AMD signals that it'll make more GPUs to alleviate demand
During its earnings call yesterday evening, AMD CEO Lisa Su signaled a possible change in the company's tack on cryptocurrency-mining demand for its Radeon products. As recently as October of last year, Su predicted that cryptocurrency demand would soften throughout the fourth quarter of 2017. The consistently high prices of Bitcoin and other forms of cryptocurrency in the intervening time, plus the gold-rush levels of excitement from folks hoping to cash in on the boom with GPU mining rigs of their own, have shattered that prediction. Su said that roughly a third of the company's $140 million sequential revenue growth in its Computing and Graphics business came from miners' appetites for its products last quarter. Demand for graphics cards to mine crypto-coins remains strong and appears as though it'll remain that way for some time yet.
Even if demand from the crypto market is healthy today, it's widely expected that the price of Bitcoin and its satellite cryptocurrencies will fall from their current heights at some point. Despite that potential volatility, Su told investors that AMD is "working to replenish [the] channel environment" and "ramping up production" in response to the state of ...