Advanced Micro Devices, the troubled maker of x86 central processing units (CPUs), is projected to face further delay of its highly-anticipated AMD Phenom microprocessors and will only be in position to supply them in Q2 2008. This setback is likely to have a negative financial impact on the company’s financial results in the first quarter of 2008.
After a Translation Lookaside Buffer (TLB)-related erratum was discovered in AMD Phenom microprocessors and AMD had to impose a fix that reduced performance of the CPUs, Advanced Micro Devices had to announce a new B3 stepping of the chip with bug corrected without performance degradation. Unfortunately for AMD, the new chips will only become available for its customers sometime in Q2 2008, not in Q1 2008, as expected, according to AMD’s production schedule published by HKEPC web-site.
Quad-core AMD Phenom 9900, 9700, 9650, 9550, 9150e and 9100e chips are scheduled to be commercially available in the second quarter, 2008, whereas development samples of the chips are generally projected to be available for AMD’s customers in the first quarter of the year. Triple-core AMD Phenom 8700, 8650 and 8450 chips are also projected to be available in Q2 2008; still, AMD Phenom 8600 and 8400 – which are based on the B2 stepping with TLB errata – will be released commercially in March, 2008.
Despite of stepping change, the new quad-core microprocessors by AMD will only run at clock-speeds 2.60GHz and below, whereas triple-core chips will only operate at 2.40GHz and lower.
The delay of the advanced AMD Phenom microprocessors to Q2 2008 will slowdown AMD’s revenue growth in the first quarter, as currently available AMD Athlon 64 X2 processors are not competitive against higher-end Intel Core 2 chips and the world’s second largest x86 processor maker will have to concentrate on selling primarily lower-end CPUs that have low profit margins.
http://www.xbitlabs.com/news/cpu/display/20071226214456_Advanced_Micro_Devices_Faces_Further_Delays_of_Phenom_Processors.html
