to Lisa.

Thank you, Frank and Jason. We're very excited about bringing together the power of Ryzen, Radeon and AMD software to build the best in ultra thin, commercial and gaming notebooks. Now you all know that at AMD, we're always working on what's next. So let's close with a preview of what comes next for desktop PCs. Today, tens of millions of gamers, creators and PC enthusiasts use AMD Ryzen processors in the AM4 platform. AM4 motherboards were first introduced in 2016. Almost 6 years later, we've now shipped nearly 70 million AM4 CPUs spending more than 125 unique processors, 5 different architectures and 4 process technology nodes. Ecosystem support for AM4 has been amazing with our partners introducing more than 500 unique AM4 motherboards, and AM4 is still going strong. Just last month, we launched the Ryzen 7 5800 X3D, the world's first desktop CPU with 3D stacked triplets. It plugs into existing AM4 motherboards and delivered an average 15% boost in gaming performance over the 5800x. This type of performance improvement has typically only been possible with the introduction of a new CPU architecture. And as the reviews have highlighted, if you want the best PC gaming processor today, it's the 5800 X3D in the AM4 platform. And when you look at the numbers compared to the best gaming processor from the competition, the 5800 X3D wins across a broad range of games. It is the world's fastest gaming CPU and importantly, it delivers that leadership performance while using significantly less power. Now while AM4 is a great platform that will continue for many years to come, building the best PC is always about pushing the envelope. And for AMD, we do this by combining our multigenerational CPU core road map with advanced manufacturing process nodes and leadership packaging technologies. Today, I'm really excited to share more about the next major step in our road map that extends our leadership in desktop PCs. Our next-generation Ryzen 7000 desktop CPUs, combined our new N4 core in 5-nanometer process technology with the all-new Socket AM5 platform to bring more performance, more features and more capability to desktop PCs. And it all starts with our Zen 4 core. We designed Zen 4 to deliver significant performance and performance per watt advances over our already industry-leading Zen 3 core. We doubled the L2 cash to 1 megabyte per core for higher throughput. We've also increased the clock speeds on Zen 4 to run significantly above 5 gigahertz. And with higher IPC and faster clock speeds, we expect Zen 4 CPUs to deliver more than 15% higher single-threaded performance compared to the prior generation. We've also added instructions for hardware accelerated AI workloads like neural networks and machine learning. Now for the first time, let me show you our Ryzen 7000. As you can see, Ryzen 7000 CPUs include up to 2 core chiplets each with 8 Zen cores built on an optimized version of TSMC's high-performance 5-nanometer process technology. The larger chiplet is an all-new 6-nanometer [ I/O die ] designed for Ryzen 7000. We added RDNA 2 graphics, bringing integrated graphics capabilities into our Ryzen enthusiast desktop CPUs for the first time, and we've also made significant advances in power management and added support to the latest memory and I/O technologies like DDR5 and PCI Express 5. To tell you more about our new AM5 desktop platform, here is the General Manager of our desktop business, David McAfee

Thanks, Lisa. Beyond the processor itself, one of the most exciting aspects of this new product family is the transition to the AM5 platform ecosystem. As Lisa mentioned, AM4 was an incredible platform with longevity and capability beyond what we even imagined it would be when it was first introduced. As we approach the design of AM5, our philosophy followed many of the same principles. We wanted to create a platform designed for flexibility and built for the future, one that maximized the capability and performance of our processors and one that incorporated modern I/O and interfaces that will define the next generation of enthusiast desktop PCs. To that end, our new AM5 platform will lead the industry in capability for the most demanding enthusiast PC builds. That starts with an all-new socket and a transition from micro PGA to an LGA socket to drive more power and greater signal integrity for all of those high-speed I/Os. Pair that with an expansion to new processor infrastructure groups, all the way up to 170 watts TDP to take advantage of the performance per watt efficiency of leading-edge process technology nodes unlocking even more all core performance. It incorporates next-generation I/O capabilities, including dual channel, DDR5 memory and the capability to draw the most PCI Gen 5 lanes from the processor socket in the industry. And last but not least, over the past several years, we've developed a robust cooler ecosystem for AM4 platforms, supporting a wide range of passive, air and liquid coolers in all shapes and sizes and price range. And I'm happy to say that as we make this transition, our new AM5 socket will be compatible with existing AM4 coolers. When you look at AM5's I/O capabilities, we've made many enhancements like enabling 24 PCI lanes capable of Gen 5 speed connected directly to the socket to power the fastest storage and graphics solutions in the industry. We now support up to 14 SuperSpeed USB ports, including support for 20 gigabit per second speed and USB Type-C connectors. We know that connectivity is critical to the enthusiast motherboard user and AM5 includes support for Wi-Fi 6E for blazing fast wireless connectivity as well as 4 independent display outputs connected to the integrated RDNA 2 graphics engine. In addition to all of that I/O directly connected to the socket, the new 600 series chipsets bring a host of expansion options to the platform to meet the needs of even the most demanding users. Now beyond the core platform I/O, the Socket AM5 ecosystem also features an all-new SBI 3 power infrastructure. This brings multiple advantages to the platform, such as support for additional power phases for that higher power delivery into the motherboard, fine grain power control and significantly faster voltage response capabilities. Our AM5 motherboard family will feature 3 levels of boards with different features targeting different segments of the desktop market. At the very top of the stack, we have our X6 70 Extreme boards. These boards deliver the best of the best across all aspects of what the most demanding enthusiast crave. PCI, dual-channel DDR5 memory with the most extreme overclocking headroom and the most power phases to push the limits of performance and overclocking. Next, the X670 AM5 platform delivers the goods for the bulk of Ryzen enthusiasts and their gaming builds. PCI 5 to at least one of the M.2 slots as well as the primary graphic slot on many boards as well as very strong memory overclocking and CPU power deliveries on the board. And finally, our B650 boards offer the perfect balance of price point and capability. These boards are designed performance users who want all the features, the AM5 ecosystem has to offer, but may not demand all of the headroom and overclocking support the X Series boards make available. These boards will all feature PCI 5 to an M.2 storage socket so that users can take advantage of the benefits that Gen 5 offers. Now in 2019, AMD was the first to introduce PCI 4 to our desktop platforms. And now we're bringing in PCI 5, which doubles the throughput once again offering a theoretical maximum speed of 32 gig per second per lane to a range of devices on the motherboard. The first enthusiast grade PCI 5 devices entering the market are NVMe storage solutions. And AMD has partnered with Bison as well as storage device manufacturers like crucial and Micron to bring this incredible performance uplift to the AM5 platform. Now speaking of performance, as we develop these next-gen storage solutions with our partners, we're seeing an incredible 60% increase in sequential read performance versus PCI Gen 4 drives. When you think about what gamers and enthusiasts want most, like faster game loads or recalling large models from storage, the PCI Gen 5 ecosystem promises to deliver a fantastic experience. We expect to see the first devices from crucial and Micron available in the consumer market timed with the introduction of the AM5 ecosystem, followed by new devices from other partners like gigabyte, MSI, Corsair and many more shortly thereafter. Our partners will introduce a range of new AM5 platforms covering the features, price points and capabilities to address the needs of many different enthusiast desktop customers. boards from so BioStar, gigabyte and MSI will feature many of the capabilities that you heard about today. I'm so excited about what we're bringing to market with AM5 and the designs our partners are developing around this next-generation solution. I can't wait for you to get your hands on the next era of Ryzen desktop computing. And with that, I'd like to hand the stage back to Lisa to show off a little bit of what this platform is capable of.

Thanks, David for highlighting some of the big advances AM5 will bring to desktop PCs. Now one of my favorite things to do is show off our new tech. So I'm so excited to be able to do that now with Ryzen 7000. Let's start first with gaming. What you're seeing now is gameplay footage of the recently released GhostWire Tokyo from Tango GameWorks and Bethesda Studios, running on a preproduction version of our 16 core Ryzen 7000 processor. This first-person action adventure game has rich visuals that help recreate an alternate version of Tokyo. If you look at the current frequency of the CPU reported in the top left corner, you can see that those Zen 4 cores are running around 5.5 gigahertz with slight variations during gameplay. We designed Zen 4 to run significantly faster than our previous generation, and that increase in frequency can translate into a smoother gaming experience. And while this is just one example, we're really excited for gamers to get their hands on our Ryzen 7000 series. But we know our fans use Ryzen for more than just gaming. From the beginning, Ryzen has set the standard for high-performance content creation, delivering performance that was previously only available in a workstation class processor. Ryzen 7000 will extend that even further. Now let me show you a Ryzen 7000 processor running the popular blender 3D modeling software. On the right is the Ryzen 7000 system and the left is a competitor system. Both CPUs are 16 cores and rendering a custom image of our next-gen Ryzen desktop CPU with blender maxing out the core and thread count of those processors to complete the render as quickly as possible. As you can see, the Ryzen 7000 system completes a process 31% faster, which means creators spend less time waiting and much more time creating. So hopefully, you can see why we're so excited about our next-generation Ryzen 7000 CPUs and AM5 platforms. You'll hear a lot more over the coming months, and you should expect Ryzen 7000 processors will be available starting this fall. It's been fantastic spending some time with everyone today. Let me close with a recap of the news. New ultrathin and gaming notebooks powered by Ryzen 6000 series and AMD advantage with leadership performance and battery life are available now. Mainstream notebooks based on AMD Mendocino will be available starting in Q4 and Horizon 7000 and AM5 are coming this fall. Thank you all so much for joining us today. We look forward to seeing you in person again soon. Have a great COMPUTEX 2022.