Snow arrives early in AMD's Sunnyvale

BULLDOZERS, Bobcats, Sand Tigers and Hardcastles - sheesh Charlie Demerjian wasn't kidding when he said AMD delivered a codename blizzard yesterday at its analyst conference.

Strange kind of snow flakes these though, more like the combination of a menagerie and a building site with perhaps mythological creatures to frighten away the Intel bogeyman. Being snowed in is no fun and nor is being snowed under. AMD has got to be careful about codenames and these kind of future promises because things don't always work out quite as the chip companies intend, especially two years down the line.

"Bobcat" is AMD's answer to a UPMC reference low power chip that Via is already delivering and Intel won't, until at least the middle of next year. Do these X86 chip companies always have to be such copycats?

Intel knows, to its chagrin, that showing off new stuff well ahead of time can make for great headlines for a day or two, but if pesky journalists get out of goldfish-brain mode and remember things for longer than that, it can lead to great embarrassment when the hot projection of tomorrow turns out to be a parson's egg at best.

It's hard to forget a dead duck like Intel's Timna chip and other initiatives and "future roadmap" announcements too many to count. And while codenames often have a lyrical or esoteric undertone which tend to get you all excited, way too many have foundered on the rocks of reality - like Intel's Nehalem I - just as a f'rinstance.

Yesterday's AMD codename blizzard is a characteristic marchitectural move by an X86 chip company.

The harsh reality of the poor engineers and architects sweating in their bunny suits in a bid to hit targets and create products that the marketeers promised when they were in the dimmed, balmy yet nevertheless heady atmosphere of the marketing department is way too familiar.

Intel has only got itself out of bother recently after its senior executives continued to promise speed bumps on the Pentium IIII architecture that even us poor benighted hacks knew was impossible.

Candidly, that idea was a chimera.

It's bad news to make promises that you can't deliver on, and no bride likes being jilted at the altar. AMD may well be able to deliver what it promised yesterday and if so then jolly well done you lot.

But as AMD took us and its partners for ride earlier this year on a Barcelona superhypertransport magic carpet, powered by waves of hot air generated from some idea furnace in Sunnyvale, we trust that it's not being too optimistic about its futures. It has some challenges and promises to fulfil this year, lest we forget. µ