Chip stock Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. (NYSE:AMD - 3.75) found itself in the hot seat with speculators on Tuesday, as call volume surged to roughly three times the daily average. By the time the dust settled, approximately 18,000 calls had changed hands on AMD, compared to only 5,895 put options.

Drilling down, call players paid particularly close attention to the September 4 strike, where 10,390 contracts were traded. Nearly all of these calls were exchanged at the ask price, indicating they were purchased, and open interest rose overnight by exactly 10,000 contracts. Based on this data, it seems safe to assume that new bullish bets were initiated here on Tuesday.

Daily volume stats from the major options exchanges confirm this theory. There were 9,752 calls bought to open on AMD yesterday, according to the International Securities Exchange (ISE), Chicago Board Options Exchange (CBOE), and NASDAQ OMX PHLX (PHLX). Meanwhile, only 272 puts were purchased across all three exchanges.

Given the September 4 call's volume-weighted average price (VWAP) of $0.07, Tuesday's option buyers need AMD to close above $4.07 upon front-month expiration in order to turn a profit.

On the charts, AMD has lost a steep 30.6% of its value so far in 2012. Since late April, the shares have been battling resistance at their 20-day and 40-day moving averages.

However, the stock enjoyed a healthy bounce on Tuesday after unveiling an investment in cloud gaming company CiiNOW. Based on the equity's close at $3.75, AMD would need to rally more than 8.5% over the next two and a half weeks in order to place those September 4 calls in the money.