AMD Will Spectre-proof The Zen 2 Architecture, And 4 Other Nuggets From Its Earnings Call

One piece of good news is obvious: AMD’s making money again, contributing to the long-term health of Intel’s chief rival.

- Mark Hachman

After years of reporting loss after loss, AMD marked a second straight profitable quarter, standing upon the shoulders of its successful Ryzen CPUs and Vega chips. Company executives also said they plan to implement mitigations for the Spectre vulnerabilities in the upcoming Zen 2 architecture, and warned of memory shortages.

The Wall Street analysts on the call were focused on what impact this would all have on AMD’s future earnings, and by extension, its stock price. But as always, it was possible to distill a few drops of information that could affect users directly. Here they are.

1. SPECTRE MITIGATIONS WILL BE BUILT INTO ZEN 2

If you’ve been following the ongoing Spectre and Meltdown saga (go.pcworld.com/ spme), you know that Intel has been the vendor most affected by the two chip vulnerabilities. Lisa Su, AMD’s chief executive, reiterated AMD’s prior position that the company’s chips aren’t vulnerable to Meltdown, nor to some of the iterations of potential Spectre exploits.

Here’s how Su explained it: