Graphics Products Group (Part 1)

The year 2008 has so far been very eventful for AMD, as the industry watched the company's newest consumer graphics products take on every segment the competitor has to offer, and reestablish AMD as a pioneer in visual computing. Rick Bergman, Senior Vice President, General Manager for the Graphics Product Group (GPG) addressed the audience, with little insights into what drives the company's design process, and how it's been successful lately.
There's a slight repetition of what went on in last year's AMD, only that this time around, AMD has a lot more to brag about. The model AMD is basing on, is the newfound love for the US$ 200~$300 market, where the company would focus all its R&D onto creating a powerful and highly scalable graphics processor for that segment. The scalability of the GPU would then be put to use in making extreme-performance graphics boards featuring two of those GPUs, to cater to the enthusiast market, while later on, the same GPU could be scaled down to create mainstream and value GPUs. This, unlike the competitor (NVIDIA) pushing all its resources into a monolithic high-end GPU, and not being able to deliver anything new down the segment (lately).



As expected, AMD has many numbers and figures to brag about. To begin with, AMD is using its superior integrated graphics performance as a medium to sell its entire platform consisting of its processor and chipset. Also put up, are charts to show how the company stacks up against NVIDIA on a segmented GPU chart.



GPG grew in relation to itself on annual and quarterly bases, recording 40% growth over the year, and up to 55% growth over the most recent quarter assessed. Also recorded is a steady growth against NVIDIA in on a quarterly basis, with AMD now having crossed the 40% mark. The growth was even more, when consoles are brought into the picture, where the sales of console processors are directly linked to the sales of the consoles. AMD makes the graphics processors for Microsoft Xbox 360 and Nintendo Wii, while NVIDIA makes the GPU for Sony Playstation 3. The rather consistent success Xbox 360 has had in recent times has boosted AMD's sales up for its GPU.