AMD says March/April is release date for Hammer chips

AMD will introduce its Hammer architecture in March/April next year, its chief financial officer said at the Credit Suisse FB Tech Conference today in Scottsdale, Arizona.

Without being unduly cynical, that's what its chipset partners told us when we met them at Computex in June, although AMD had originally boasted it could introduce Hammer chips in time for Christmas.

And AMD is poised to increase our market share in the commercial market, he said. "AMD is working with several partners to capitalise in this new environment."

That would be Newisys -- see our separate story today, linked below.

He claimed that AMD had already made several wins in the corporate sector, but, he added: "Our efforts in the enterprise are only just beginning," he said. Growth will be in the 32-bit and 64-bit X86 sectors. "That's the definition of AMD's Opteron," he said.

He claimed: "The Opteron is a Xeon killer". It will be a good opportunity both for selling units and for good average selling prices. Opteron has dramatically superior performance in 32-bit mode, he said. SPEC was examining that performance, he said.

He said: "Without financial credibility, we have no credibility. We believe this wholeheartedly at AMD. I would encourage you to be very open minded about the company."

AMD had taken $100 million out of the PC supply chain in the third quarter. "This is reflected in our new update. You'll see processor revenues rebound in the fourth quarter and beyond," he claimed.

He also said that AMD's Flash business had "turned the corner". It is concentrating on its cellphone, mobile phone business, building better technology, and focusing some of its efforts in China.

He also claimed that AMD hadn't lost market share, despite its problems with inventory in the third quarter.

He said that while it had 2800+ Athlon XPs, the "hot selling products" were the Athlon 1800+ and the 2000+. "The processor is the big pick up [in the current quarter], higher than expected."

AMD will announce a lot of "thin and light" mobile products early next year.

Low end PCs from Wal-Mart, using Via chips, had not "impacted" AMD's share in the market, he said. And AMD seems indifferent to other X86 manufacturers too, apart from Intel. "Transmeta is pretty low on the radar screen. It's pretty low noise," he said.

He claimed the Itanium hadn't been very successful but the Opteron was incredibly successful at the 32-bit Xeon level.

He said AMD would be able to convert to 90 nanometer technology within six to nine months. µ

See Also
AMD Opteron partner Newisys "talking to" Dell, IBM, others
AMD says PC sales on the rise, this quarter will be better