CEO of the struggling microprocessor maker AMD, said the company expected to return to profitability this quarter in his comments on the net loss it reported for the most-recently completed second quarter.

AMD reported a net loss of US$74m on $1.6bn in sales for Q2. Revenue was up 18%, while income was down about 140% year over year (the company reported net income of $77m for the second quarter of 2012).

The results were an improvement from the year's first quarter, however, which Rory Read, AMD's president and CEO, attributed to the company's focus on restructuring.

“Our performance in the second quarter was driven by opportunities in our new high-growth and traditional PC businesses,” he said. “Looking ahead, we will continue to deliver a strong value proposition to our established customers and also reach new customers as we diversify our business.

“We expect significant revenue growth and a return to profitability in the third quarter.”

AMD launched a number of new processor models during the quarter, including PC, graphics and APU chips, as well as another x86 server processor for its Opteron line. The company also detailed its plans to release a 64-bit ARM processor and two- and four-socket x86 CPUs in 2014.

Andrew Feldman, who heads the company's server business, told us in June that he expected low-power CPUs (such as ARM) to do the bulk of the world's processing in the future. This will be driven by the shift of processing power away from the end-user device and inside the data center, he said.

Another major news for AMD's server business during the quarter was the start of availability servers built to AMD designs that were based on the open-source data center and hardware design community called the Open Compute Project.

Manufacturers of AMD's Open 3.0 servers include Quanta and Tyan, and distributors include Avnet, Hyve, Penguin Computing and ZT Systems.

AMD's arch rival Intel Corp. reported $12.8bn in revenue for the second quarter – down from $13.5bn the company made in sales in the second quarter of last year. Intel's net income for the quarter was $2bn – down from $2.8bn in Q2 2012.