AMD has formed a separate division for its graphics cards business in an attempt to recapture "profitable share" in traditional sectors like desktops and laptops, and also in "new markets such as virtual and augmented reality." Raja Koduri—who joined AMD from Apple, where he was director of graphics architecture—will lead the new Radeon Technologies Group.

AMD hopes that by splintering off the graphics unit, which was formerly known as ATI before AMD purchased it back in 2006, it'll be "more agile," hearkening back to its independent past. While the ATI and AMD merger has resulted in some excellent products over the years—including some of the later APUs and the recent Fury range of graphics cards—integrating the two companies proved difficult. What this new Radeon group means for the company's APUs, which combine a CPU and GPU together on a single die, remains to be seen.

While AMD has had some success partnering with PlayStation and Xbox for the current generation of consoles, it has struggled to compete against Intel CPUs and Nvidia GPUs, both of which have dominated their respective portions of the desktop market for the past several years. Last year, AMD shed seven percent of its global workforce, amounting to around 700 jobs, while its CMO, CSO, and the general manager of its computing and graphics business group resigned at the start of the year.

AMD's most recent first quarter financial report showed a net loss of $180 million (£116 million), while revenue declined 17 percent quarter-on-quarter. At the time, CEO Lisa Su blamed a "weaker than expected market environment" for graphics cards.