| AMD ships triple-core
Phenom chips
13 March, 2008
By Liam Lahey
Advanced Micro Devices Inc. says it is on the cusp of
shipping its triple-core Phenom 8000 series processors.
Whether AMD is about to ship the chips or has already begun
to ship them is a little unclear. Industry reports suggested
major OEMs Dell and Hewlett-Packard would use the Phenom
8600 for respective lines of business desktops.
Regardless, AMD is shipping triple-core Phenoms and the
other channel players should expect to see the chipsets
within a couple of weeks.
"We launched Phenom with our 3800 series graphics
cards back in November . . . we had OEMs with systems on
shelves globally in January. We got good reviews on the
processor but there was certainly a desire for additional
frequencies and we're going to meet that need in March,"
explained Leslie Sobon, director of product and brand management
for AMD desktops. "We've gotten a lot of feedback from
the channel and our OEM customers wanting to design sleeker,
smaller systems especially in the desktop space."
Warren Shiau, associate partner, lead IT analyst, The Strategic
Counsel, said there's a solid consensus that Phenom isn't
going to be taking back the performance crown for AMD. Moreover,
the whole avenue for marketing and sales through price/performance
reputation doesn't, and hasn't worked for AMD and its partners
for quite a while.
Not that anyone says AMD's design path is bad -- conceptually
many experts believe AMD has the purer design philosophy.
"The major problem it seems is the effectiveness of
the design for mass volume manufacture," Shiau said.
"The word is that AMD simply can't get a high enough
yield for its Barcelona-based products at the clock speeds
it needs to be competitive with Intel.
"Meanwhile Intel is pressing ahead moving over to
a 45-nm process and a quad-core line-up; Intel is already
ahead of AMD pretty much throughout its entire line with
65-nm dual-core; so when AMD gets things sorted out it's
still going to be playing catch-up, maybe even more so than
currently."
Sobon said AMD won't have the highest frequency quad-core
chip on the market.
"Will it outperform the top product from Intel? No.
What we have is a very good line up that beats on price-performance
for quad-core. So where we're focusing the effort isn't
in technology . . . it is a focus on the mid- to high-end
mainstream part of the market with good profitability and
high volume," she said. "We'd rather focus in
that area and frankly focus our direction on low-power 65-watt
quad-core versus going to get a 3.5 or a 3.8 Gig quad-core.
"In terms of the nanometer process . . . our competitor
has historically started first. But when you look at when
we've converted 100 percent over, we're roughly around the
same time. Yes, they started 45-nm before us, we'll start
shipping product in the back half of this year in 45-nm.
If history proves [correct], we'll be 100 percent converted
around the same time they will be."
Shiau added everyone's pretty much given up on AMD staging
a miraculous comeback. The great hope now is AMD targets
its opportunities and maintains its' position.
"The big OEMs are never going to want to be beholden
to Intel like they were before getting AMD in there, so
they're going to keep AMD-based product lines around,"
he said. "The server shops that have gone the AMD-based
route are going to stick with AMD. And there's always a
portion of the channel that'll stick with AMD too."
Regarding the channel and Phenom, Shiau said there would
be great Phenom-based machines available. "It's far
less of a pickle than what the channel would have been facing
if Phenom had been delayed out to say Q2 or Q3. And it looks
like AMD is going down the route of developing lines that
are specifically consumer (and channel) targeted."
However, he added Phenom is more channel relief than channel
opportunity at the moment. As the new products come out
from AMD, the opportunity isn't necessarily going to be
enterprise (which had always been a big push before).
"It's back to AMD's consumer roots for the channel,"
Shiau said.
"From a channel perspective, initially that's true,"
Sobon remarked. "You will see commercial grade CPUs
coming from us both in triple and in quad for the commercial
market in the channel next quarter.
"For the products that are launching in a couple of
weeks, those are consumer-focused."
"A lot of them are driven by applications," said
Gary Bixler, director, worldwide channel development, AMD.
"The reality is for quad-core products, the applications
that are leading the way have been multi-threaded, more
to the entertainment applications such as gaming.
"As quad-core products become mainstream, which they
are very quickly, we're positioned very well to do well
in the mainstream space with those products and they'll
then begin to penetrate into the commercial space."
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