AMD hopes for quick return to profit...

AMD sees pricing in the chip market remaining competitive and aims to return to profitability soon, chief executive Hector Ruiz said on Thursday.

AMD, the number-two maker of chips, controls about a fifth of the market for the CPUs at the heart of the world's one billion personal computers and servers.

It has been locked in a price war with market leader Intel and has reported four straight quarters of net losses.

"The good news is that for consumers, prices keep going down," Ruiz told reporters after inaugurating a R&D facility in Bangalore, which is India's technology hub.

"The bad news is we always have to figure out how to still do that and hopefully make money. It's a very competitive industry and I don't see pricing being anything but competitive in any segment in this industry," Ruiz said.

Last month, AMD posted a smaller-than-expected quarterly loss of $396m (£191m) on higher sales of chips for notebooks and signalled that the brutal price war with larger rival Intel had abated.

Ruiz said AMD aims to return to profitability soon.

"That is our number-one goal right now," Ruiz said.

AMD is a technical partner in Indian semiconductor consortium SemIndia, which plans to set up a chipmaking facility with an investment of $3bn over the next five years. Intel had initially shown interest in making chips in India, but pulled out due to delays in India releasing its guidelines.