Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD) on Tuesday reported record growth in data center revenue and forecast revenue growth in fiscal 2019 above expectations.

The chipmaker said it expects high-single digit percentage revenue growth in 2019.

The company announced revenue for fiscal year 2018 of $6.48 billion, primarily driven by higher revenue in the Computing and Graphics segment.
The company also reported perating income of $451 million, net income of $337 million and diluted earnings per share of $0.32.

For the fourth quarter of 2018, the company reported revenue of $1.42 billion, driven by the Computing and Graphics segment. Revenue was down 14 percent compared to the prior quarter as a result of lower revenue in the Enterprise, Embedded and Semi-Custom segment. Third quarter 2018 also included approximately $125 million of IP-related revenue.

Sales at AMD’s computing and graphics segment, which includes GPU sales to data centers, rose over 8.5 percent to $986 million, driven by strong sales of Ryzen processors.

“In 2018 we delivered our second straight year of significant revenue growth, market share gains, expanded gross margin and improved profitability based on our high-performance products. Importantly, we more than doubled our EPYC processor shipments sequentially and delivered record GPU datacenter revenue in the quarter,” said Dr. Lisa Su, AMD president and CEO. “Despite near-term graphics headwinds, 2019 is shaping up to be another exciting year driven by the launch of our broadest and most competitive product portfolio ever with our next-generation 7nm Ryzen, Radeon, and EPYC products.”

AMD’s results are better than expected, provided that most of chipmakers have been warning about a slowdown in China triggered by the ongoing trade dispute with the United States.

AMD rivals Nvidia and Intel both flagged a stagnating growth in data center sales, a segment where AMD is beginning to get a foothold on the back of its server chips.

AMD also today announced it entered into a seventh amendment to its wafer supply agreement with GLOBALFOUNDRIES Inc.

"GF continues to be a long-term strategic partner to AMD for the 12nm node and above and the amendment establishes purchase commitments and pricing at 12nm and above for the years 2019 through 2021," AMD said.

The amendment provides AMD full flexibility for wafer purchases from any foundry at the 7nm node and beyond without any one-time payments or royalties.