AMD: Cryptocurrency Mining Isn't 'A Long-Term Growth Driver'

Chip maker AMD has seen its sales buoyed in recent months by big demand for graphics cards by cryptocurrency miners.

According to its latest financial report, AMD recorded $1.22 billion in revenue during the second quarter of 2017, up 19% compared to the same period last year. This increase, the company said, is being spurred "by higher revenue in the computing and graphics segment."

Yet cryptocurrency mining isn't part of its long-term strategy for growth, according to Lisa Su, the firm's president and CEO, who remarked on the phenomenon during a Q2 earnings call this week.

However, that state of affairs could change depending on how the situation progresses in the months ahead.

Su said during the call:

Mining is an energy intensive process by which new transactions are added to a blockchain. In return for adding a new blocks, miners are awarded with new tokens, with the profits being derived from the difference between the energy expended and the prevailing exchange rate of those tokens.

Much of the demand for graphics cards, or GPUs, is being driven by ethereum miners. Bitcoin mining, by comparison, is accomplished through special-purpose computers designed for that singular purpose.

Graphics cards image via Shutterstock