That isn't to say that it actually made much profit, quite the opposite in fact, for October-December at least. There was a net loss of $177 million (136 million Euro, give or take), though it did not come about as a consequence of weak sales.

The marketing performance actually wasn't too bad, with revenues staying flat compared to the third quarter ($1.69 billion / 1.29 billion Euro). Also, for the whole year, revenue increased a small bit, ending up at $6.57 billion (5.04 billion Euro).

That said, the reason AMD incurred a loss this past quarter instead of profiting was the impairment of investments in Globalfoundries ($209 million / 160.5 million Euro loss). There were also some restructuring changes to cover, so the Sunnyvale, California-based corporation spent $98 million on that (75.26 million Euro).

If one factors in whatever monetary returns AMD managed to accrue, that leaves the CPU, APU and graphics card maker with a loss of $177 million for Q4 2011. Fortunately, the whole year didn't fare as bad, with the net income being of $491 million (377 million Euro), meaning $20 million / 15.3 million Euro above the sum of 2010 ($471 million / 361.72 million Euro).

Over 30 million APUs were shipped in 2011, belonging to the A, C and E lines, while the Bulldozer-based Opteron 6200/4200 CPUs enabled the server business to thrive. This fits with how Linley Group recently dubbed the 6200 as the best server processors currently available.

For the first quarter of 2012 (January-March), Advanced Micro Devices expects to face a revenue drop of 8%, give or take 3%.