AMD's Hammer delayed for another Quarter

[LiamC]

It's now not expected until late Q1 2003, so for us mere mortals, late Q2 2003.

http://www.aceshardware.com/forum?read=80033647

also

http://news.com.com/2100-1001-957757.html?tag=fd_top

Sunnyvale, California, Sept. 12 (Bloomberg) -- Advanced Micro Devices Inc., which competes with Intel Corp. in personal-computer processors, will delay the desktop version of its Hammer chip by a few months, marketing manager John Crank said.

The company will start selling the chip late in the first quarter of next year or early in the second quarter, instead of late in the fourth quarter, he said in an interview.

Crank declined to comment on the specific reasons for the delay. There aren't any flaws in the Hammer chip, he said.

``Microprocessor design and delivery is complex,'' he said. ``We feel we need to move the product out.''

Advanced Micro's Athlon XP desktop chips that are available now are doing well enough that the company doesn't need to rush out Hammer, he said. The Sunnyvale, California-based chipmaker wouldn't have generated much revenue from Hammer this year, so the impact on business will be ``very minimal,'' he said.

Who's he trying to kid? Bummer...

This kind of delay is usually due to silicon errors - 3 months is how long it takes to "spin" a new revision of the chip...

 

[Tea]

In commercial terms, it's a very wise move (regardless of any technical reason). AMD have every prospect of being the clear desktop performance leader for the next six months or so anyway (courtesy of the 0.13 micron Athlon XP). If they are to have a good return from high ASPs on the 0.13u XP, then it needs to be "the world's best chip" for as long as possible. Delaying the desktop Sledgehammer is a smart move, from this point of view. (Remember how the Athlon Classic effectively killed the K6-III as a profit centre? One thing you can always say about AMD is that they learn from their mistakes.)

Now the server Sledgehammer is a completely different matter. In that end of the market, AMD have nothing to lose and everything to gain by introducung it as soon as the engineers say it's ready. The only companies who might lose ASP on their existing products are Intel and maybe HP, Sun, & Co. I'm afraid I've not paid any attention to the enterprise Sledgehammer release date - not our end of market, so I don't need to know - but I note that the announcement above is for the desktop chip.

 

[time]

I'm not sure the K6-III could be classified as a profit center; more a loss center for AMD thanks to its lateness and expensive manufacture.

Very astute of you to notice the desktop reference, Tea. You'd expect them to go to more trouble validating the server chip if anything, but they have consistently quoted a later release date for the cutdown desktop CPU. Makes me wonder if your theory might have an element of truth.

Still, Intel is not exactly asleep, so this just gives them even more time to catch up. The only real chance AMD has with Hammer is for it to be such a clearly superior solution that they will carry the market with them.

IMO, AMD would do better to concentrate on power consumption and dissipation (perhaps they already are), and lowering their manufacturing costs. I suspect the market is changing, and being the fastest may no longer guarantee sales in future.

 

[Handruin]

Well, so far we've seen big hype with the new matrox card, and then once released, it seemed to disappear. (dopes anyone know a person who bought one?) Then came along the ATI 9700. It surprised me that it was able to pull away from the GeForce 4. I thought it would have been a dud, but it wasn't.

Now my hopes are that AMD has their act together and climbs ahead with their hammer. Intel seems to be ahead in the MHz area, although this doesn't always translate to better performance. Sad truth is that people are still hung up on the MHz.

 

[Pradeep]

With the recent release of the 2.2GHz AthlonXP, and faster versions using the 166MHz FSB around the corner, I'm ok with them delaying the Clawhammer till it's 100% ready to go. Plus this will give mobo manufacturers etc time to work out the bugs.

 

[Prof.Wizard]

I'm not so pleased by the delay but Pradeep and Tea are right.

There IS steam down AthlonXP's pipe... but they need to beef up the FSB as soon as possible...