Crazy butcher goes on axing frenzy on Opteron's prices

[CougTek]

If The Inquirer is right (flip a coin), Opteron for dual sockets will see huge price drops in three weeks.

The 265 currently costs about $700 and that price is set to cascade down to $341. The 270 costs $864 as we speak, and in mid Feb the price is likely to tumble to $476.

Then the 275, which costs over a gigahertz of money at $1,063, will become a $700 part. Lastly, but far from leastly, the 280 will fall from its high $1,300 podium to $865.

 

[Gilbo]

One day, I'd like to build a dual-socket, dual-core Opteron system. The price of the 265 is low enough to be interesting. On the other hand it's still far more than I would normally consider paying for a single processor, let alone two.

I though AMD was all sold out and under serious capacity restraint. Has anything changed? I don't think they're supposed to move to 65nm until late 3rd Quarter, and Fab 36 isn't supposed to come online for several months, so I'm very surprised that they're cutting prices on server chips.

 

[LiamC]

My understanding of new production ramps (like bringing a new fab online, or bringing a new process online, e.g. 65 nm) is that yields will be O.K. at the lower speed bins. As the process/fab becomes more mature, then you getter higher yields of faster parts.

It looks like the lower speed bins are getting the biggest (%) price cuts, so AMD expects to have more of them available. Also, last I heard, AMD were bringing FAB 36 online at 90nm rather than 65nm as initially planned. Perhaps they are going early, because their market share is climbing?

Overall, the company went from 17.7% of the x86 market in Q3/05 to 21.4% in Q4 - a whopping 3.7% increase. The reason for the product shortages they so heavily denied was that they were totally sold out. For servers, the corresponding numbers are 12.7 and 16.4, another 3.7% increase, while desktop went from 20.4 to 24.3, a slightly higher 3.9% increase. Mobile, the dim spot of the group went from 12.2 to 15.1, a mere 2.9% marketshare jump.

http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=29230

It is quite possible to run two lines at the one fab. And having a mature process to validate against is good when bedding in a new process.

I also heard that the Chartered Semiconductor joint venture is nearing completion.