AMD Records Loss As 'Trinity' Chip Launch Nears

Also while the quarter, AMD closed on its $334 million deal to buy microserver maker SeaMicro. But, the earnings of $1.59 billion – even though less than the $1.61 billion it generated in the first quarter of 2011 – was higher than expected, and the company expects earnings to grow another 3 percent in the second quarter.

The server side

On the server side, Read said the company's Opteron chips, based on the Bulldozer architecture, were continuing to see steady adoption, and that in the first quarter, Bulldozer-based Opterons accounted for more than half of all the server chips sold. Last month Intel unveiled its latest Xeon chips, dubbed "Romley." The Xeon E5-2600 processors are designed for such uses as analytics and cloud computing.