AMD to Ramp K8L Slowly?

The gang over at CRN have managed to sit-down with AMD's CEO Hector Ruiz for an in-depth interview. Although the interview mainly focuses upon the economic status of the company, there are some interesting tidbits of information regarding AMD's upcoming K8L core and how AMD plans to roll out the technology. AMD's "Barcelona" core will be a native quad-core solution that many are expecting to give Intel's popular Core 2 Duo architecture some serious competition. Unfortunately, it sounds as though AMD will be unable to get the K8L core out to the masses and will be forced to have it trickle-out over time. Hopefully, AMD can find a way to get the new architecture out in volume and we can have some more competitive CPU reviews in coming months.

This is an incredibly important product transition. We don't expect the ramp [this year] to be dramatic because it's a new core, new micro architecture and platform. The biggest impact it will have is that we'll see a large number of customers and partners align themselves behind the technology. We expect that ramp to follow along the same lines as when Opteron began to get adopted. So I expect it to follow the same patterns. Over 2007, it will have a significant impact on what I call design wins. People are committed to the architecture and product, and [it will be] a very significant part of revenue and earning in 2008.