Advanced Micro Devices said that its ATI graphics business unit has shipped over sixteen million of DirectX 11-compatible graphics processing units and reiterated plans to introduce second-generation DirectX 11 graphics chips later in 2010. Besides, despite rumours, AMD expects supply constraints to ease in the second half of the year.

"Demand for our GPU offerings in the quarter was very strong, and shipments were temped only by supply constraints. This was the second straight quarter of record GPU shipments, led by an 18% sequential increase in notebook discrete units. More than half of our GPU shipments in the quarter were DirectX 11-capable and [so far] we have shipped nearly 16 million DX11 GPUs to date," said Dirk Meyer, chief executive officer of Advanced Micro Devices, during the quarterly conference call with financial analysts.

AMD announced revenue for the second quarter of 2010 of $1.65 billion, a net loss of $43 million, or $0.06 per share, and operating income of $125 million. The company reported non-GAAP net income of $83 million, or $0.11 per share, and non-GAAP operating income of $138 million.

ATI's revenue increased 8% sequentially and 87% year-over-year to approximately $470 million, which is higher than GPU revenues received by ATI when it was independent back in 2006.  The sequential increase was driven by record GPU unit shipments, partially offset by a decrease in average selling price. The year-over-year increase was driven by an increase in GPU shipments and ASP. Operating income was $33 million, compared with $47 million in Q1 2010 and a loss of $17 million in Q2 2009.

AMD also reaffirmed plans to introduce  the next-generation ATI Radeon HD 6000-series graphics processors in 2010. However, this time AMD did not say that it planned to refresh the whole lineup, but only promised to debut some of the novelties.

"In the second half of the year, we expect GPU demand to remain healthy and supply constraints to ease. We remain on track to bolster our GPU leadership with the introduction of our second-generation DirectX 11 graphics products later this year. [...] We will start introducing the second-generation of our DX 11 products before the end of the year," said Mr. Meyer.

Tags: ATI, Radeon, AMD, Southern Islands, 40nm