AMD Planning To Ship 32nm Chips By Q4 2010
In a recent interview with InformationWeek, the company's CEO Dirk Meyer stated that it would be "ramping up" production of next generation 32 nanometer processors around the middle of 2010, but "volume production" wouldn't begin until Q4 2010. It's noted that AMD typically lags behind Intel by around six to twelve months in shipping next gen products, so news that it would be behind in the 32nm race isn't all that shocking. Of course, we still feel that being so far behind is probably one of the reasons AMD keeps losing market share, but what do we know?At any rate, it should also be noted that AMD's future 32nm chips will be the first that aren't actually built and fabricated by AMD proper. Thanks to a recent spinoff of its manufacturing facilities, the newly formed The Foundry Company will be handling those duties. Also of note, we're told that Dirk asserted that AMD wouldn't be diving into the netbook arena for "at least a couple of years." Of course, given that the company doesn't have a planned successor to its rather popular Geode processor, we suspect that this was kind of a given.
Personally, we're a bit curious as to what AMD's aiming for with these 32nm chips. Sure, it's hoping to
provide quicker and better all the way around, but with quotes like the following from Mr. Meyer, we're left wondering where that killer instinct has gone: "The way in which consumers and businesses ought to gauge the value of the PC or notebook shouldn't be in performance benchmarks, because those benchmarks do not reflect what people do with the PC. It's not just about the CPU. People can get distracted by how fast is the CPU, and then have a lousy graphics experience when they get home." Benchmarks don't matter, Dirk? Maybe you should conduct some marketing studies. |
/Agrees w/Shawn! In related news, AMD has just announced that they won't use any KPI's internally: since management might get distracted by industry standard indicators which apparently aren't relevant at all to overall performance of their company. |
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I hate to say it as I have been an AMD die hard for many years. I think I am going to have to use a I7 920 or better on my new build this summer. My current system is about 1.5-2 years old now. Of course some of the components are newer. But it is time for a new build, and AMD is nowhere near the performance of the I7. Looks like they won't be for at least 1.5 years probably 2 taking the last couple years into account. I mean if I want AMD class perf I can just buy a 2 year old core 2 Duo for chump change. |
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I'm sure back in the day when AMD was first to introduce the all singing 64bit Athlons everything was about performance. Is this another case of muppet management ruining a once great company ? I think Mr Meyer should know that for over 10 years I used to be a die-hard AMD fan. For the last two years though, i'm sad to say that every PC i have upgraded or built has had an Intel inside. Get your head out your backside Meyer - of course its about performance. One last note - isn't Intel planning on building GPU's inside of CPU's ??? (Intel looks like they have the COMPLETE package) Maybe AMD should get some new management quick as Dirk obviously hasn't got a clue..... |
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I'm a AMD fan as well. I would love to build a Phenom II rig. It is just easier to have all one platform. When I upgrade my PC Jen gets the hand me downs and the third rig gets hers. If I throw a AMD rig in there it would complicate my master plan. |
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I'll play Devil's advocate here and suggest that perhaps we should be reading Dirk Meyer's comments word for word, verbatim. "It's not just about the CPU"... That makes sense actually. I think he's referring to balanced system performance being important. IE: if you have a Ferrari engine under the hood but the tires and gearing are built by Playskool, you're going nowhere fast. That said, I do disagree with his comments about "benchmarks don't reflect what people do with their PC". If you're looking at the right benchmarks, they certainly do reflect end user experience and even beyond that, benchmarks provide a very important frame of reference. So, let's time a machine doing something very specific like running office apps, multitasking with media encoding at the same time and see how long it takes to complete that workload. Is that something more real world? Oh wait a second - that's a benchmark, isn't it... |
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I am just reading a bit between the lines here but I have to agree with Dave. I think with all the recent GPU related awesomeness and stories of how using GPUs for formally CPU-related tasks are MUCH faster, AMD is going to attempt to capitalize upon this.
I think they plan on going a little different direction than Intel...that is a CPU/GPU hybrid is already in the works. They're doing this rather than making current CPUs more efficient and such...going against the grain. Which is why they bought ATI in the first place! They've had this plan for years apparently :)
Just my guessing anyway |
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