Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) has given shares in Advanced Micro Devices Inc. (NASDAQ:AMD) a boost after saying it will be using the chipmaker’s technology in its new iMac Pro.
Shares in AMD gained for a third day in a row in early US trading, rising 2.58% to US$12.70.
At Apple’s worldwide developers’ conference in California on Monday, the tech giant said its new US$5,000 iMac Pro will include AMD’s Radeon Vega Graphics chips. The announcement sent its share up 3.1% on Monday and 7% on Tuesdays.
“We’ve had a tremendous amount of very positive coverage from Monday’s Apple announcement,” said Chris Hook, senior director of marketing for the Radeon Technologies Group at AMD in an interview with MarketWatch. “We’re thrilled to have Apple as a customer.”
Rising demand for AMD chips...
Shares were also lifted by reports of product sellouts, supported by rising demand for its chips from gaming enthusiasts and cryptocurrency miners.
Mining for cryptocurrency involves using computers to validate transactions and prevent counterfeit by solving difficult mathematical equations. Computer operators are rewarded with the generation of a new currency.
RBC Capital said demand from cryptocurrency miners for low-to-mid end graphics procession units, such as AMD’s, have increased recently. The analyst expects demand will remain high “given the return on investment is material” for the mining community.
AMD addresses competition concerns...
AMD chief technology officer Mark Papermaster tried to soothe worries over competition, particularly from graphics chip marker Nvidia Corp, at the Bank of America Merrill Lynch’s global technology conference on Tuesday.
“I think the short answer is that the product competitiveness drives share gain, right?” Papermaster said, according to a transcript provided by FactSet. “So when you look at Polaris, we released it last year and it’s targeted right smack in the mainstream...We’ve gained five [percentage] points of share since the release of Polaris.”
Polaris is a new graphics architecture used in AMD’s graphics chip and designed to improve performance in gaming technology.