Greetings, welcome to the Advanced Micro Devices second quarter 2017 conference call. At this time, all participants are in listen-only mode. A question and answer session will follow the formal presentation. If anyone should require operator assistance during the conference, please press star zero on your telephone keypad. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. It is now my pleasure to introduce your host, Laura Graves, Vice President of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.
Thank you, welcome to AMD's second quarter conference call. By now, you should have had the opportunity to review a copy of our earnings release and the CFO commentary and slides. If you have not reviewed these documents, they can be found on AMD's website at ir.amd.com. Participants on today's call are Dr. Lisa Su, our President and Chief Executive Officer, and Devinder Kumar, our Senior Vice President, Chief Financial Officer, and Treasurer. This is a live call and will be replayed via webcast on amd.com. I would like to highlight a few key dates for you. Mark Papermaster, Senior Vice President and Chief Technology Officer, will present at the Canaccord Genuity Global Growth Conference on August ninth. Raja Koduri, Senior Vice President and Chief Architect of Radeon Technologies Group, will present at the Jefferies Semiconductors, Hardware, and Communications Infrastructure Summit on August 30th.
Forrest Norrod, Senior Vice President and General Manager of our Enterprise, Embedded, and Semi-Custom Business Group, will present at the Deutsche Bank Technology Conference on September 12th. Our third quarter quiet time will begin at the close of business on Friday, September 15th, 2017. Today's discussion contains forward-looking statements based on the environment as we currently see it. Those statements are based on current beliefs, assumptions, and expectations, speak only as of the current date, and as such, involve risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from our current expectations. Additionally, please note that we will be referring to non-GAAP financials during this call, except for revenue and segment operating income or loss, which is on a GAAP basis.
The non-GAAP financial measures referenced are reconciled to their most directly comparable GAAP financial measure in the press release and CFO commentary posted on our website at quarterlyearnings.amd.com. Please refer to the cautionary statement in today's earnings press release and CFO commentary for more information. You'll also find detailed discussions about our risk factors in our filings with the SEC, and in particular, AMD's quarterly report on Form 10-Q for the quarter ended April 1st, 2017. With that, I will hand the call over to Lisa. Lisa?
Thank you, Laura. Good afternoon to all those listening in today. Q2 was a strong quarter for us as we continued to ramp our high-performance product portfolio. Second quarter revenue increased 19% to $1.22 billion, and gross margin improved year-over-year. Importantly, we returned to non-GAAP net income profitability in the quarter, driven by strong growth in our Computing and Graphics segment. Looking at our Computing and Graphics segment, we made excellent progress in the quarter and reported operating profitability for the first time in three years based on our leadership Ryzen processor and GPU product offerings. The expansion and growing adoption of our Ryzen CPUs, combined with our sixth consecutive quarter of double-digit year-over-year graphics revenue growth, resulted in a 51% increase in Computing and Graphics segment sales year-over-year.
Client computing revenue increased by strong double-digit percentage from a year ago, driven by a significant ramp and strong sell-through of our Ryzen CPUs in the first full quarter of sales. Our Ryzen family of processors drove a richer mix of shipments, and client ASPs improved significantly from a year ago. All major PC OEMs have announced premium Ryzen-based desktop systems, with widespread availability expected for the back-to-school and holiday seasons.
As we move into the second half of 2017, we are on track to complete the full family of Ryzen processors, including Ryzen 3 processors targeting the mainstream and value market segments with on-shelf availability later this week; Ryzen Threadripper products for the high-end desktop markets, with global component channel availability in early August; Ryzen PRO-based offerings targeting the commercial client segment, with availability in Q3; and Ryzen mobile APUs, which will be available for the consumer market later this year. In graphics, GPU revenue increased by a strong double-digit percentage from a year ago, with higher unit shipments and ASPs driving growth across our desktop and mobile GPU products. Demand for Radeon RX GPUs was strong in the quarter, driven by gaming and cryptocurrency mining.
In June, we began the introduction of our Vega GPU architecture with the launch of the Radeon Vega Frontier Edition, delivering a powerful professional workstation graphics card designed to tackle demanding design, rendering, and machine intelligence workloads. Apple announced that our Radeon Pro Vega product will power the new iMac Pro, a workstation class product line designed for creators running the most demanding workflows. In addition, Apple also announced expanded iMac offerings, which are powered by the Radeon Pro 500 series. We will launch additional Radeon Vega products at SIGGRAPH next week, expanding further into premium portions of the consumer and professional GPU markets. Our investments in GPU compute and Radeon Instinct are continuing to build momentum. We introduced our first Vega-based Radeon Instinct data center products in June. These new GPU accelerators will significantly increase performance, efficiency, and ease of implementation for machine learning and high-performance computing workloads.
We also showcased a server powered by AMD's EPYC SoC and four Radeon Instinct MI25 accelerators, working together to deliver groundbreaking performance of 100 teraflops. Interest and excitement are high as we recently started shipments of our Radeon Instinct MI25 accelerators to strategic data center customers. Turning to our Enterprise, Embedded, and Semi-Custom segment, revenue declined 5% year-over-year and increased 44% sequentially. The sequential revenue gains were primarily based on higher semi-custom product shipments due to seasonality. In addition, we reached an important milestone in the quarter, delivering initial EPYC server revenue. In our semi-custom business, unit shipments were up sequentially and down year-over-year as we enter the fifth year of the current game console sales cycle. This console cycle continues to outpace previous cycles as Sony recently passed a milestone of 60 million PlayStation 4 consoles shipped.
Last month, Microsoft announced the new Xbox One X with availability in November. This system will be Microsoft's smallest and most powerful Xbox ever made and will be based on the combination of high-performance CPU and GPU IP that only AMD can provide. As we look at the remainder of the year and given the maturity of the current game console cycle, we expect semi-custom revenue to be down for the full year. In our server business, last month, we launched our EPYC family of high-performance data center processors, re-entering the incredibly important $16 billion data center market and setting several new industry performance records. With up to 32 high-performance Zen cores and an unparalleled feature set, our EPYC family of processors deliver greater competitive performance at every price point across a full range of integer, floating point, memory bandwidth, and IO benchmarks and workloads.
Our two-socket and one-socket EPYC CPUs are designed to deliver industry-leading performance on critical enterprise, cloud, and machine intelligence workloads and provide a substantial TCO advantage. At our EPYC launch event, we were joined by more than 20 leading server manufacturers and global ecosystem partners who showcased optimized support and EPYC-optimized platforms. We received compelling endorsements from OEM, cloud providers, and mega data center operators, including HP Enterprise, Dell, Baidu, and Microsoft Azure, with more than 20 EPYC-based platforms announced at launch. We expect an additional 20 EPYC platforms to be available in the second half of 2017. With the strong global ecosystem and customer interest we have built around our EPYC processor family, we are on track to re-enter the data center market in a major way.
In closing, we are very pleased with the trend of our quarterly results and how our products are positioned heading into the back half of the year. Our business foundation and growth opportunities are strong based on our high-performance product portfolio and our expanding customer traction. Given our first half 2017 performance and our visibility into the third quarter, we are happy to report we are progressing ahead of our annual revenue guidance, and we look forward to a strong year overall. Now, I'd like to turn the call over to Devinder to provide some additional color on our second quarter financial performance. Devinder?
Thank you, Lisa. Good afternoon, everyone. For the second quarter of 2017, AMD revenue grew 19% and gross margin expanded on a year-over-year basis, driven by a 51% year-over-year revenue increase in our Computing and Graphics segment. We achieved non-GAAP profitability on both an operating and net basis, with net income of $19 million and diluted earnings per share of $0.02. Let me provide more specifics for the quarter. Gross margin was 33%, up two percentage points year-over-year, due to a richer product mix and a higher percentage of revenue from our Computing and Graphics segment, driven by the first full quarter of Ryzen processor sales. Operating expenses were $381 million, compared to $342 million a year ago. The increase was due primarily to higher graphics and data center R&D-related investments.
Net licensing gain from our server JV with THATIC was $25 million, compared to $26 million a year ago, and we have recognized a total of approximately $140 million of net licensing gain to date. The remaining payments are related to production milestones and are expected to occur in 2018 and beyond. Operating income was $49 million in the second quarter of 2017, a significant improvement from an operating income of $3 million a year ago. Second quarter net interest expense, taxes, and other was $30 million, down from $43 million a year ago, primarily due to a lower overall interest rate and a lower debt balance. Net income was $19 million, or diluted earnings per share of $0.02 as compared to a net loss of $40 million, or loss per share of $0.05 a year ago.
Adjusted EBITDA was $84 million compared to $36 million a year ago and $28 million in the prior quarter. Turning to the business segments. Computing and Graphics segment revenue was $659 million, up 51% year-over-year and up 11% sequentially. The year-over-year increase was driven by demand for our Ryzen desktop processors and graphics processors. Computing and Graphics segment operating income was $7 million, the first quarterly operating profit in three years, compared to a loss of $81 million a year ago. The significant improvement was primarily due to higher revenue and an improved product mix. Enterprise, Embedded, and Semi-Custom revenue was $563 million, down 5% year-over-year, primarily due to lower semi-custom SoC sales. Revenue was up 44% sequentially due to the seasonal semi-custom ramp. Additionally, in the quarter, we reached an important milestone and recognized initial revenue from EPYC data center processor shipments.
Operating income was $42 million, down from $84 million a year ago, due primarily to lower revenue and higher data center-related R&D investments. Turning to the balance sheet, our cash equivalents and marketable securities total $844 million at the end of the quarter, compared to $943 million at the end of the prior quarter, due primarily to changes in working capital, largely driven by wafer purchases in anticipation of stronger revenue growth in the third quarter. Inventory at the end of the quarter was $833 million, down slightly from the prior quarter of $839 million. Long-term debt on the balance sheet was $1.38 billion. Total principal debt, including our secured revolving line of credit, was $1.74 billion. In Q2, we repurchased $40 million of term debt utilizing our lower-cost secured revolving line of credit.
Free cash flow was negative $94 million, due primarily to changes in working capital, largely driven by wafer purchases. Turning to our outlook for the third quarter of 2017, which is a 13-week quarter, we expect revenue to increase approximately 23% sequentially, ±3%. At the midpoint, this equates to revenue growth of approximately 15% year-over-year. We now expect annual 2017 revenue to increase a mid to high teens percentage year-over-year, compared to our prior guidance of low double-digit growth. Non-GAAP gross margin to be approximately 34%, non-GAAP operating expenses to be approximately $400 million, non-GAAP interest expense, taxes, and other to be approximately $28 million, and inventory to be down sequentially. Third quarter diluted share count for modeling non-GAAP EPS is expected to be approximately 1.14 billion. This includes shares related to our 2026 convertible senior notes and the warrant held by a Mubadala entity.
Additional information regarding diluted share count calculation can be found in the CFO commentary. In closing, Q2 was a strong quarter, and our financial performance continues to improve. As Lisa shared in her remarks, our business continues to strengthen as we ramp new high-performance products and expand our presence in premium markets. We are pleased with the strong growth in revenue, coupled with improving gross margin on the back of focused execution, financial discipline, and ongoing strategic investments in the business. With that, I'll turn it back to Laura. Laura?
Thank you. Thank you, Devinder. Operator, we're ready for our first question to begin Q&A.
Certainly. We'll now be conducting a question and answer session. If you'd like to ask a question, please press *1 on your telephone keypad. A confirmation tone will indicate your line is in the question queue. You may press *2 if you'd like to remove your question from the queue. For participants using speaker equipment, it may be necessary to pick up your handset before pressing the star keys. Once again, that's *1 if you'd like to ask a question. Our first question today is coming from Mark Lipacis from Jefferies. Please proceed with your question.
Hi. Thanks for taking my question. Congrats on getting back into the black on C&G. The question is on EPYC. I'm hoping that you can provide us some more color about how the reception is going, how we should think about milestones going forward. I'm wondering if you can tell us about the number of different trials or where you're seeing the most traction, and when you would expect this to ship into a production environment in the Super 7 Cloud guys. Thank you.
Sure, Mark. Thanks for your question. We are very pleased with the reception to EPYC. The launch that we did in June was very well received. We had a number of customers as well as partners, OEM providers, ODM guys, as well as cloud providers who participated in that. The general reception has been very positive. I would say that interest level is very high. In fact, we're adding additional customer support to really ensure that we help customers get their platforms up and running. In terms of what to expect in the revenue ramp, we started shipping early volume in the second half of June. We would expect that we continue to ramp that revenue through the second half of the year. We would expect some additional customer announcements in the second half of the year.
As we stated with both cloud and enterprise accounts, depending on their qualification cycles, it can take anywhere up to four quarters to qualify the parts. So far so good. I think very good traction, and we continue to lean in hard on the data center opportunities.
Thank you. That's very helpful. A follow-up, if I may. You mentioned crypto is helping the GPU side. That can be a dual-edged sword, and I was wondering if you can help perhaps quantify what that did to the upside, and is there any way to manage the risk of the miners breaking down their systems and putting it into the secondary market when the currency comes back down? Thank you.
Sure, Mark. Certainly the overall quarter for graphics was strong. Q2 tends to be seasonally down, we were up in the quarter, it was better than seasonal. I would say the better performance was due to two things. First of all, we did launch our Radeon RX 580 and Radeon RX 570 gaming cards in April, those cards are very well positioned in the market, they're doing well with gamers. Relative to cryptocurrency, we have seen some elevated demand. If you look at GPUs across the world, the inventory in the channel is actually quite lean, we're working on replenishing that inventory. Our priority, though, really is on our core market, which is the gaming market. A couple of things that we are certainly doing are we're prioritizing supply towards the gaming market.
You'll see system integrators as well as on some of the major retailers we have bundles with Ryzen and Radeon. Some of our partners are also offering mining-specific cards that have a different feature set such that we're really segmenting the market between gaming and mining. It's important to say, we didn't have cryptocurrency in our forecast, we're not looking at it as a long-term growth driver. We'll certainly continue to watch the developments around the blockchain technologies as they go forward.
Very helpful. Thank you.
Thanks, Mark. Operator, next question, please.
Our next question today is coming from Matt Ramsay from Canaccord Genuity. Please proceed with your question.
Thank you very much. Good afternoon. Lisa, I wanted to ask a little bit about the longer-term roadmap in your businesses across the CPU and GPU side. It occurs to me, and through some of the conversations we've had, particularly in the enterprise markets of high-end desktop and server, that some of the purchasing decisions made by your customers might be sort of dictated by how confident they are in the long-term roadmap that you guys are putting together as you move to 7 nanometer versus just the products that you've launched so far. Maybe you could talk a little bit about the roadmaps, how they're developing, and the progress the team is seeing on the 7 nanometer front. Thanks.
Sure, Matt. Look, I think the overall roadmap execution has been very good, very solid. I think our customers see that Ryzen performance, the EPYC performance on the CPU side, then certainly the Vega performance on the GPU side have met our commitments. The important thing, particularly in the enterprise market as well as the commercial market, having a strong roadmap with multiple generations is important. We stated at our Financial Analyst Day that we're already investing heavily in 7 nanometer. 7 nanometer will be key for us on both the CPU and the GPU side, I would say that development is progressing well. We're working with multiple foundries on that. We have multiple design teams that are working, we expect that will give us a strong competitive roadmap for the next several generations.
All right. Thank you for that, Lisa. A couple questions quickly for Devinder. I guess the first one is on share count. There was obviously some movement higher in the share count due to the in-the-money converts. Maybe you could talk us through if you were modeling maybe your business on a long term from an earnings power perspective, how would you think about modeling that share count? Then secondly, on the operating expense line, there's plenty to invest in here, but how should we think about that as we move through the year and into next year? Thanks.
Yeah, thank you, Matt. I think on the share count, basically, beyond the basic shares, the dilutive impact comes from three components. You have the employee equity grants, you have the 75 million share warrant that we issued to Mubadala in 2016, and you have the 101 million shares underlying our 805 million convertible note. The good news is as you start making money and you get beyond inflection points, all of that gets included in dilutive share count. I think given what we have laid out as guidance, in particular in the Financial Analyst Day, the assumption should be as you model profitability in the company, those shares get included. We have provided color in the commentary, and for Q3, we are estimating that the total share count is about $1.14 billion.
As far as the OpEx is concerned, we are obviously, with the strength in the business, performing stronger. We are making targeted investments, particularly in the R&D. We have included and invested in targeted R&D areas. Also in 2017, I think there are some employee-related performance incentives that are included in our current guidance given the fact that the business is performing stronger than anticipated. Lisa, anything you want to add?
Yeah, no, I think you covered it, Devinder. On the investment front, Matt, just to give you a little bit more color on that, I think we see tremendous opportunity in the data center around both CPU and GPU compute. We're taking the opportunity with some of the strength in the business to make sure we lean into those resources and fully pay off the product investments.
Thank you very much.
Thank you. Our next question today is coming from Ross Seymore from Deutsche Bank. Please proceed with your question.
Thanks for letting me ask a question. Lisa, one for you first on the client ASPs. I know Ryzen on the side, the mix had to go up, and those carry much better ASPs, but the client category as a whole, the ASPs went down. If you just think about going forward, when do the size of the buckets work that the Ryzen contribution will be big enough to offset whatever was the headwind against that in the second quarter?
Yeah. Good question, Ross. When you take a look at our client business, think of it as desktop and mobile, and then within the desktop segment, it's channel and OEM. Ryzen performed very well. I think the ASP contribution is very evident on the desktop line item. When we look at where we are in the progression of the Ryzen rollout, we're still in the early innings. We had our first full quarter of Ryzen desktop in the channel. The OEMs launched their desktop products in about mid-June, and they just started selling at the end of June, and that will flow through into the second half of the year. The mobile products are still our legacy products.
You saw the mobile ASPs were down slightly as we went from Q1 to Q2, and that was just a mix on some of the legacy business. The desktop ASPs were quite strong, and we should expect that as we go into the second half of the year and we have Ryzen really take off in the OEM sectors as well as once we introduce Ryzen Mobile towards the second half of the year, is when you'll see more of the full portfolio over to Ryzen. Does that help?
It does. A related follow-up on that is just transitioning those ASP and mixed commentaries over to the actual gross margin. The full-year revenue guidance is increased again. Just recently, you guys did it at the analyst meeting, now you're doing it again, so that's clearly a positive. It seems like the C&G side of things is what's driving that, given your commentary and the game console side being down. Given everything you just said about the mix improving in the back half of the year and the revenues now being higher, I'm a little surprised the gross margin guidance didn't change for the year. If we translate everything you just said, Lisa, to a gross margin dynamic, can you help us kind of make all of that make sense as well?
Yes. I think you summarized the revenue guidance well. I think we see the Computing and Graphics business accelerating on the strength of the new products. We do have a bit of a year-over-year headwind when we compare game consoles. When you look at our Q3 margin guidance, we are certainly up year-over-year three points. I think that's the strength of the product portfolio. I think as we get into the Q4 guidance, we'll talk more about the margin progression. What we expected in terms of margin expansion, with the premium products, is certainly playing out and that's helping the Q3 guide.
Thank you.
Thank you. Our next question today is coming from David Wong from Wells Fargo. Please proceed with your question.
Thanks very much. Can you give us some idea of whether your September guidance assumes any meaningful contribution from Vega sales for gaming in the September quarter?
Yes, David. We will be launching Vega actually in a week at SIGGRAPH. Yes, Vega will be shipping into gaming, into professional workstations, as well as into the GPU compute segment in the third quarter.
Can you update us on your expectations for launch timing of Ryzen Mobile chips? If you expect there to be revenues from Ryzen Mobile in December?
Yes. Ryzen Mobile is on track to launch for the holiday platform sales. You should see OEMs launching Ryzen Mobile for the holiday period. Yes, we will see revenue in the second half of the year.
Thanks very much.
Thanks, David.
Thanks, David. Next question, please. Our next question today is coming from Ambrish Srivastava from BMO Capital Markets. Please proceed with your question.
My question, first one, was on free cash flow. It's negative again, and for the first half, -$420, if my math is right. Devinder, when does free cash flow turn positive? I had a follow-up, please.
Yeah. I think 2016, if you go back and look at the full year, because of the seasonality of our business, we were positive. From a viewpoint of midpoint of 2017, we do see strength in the business. You are right, cash is down with the changes in working capital, and it's largely driven by wafer purchases in support of the stronger second half, and in particular, the stronger business that we are seeing. We expect cash to be up for the quarter, this quarter, and to be free cash flow positive for the year.
Okay. My follow-up is, Lisa, on the crypto question that Mark had asked earlier. I'm not sure you gave an answer to, or maybe Mark didn't ask that. Are you seeing follow-on strength from that in the current quarter? We realize it's not a core part of your business, but why or why not is it not similar to what happened in 2014? Thank you.
Sure, Ambrish. I think from an overall standpoint, we see strong demand in graphics for the third quarter. I think that's a mix of a couple things. That's a mix of gaming being seasonally stronger in the third quarter, that's a mix of inventories being very low in the channel, and there is probably a cryptocurrency component as well, relative to overall demand. When we look at it as a whole, though, we think that the growth in the business is really on the strength of the products and how the design wins, both OEM and as well as system integrators are improving. Now, how is it different than a couple of years ago? I think we understand the market much better from the standpoint of the products are significantly stronger.
If you look at the product portfolio, not just the current Polaris or RX 5 Series products, but the Vega product coming in really opens up a larger TAM for us. We are working with our add-in-board partners to segment the markets in terms of the feature set that go into the cards, as well as prioritizing some of the gamer ecosystem. In terms of system integrator supply as well as bundling and OEM supply. I think we are doing quite a bit to make sure that we protect against any downside as it relates to cryptocurrency. Overall, I would view it as GPUs are strong, we see GPUs continuing to be strong, it's a great market to be in.
Okay. Thank you.
Thank you. Our next question today is coming from Kevin Cassidy from Stifel. Please proceed with your question.
Thanks for taking my question. Maybe just as a follow-up to that. Inventories being down going into this quarter and with all your new product ramps, is it down mainly just because of GPUs, or is there something else?
I think if you look at the inventory, in fact, if you look at it from my standpoint on the strength of the business, there's revenue growth. We're obviously buying wafers in support of the stronger revenue. Some of the ramp in new products does have an impact on the inventory, and obviously we want to support all of the new product ramps. It's down marginally in the quarter, but I expect that in Q3 it'll go down. Then we have previously guided down year-over-year. I expect when we end the year, it'll be down in 2017 compared to 2016, while fully supporting the needs of the business.
Okay. I guess for the server side, how are you building inventory for that, or is that a longer design cycle so that you don't really start building inventory?
I think the server side-
For the EPYC, sorry.
Yeah, it's a smaller portion. The ramp in EPYC, as you probably heard us say, is slower than in other businesses. If you look at it, total inventory, the server portion of the inventory is not that huge.
Okay, great. Thank you.
Thank you. Our next question today is coming from Vivek Arya from Bank of America Merrill Lynch. Please proceed with your question.
Thanks for taking my question and congratulations on the good sales growth. Lisa, for my first question, if I go back in history, at one point, AMD had a 20%-plus share in server CPUs, and I appreciate we are far off from that point right now. I just want to know, conceptually, what are you doing or can do to recreate those conditions, or do you think the environment is very different this time around?
Yeah, Vivek, I think we are actually very pleased with the conditions around the server market for us. It all starts with a good product or a great product. I think the EPYC product performance is very important. I think the other conditions that are different and perhaps even more favorable than in the past, is the fact that the cloud data center guys are making up such a large piece of the market, and they tend to move faster in their qualification cycles given the fact that they have more control of their own software environment. I think our differentiation is strong. I think we have put out a product that is not only strong on basic CPU performance, but also offers much more flexibility in terms of what you can do with memory and IO.
I think that value proposition is recognized by the customer set. We certainly are looking to ramp the revenue as fast as possible.
Got it. For my follow-up, as you are starting to become more competitive against Intel and NVIDIA, are you seeing any competitive response from them in terms of pricing or features or go-to-market strategy that you might need to respond to?
Obviously, we continue to watch the competitive market. It's been an exciting market. Some would say that from a product standpoint, there has been a bit of back and forth already. We feel good about how our products are positioned, not just today, but how they will be positioned over the next 18 to 24 months. We're going to be very focused on ensuring that we lead with the product message. Of course, there's a go-to-market element and all of that around that. I think the competitive environment right now is very focused on product competitiveness.
Maybe a quick follow-up on that, Lisa, if I might. When Ryzen initially rolled out, I think some of the benchmarks were not up to par. Have you seen an improvement in that? Especially as you roll out EPYC, are you seeing the ecosystem come and work around your products so those benchmarks are not going to be an issue this time around?
Yeah. I think, Vivek, you're referring to when we initially launched Ryzen 7, there were some gains, particularly in 1080p resolution, that were not as good as some of the higher resolutions. I believe we worked around a lot of that. We've seen game developers, content developers really support the Ryzen ecosystem. I've actually been very happy with how they've jumped on the support of it. We have been continuing to improve the ecosystem. If you look at the motherboards, and if you look at the memory capability, they've significantly improved just in the last three or four months. I think you'll see, as we go through Threadripper launch, which is coming up very shortly, that the Ryzen ecosystem is strong. As it relates to EPYC, very similar comments. I think the ecosystem has been very supportive of the EPYC processor family.
I don't see that as an issue.
Okay. Thank you.
Thanks, Vivek. Next question, please.
Our next question is coming from Joseph Moore from Morgan Stanley. Please proceed with your question.
Hi, Joe.
Hi. Great. Thank you. I wonder if you could talk a little bit about, as we think about EPYC for next year, how do you think we should frame that opportunity? Is it mostly a cloud, sort of top-tier cloud customer that's gonna drive that revenue? Is the sort of next level down of cloud customer gonna drive significant revenue and then enterprise next year? How would you sort of bucket those three things in terms of where the EPYC potential lies?
Yeah. I would say, Joe, we have a broad set of customers that we're engaging with. Definitely, we see top-tier cloud guys very engaged with EPYC, and talking about a number of different instances. Microsoft Azure was at our launch event, and Baidu was at our launch event, and we're working with a number of other cloud vendors as well. We also have a very strong OEM support base as well. With HPE and Dell putting out a number of platforms with EPYC, I think that will ramp enterprise customers in 2018 as well. I view it as really both sides of the equation are important for 2018. I think we will see cloud be a little lumpier. Certainly they tend to buy in stages.
They may be a little bit lumpier, but I think overall, we are very focused on both cloud and enterprise accounts.
Okay. Thank you for that. Then, circling back quickly to the inventory issues that you talked about in graphics. It seems like they're quite lean, and in some cases, in shortage. Is that completely a function of demand, or were there any supply issues in the quarter? Do you perceive that as an issue, and if so, how quickly do you fix it?
Joe, it was completely a function of demand, and demand within lead time. I think from a supply standpoint, we've had a very strong supply chain across the board, across both CPU and GPUs. We are, as I said, in the process of catching up to demand, so we're certainly increasing some of the production, and that was Devinder's comment about some of the working capital and some of the inventory comments. Overall, though, I think we're going into a stronger second half of the year. It's not unexpected for us to ramp up production. It's just demand was quite strong, particularly, in the April-May timeframe, is when we saw a spike, it takes some time to react to those signals.
Great. Thank you very much.
Thank you. Our next question today is coming from Hans Mosesmann from Rosenblatt Securities. Please proceed with your question.
Thanks. Hey, Lisa, can you give us a sense of how EPYC is doing in virtualized environments? There might be some issues regarding compatibility with the other x86 supplier, and how you would go through that process over the next several quarters. Thank you.
Yeah. Again, Hans, I think we have been working closely with a number of different customers, including in virtualized environments. We see no particular issues other than just getting their platforms up and running. I think we continue to believe EPYC will do very well in those environments.
Okay. As a follow-up, can you give us a sense, now that EPYC is out, what the feedback is from your customers, cloud or OEM, regarding your packaging approach in terms of using a multi-chip module type approach versus a monolithic silicon approach?
Yeah. Hans, actually, the feedback has been quite good. I think what we're able to do, obviously, it's a decision to make, right? We could have built one big monolithic chip, or we decided very strategically to build a modular approach because it just gives us so much flexibility when we talk about the combination of CPU cores and IO. Far so good. I think there is some work to do to make sure that the latencies are appropriately taken care of, and the customers are working with us on that. I think the flexibility is really, really appreciated, particularly when you look at what we can do with single-socket servers as well. We feel very good about where EPYC is positioned.
I think the customer feedback continues to be very strong. Our goal is to get as many platforms out as possible with EPYC this year.
Great. Thank you.
Thank you. Our next question today is coming from John Pitzer from Credit Suisse. Please proceed with your question.
Good afternoon, guys. Thanks for letting me ask the question. Congratulations on the strong results. Lisa, notwithstanding the possibility that you guys beat your revised guidance you just gave today, if you just go by the revised guidance, it's kind of implying calendar fourth quarter revenue down about 10% sequentially, which is about in line with seasonal. Just curious, just given where you are in the product cycle for Ryzen and EPYC, why a seasonal quarter wouldn't be something that you could beat? I guess equally important, are you planning to stay profitable in the calendar fourth quarter if it is down seasonal, just given the trajectory of OpEx?
Yes, John, let me answer that. When you look at our typical seasonality, as you said, we tend to be down in Q4. Semi-custom is still a large piece of our business. Semi-custom will peak in Q3. It will come down in Q4. I also think that we want to be cognizant of the fact that some of the graphics demand that we see might be temporal. We're not counting on that staying through the full year. We'll see what happens. Frankly, I think we'll see what happens with the whole mining stuff. I think when you look overall, I think that it shows that the business is strengthening. We like the growth very much. Ryzen will continue to grow through the second half. EPYC will continue to grow through the second half.
Vega and our GPU business will continue to grow through the second half. The only headwind that we have is for the game console business, just as part of normal seasonality. Relative to the profit statement.
I think it's hard to predict that right now, John. I think if you look at our guidance, as we said, revenue mid to high teens, which from our standpoint is 16, 17-ish increase. We'll get to Q4 when we get there.
That's helpful. Lisa, for my follow-up, R&D ticking up, which is absolutely the right thing to do for the longer-term health of the business. I'm just kind of curious if you could help me understand your sort of R&D priorities. To what extent is this uptick in R&D really to help bolster your position in existing markets versus sort of R&D dollars to go after new markets, whether that be acceleration, machine learning, or autonomous driving? How should I think about that?
I think there are a couple of points, John, that I want to make sure that we're clear about. Although OpEx is going up and R&D is going up, we're doing it in a very thoughtful fashion. Staying within the confines of the business model is really important. As Devinder said earlier, our model that we laid out at Financial Analyst Day for 2017 has us, let's call it, at approximately 31% E/R, and we're going to stay within that model for sure. Relative to priorities in R&D, it is very much focused on sort of the new growth areas for us, very much focused on data center, and very much focused on GPU compute, so around machine learning and sort of the entire compute space on the GPU side.
It is fairly incremental in terms of adding things like customer support, field application engineering, software support, given that we're familiarizing people with our architecture. I think it's good. We're happy that the business affords us the ability to increase R&D in this timeframe, and we're using it to accelerate our growth in these high-margin markets.
Thank you.
Thanks, John. Operator, we have time for two more questions, please.
Certainly. Our next question is coming from Vijay Rakesh from Mizuho. Please proceed with your question.
Hi, thanks. Dr. Lisa, when you look at the EPYC, I know you said 20 customers already and then 20 more in the second half. Do you think that gets to 5% of your revenues, just the EPYC side of your revenues as you look at the third quarter? Should we assume pretty incrementally about not the 50% margins on your EPYC product, especially as it goes to the data center side?
Vijay, without getting too granular about percentage of EPYC revenue, I think what we've said is our target for EPYC, we sort of have the midterm target is to get back to double-digit market share, so over 10%. We think that we have a product and a customer set and an environment that does support that. It will take longer than this year to get there. I think this is a multiple-quarter ramp for us. In terms of how we've laid out the business model, I mean, that's all contemplated sort of in our overall growth model for 2017. As it relates to margins, again, without being very specific, I would say the EPYC margins are highly accretive, even at our current sort of pricing, which offers, I would say, significant value to the customer.
I think it also gives us significant credit for the capability of the product, and so the margins are accretive to our business model.
Got it. Very helpful. Just on the Radeon Instinct side, too, can you give us some similar commentary on how you see in terms of customer adoption, and what the response has been similar to EPYC?
Yes. The Radeon Instinct similarly has a lot of interest from the marketplace, a number of different applications. We started shipping, actually in July, to some strategic data center customers. We see that interest continue to ramp. There, I think it is, this is definitely a lumpy business, and so it goes as a cloud guy puts on a new instance, you would see a larger buy and that's the way it would work. Again, very good market. I think we're in the very early parts of the growth trajectory for AMD in these markets, and we'll continue to invest and work closely with customers to ramp those platforms.
Thanks.
Thank you, Vijay.
Thank you. Our final question today is coming from Blayne Curtis from Barclays. Please proceed with your question.
Hey, guys. Thanks for squeezing me in. Lisa, I just want to follow up on your comments on the cryptocurrency market. Just curious, what's your visibility into whether someone, obviously, if they buy a dedicated card, it'd be easy to track. Just your visibility on the back end as to where the strength in the overall GPU market is coming from. You mentioned it as a third factor, I think, in September. Then mentioned it may impact December. If you can just talk about in that full-year guide, are you factoring in any contribution in December?
We're being conservative in our estimates for what will happen as we get into the fourth quarter. I think the visibility, it's anyone's guess at this moment. However, I think what we are doing, very clearly, is prioritizing the core customer set so that we're segmenting the market. You can never segment it perfectly, but I think we are segmenting it well. We continue to be very closely in tune with our partners and how this develops. My expectation is that there will be a leveling off of the demand at some point. As we fill the channel, that will become clearer what the level-off point is. I think we are segmenting it well. We continue to be very closely in tune with our partners and how this develops. My expectation is that there will be a leveling off of the demand at some point. As we fill the channel, that will become clearer what the level-off point is. But right now, as we said, the channel inventories are very low. So it's hard to call the absolute demand. We're ensuring that we're not over-calling the demand.
Thanks. Then just a question for Devinder. The OpEx step-up in September, it's hard to tell from the full-year guide, 31 can round a bunch of different ways. Just curious if you expect any follow-through in that increase in R&D into the December quarter. Then if you could just mention also timing of the JV payments. Obviously, you're not getting any in the back half of this year. Maybe you could talk about the milestones into next year and when those should come back as offset.
Yeah. Let me take the JV one first. As we said in the commentary in my prepared remarks, $140 million licensing gained on the THATIC server JV to date. We got $52 million this year. There's nothing more this year. The remaining payments are based on some production-related milestones. Those are in 2018 and beyond, and we'll update that as we get closer. As far as the OpEx is concerned, I think we've said a lot. We stand by what we said. We'll manage it in our guidance of Expense-to-Revenue ratio over approximately 31% for the year.
Okay, thanks.
Thank you. We've reached the end of our question and answer session. I'd like to turn the floor back over to management for any further closing comments.
Great. Thank you very much, operator. We appreciate everyone being with us today. We look forward to spending time with you in the coming quarter. Thank you for your time.
Thank you. That does conclude today's teleconference. You may disconnect your line at this time, and have a wonderful day. We thank you for your participation today.