AMD: Barcelona on time, but Budapest slips
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Blog: Chipmaker reaffirms third-quarter launch schedule for quad-core Barcelona chip but says shipments to Cray of different quad-core processor have slipped.
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New Semprons this month; new 90nm Athlons coming November What has AMD got coming up during the last three months of the year? A host of 65nm and 90nm Athlons, apparently, according to roadmap slides posted on the internet last week which would seem to confirm earlier reports.â¦
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The old saying, essentially, is, "From here, things can only get better." From where AMD was last April, that's indeed what happened - and perhaps that's no surprise. Yesterday, the company reported rising chip shipments that led to increased revenues and recovering profit margins, though still not yet near the point of being considered "healthy."
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Preps pair of Octals Entire computing platforms have come and gone* in the time that it has taken AMD to shove the four-core version of Opteron known as Barcelona into end customers' hands.â¦
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AMD is releasing nine versions of its new Quad-Core Opteron server chip, code-named Barcelona.
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Amid further delays of AMD's quad-core server chip and plans to write off goodwill from the acquisition of ATI, AMD executives are going to face tough questions when they meet financial analysts in New York Thursday.
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As this year comes to a close, AMD executives won&#39;t be sorry to put 2007 behind them. Battered by rising debt, shrinking market share and mounting financial losses, AMD is counting on a comeback in 2008. But can the struggling chip maker make good on its promises to customers and investors that better times lie ahead?Many of AMD&#39;s current troubles are tied to Barcelona, the first version of its Quad-Core Opteron processor.&#160;Repeated delays of this chip weakened AMD&#39;s finances and undermined confidence in the company&#39;s ability to deliver new products as promised. Rebuilding that lost confidence among corporate users and the financial community won&#39;t be easy and the company can ill afford further missteps.Over the next six months, there are several milestones that AMD must hit in order to get back on track. The first, and arguably most important, involves volume shipments of Barcelona, scheduled to happen during the first quarter. AMD desperately needs this chip to shore up flagging revenue from its commercial business and to take back ground lost recently to Intel in the server market.With a bug that was recently discovered in Barcelona fixed, AMD expects the latest version of the chip to start coming out of its manufacturing plants in January. Barcelona shipments are expected to rise throughout the first quarter, reaching &quot;full volumes&quot; and widespread availability of servers based on the chip during the second quarter, according to Phil Hughes, an AMD spokesman.Another early milestone to look out for involves Shanghai, the second version of the Quad-Core Opteron chip that&#39;s set for volume production during the second half of 2008. AMD will produce Shanghai with a 45-nanometer manufacturing process that is one generation ahead of the 65-nanometer process used to make Barcelona.The numbers used to describe chip manufacturing processes refer to the average size of the smallest features that can be created on a chip. The smaller these features can be made, the better. Making these features smaller gives chip makers the ability to shrink the overall size of a chip, thereby reducing unit manufacturing costs, or to add new features. Chips made using a more advanced process may also consume less power and run faster than other versions. But semiconductor production is as much art as it is science, and moving to a more advanced process is fraught with risks.In the case of Shanghai, AMD will take advantage of the 45-nanometer process to triple the size of the Level 3 (L3) cache, from 2M bytes in Barcelona to 6M bytes. The L3 cache is a shared pool of memory that can be accessed by all four cores on the chip. Each core has 512K bytes of Level 2 (L2) cache. When data is moved out of the L2 cache, it moves into the L3 cache instead of main memory, meaning that the core can access this information more quickly than would otherwise be possible.Like AMD&#39;s existing server lineup, Barcelona and Shanghai also include an on-chip memory controller that further helps to increase performance.The memory structure used in the Quad-Core Opteron is different from Intel&#39;s server chips, which do not use an L3 cache and do not have an on-chip memory controller. Instead, Intel&#39;s quad-core Xeon 7300 server chips have 8M bytes of shared L2 cache. Since Intel processors actually pack two dual-core chips inside a single package, the L2 cache is divided into two parts, with 4M bytes on each silicon chip. Intel&#39;s processors do not use an on-chip memory controller.Boosting the Quad-Core Opteron&#39;s L3 cache with Shanghai should give AMD&#39;s quad-core chips the opportunity to stretch their legs, but the company has to make them first. The first working samples of Shanghai are due out of AMD&#39;s factory in Dresden, Germany, in January, according to recent remarks by Mario Rivas, executive vice president of AMD&#39;s Computing Products Group. If these samples arrive late or suffer from unexpected technical problems, this could delay volume production of Shanghai to late 2008 or even early 2009. Conversely, working samples that arrive on schedule and meet or exceed expectations would give AMD an added boost.Besides the server segment, there are a couple of key product milestones on AMD&#39;s roadmap for desktop and mobile processors that bear watching as well.For example, the company plans a first-quarter rollout of Perseus, a package of chips aimed at PCs for the corporate market and centered on a quad-core or triple-core processor and an RS780 or SB700 chipset. A dual-core version will also be rolled out. During the second quarter, AMD plans to roll out Puma, a chip package designed for notebooks. Puma is based on a new processor, called Griffin, expected to offer better performance and power efficiency than AMD&#39;s existing line of mobile processors.AMD plans to offer additional details of its plans and upcoming products at the Consumer Electronics Show to be held in Las Vegas during January, Hughes said.
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It's a big day for AMD, which is launching its Barcelona chip at last. Then Intel comes along with an earnings surprise.
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Plus: Alcatel outlook weak...Cisco profit climbs...Time Warner lowers earnings target...Electronic Arts lowers outlook.
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Barcelona is finally here. Four years since its last major chip upgrade, AMD is introducing the quad-core Operton server processor, which the company has described as &quot;the most advanced x86 processor&quot; ever made.
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(InfoWorld) - AMD on Monday is giving the public an advanced look at how its pending quad-core chip will improve performance and save energy. AMD, playing catch-up to rival Intel, whoseÂ quad-core XeonÂ product launched in 2006, will discuss features of its quad-core product, code-named Barcelona, at the International Solid States Circuits Conference in San Francisco, a forum for engineers in solid state circuitry and system-on-a-chip processor design. AMD says it will present details at the conference of how Barcelona, due to be released in mid-2007, improves performance and energy efficiency over the competition and over its own dual-core processor, the Opteron, which it introduced in 2003. Barcelona will feature "Enhanced PowerNow" technology, which will dynamically adjust core frequencies as workloads change in order to power down cores when not needed to save energy, said Brent Kerby, product marketing manager for Opteron. Under the PowerNow technology already deployed in the dual-core Opteron, the OS delivers the needed power to the busiest core, but if the other core is not as busy, it will still receive the voltage demanded of the busiest core, Kerby said. But with Enhanced PowerNow, while the busiest core will receive the power it needs, the OS will reduce the frequency and voltage of the remaining cores because they aren't as busy. "We still see power savings with our current PowerNow technology, but it's going to get better with Barcelona because we're going to be able to dynamically and independently adjust the core frequencies of each individual core," he said. Also in Barcelona, the OS will directly communicate with the CPU instead of first going through the CPU driver, a more efficient approach, he said. "With Barcelona, there is no CPU driver middleman. The OS can tell the processor directly, 'Hey this is how much work I'm doing,' and the Barcelona core will determine when the best time is to make that change. It's not doing it blindly," he said. Barcelona also separates the power management of the cores from that of the memory controller, which is embedded in AMD-designed processors. That way, frequency and voltage can be reduced to the cores when they are not busy and increased to the memory controller when it is busy, and vice versa. AMD claims an 80 percent reduction in memory controller power usage with this design change. Barcelona will also feature enhanced clock-gating, which means core logic circuits can be turned on or off to save power. Like settings on a coffee grinder, the chip can do "coarse" or "fine" clock gating, shutting down increasingly finer sections of core logic as needed. AMD claims that Barcelona can deliver a 40 percent improvement in performance over "the competition." While not mentioning Intel's Xeon specifically, AMD has long pointed out that its quad-core chip will be four cores designed on the same piece of silicon, while Intel's design is two dual-core processors packaged together.
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AMD reported a heavy loss for its fourth quarter on Thursday, due mostly to charges connected to its acquisition of graphics chip maker ATI.AMD reported a net loss of $1.772 billion -- greater than its revenue for the quarter, which was $1.770 billion. The figures compare to a loss in the fourth quarter last year of $576 million on revenue of $1.773 million.The net loss included charges of $1.675 billion, mostly related to&#160;AMD&#39;s acquisition of ATI in 2006. Excluding the charges, AMD said its loss would have been $97 million, greater than the $25 million it lost in the fourth quarter a year earlier.This is the fifth-straight quarterly loss for AMD, which has been struggling to get its newest processors to market on time.AMD delayed volume shipments of its quad-core Opteron processors, code-named Barcelona, in early December when it said it found a bug in the chip&#39;s Level 3 cache memory. Earlier this month,&#160;AMD said it was pushing back the release of its quad-core Phenom 9700 and 9900 processors.The company still managed to ship a record number of microprocessors in the quarter, it said on Thursday, including nearly 400,000 of its quad-core chips.
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With stronger profits to report, Intel's looking forward to this week. Struggling AMD, on the other hand, will hope it goes by quickly.
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Launch of high-performance Constellation system depends on delivery of quad-core 'Barcelona.'
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Latest timetable leaks AMD's initial array of quad-core Opteron processors will go into production in June, the latest roadmap to apparently leak out of the company indicates. Further models will get punched out in the following quarter, with workstation-oriented versions following in Q4.â¦
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Amid further delays of AMD&#39;s quad-core server chip and plans to write off goodwill from the acquisition of ATI, AMD executives are going to face tough questions when they meet financial analysts in New York Thursday.AMD preempted the analyst meeting with the announcement Wednesday that it plans to take a material charge for impaired goodwill from its US$5.4 billion acquisition of graphics chip maker ATI. But AMD didn&#39;t say how big that charge will be, promising to announce the amount within four days -- a span of time that implies details of the charge will be revealed after the analyst meeting.Goodwill is a financial term that describes the difference between the price that one company paid to acquire another and the net value of the assets that it acquires. This difference, or goodwill, reflects the intangibles that a company acquires, such as the reputation and intellectual property of the acquired company.AMD initially recorded goodwill of $3.22 billion from the acquisition of ATI. That was reduced to $3.17 billion at the end of September, primarily due to changes in income-tax liabilities recorded by the company. AMD&#39;s decision to write off a significant portion of this goodwill is a recognition that ATI is no longer worth the price it paid last year.The expected charge further dims AMD&#39;s gloomy financial outlook. The company has so far lost $1.6 billion this year on sales of $4.2 billion. By comparison, AMD recorded a $410 million profit on sales of $3.9 billion during the first nine months of 2006. At the same time, AMD borrowed heavily this year to keep its operations moving, issuing $3.7 billion in notes that are convertible into company shares.AMD received a further boost last month with a $608 million investment from a company owned by the Abu Dhabi government, but the company still faces significant challenges.Those challenges are reflected in the decline of AMD&#39;s gross margin since last year, partly as a result of the ATI acquisition, which brought lower-margin products into AMD&#39;s lineup, but also because server chips represented a lower percentage of the company&#39;s microprocessor sales. Server chips are generally more expensive and have higher margins than processors used in desktops and notebooks, and strong sales of server chips would give a badly needed boost to AMD&#39;s financial situation.The problem is that AMD&#39;s latest server chip, the Quad-Core Opteron formerly known as&#160;Barecelona has been repeatedly delayed,&#160;giving rival Intel an opening to expand sales of its own server chips at AMD&#39;s expense.After recently discovering&#160;a bug in the Quad-Core Opteron that stopped shipments of the chip, AMD now expects the processor, launched in September, to finally ship in large volumes sometime during the first quarter of 2008. That means the Quad-Core Opteron might not be available to most customers until March, six months after its launch and more than one year after the first pre-production samples of the chip were made available to server makers.While analysts will be looking for more detailed guidance on when AMD expects to ship Quad-Core Opteron chips in volume, they will also be looking for information on the next version of the Quad-Core Opteron, called Shanghai. AMD promised to ship Shanghai during the middle of 2008, but the company has yet to produce working samples of the chip.&quot;We will have initial samples also in January. I&#39;m fairly confident that those puppies are going to boot, and then we can have a follow-up conference call and I&#39;ll tell you, &#39;The sucker is booting,&#39;&quot; said Mario Rivas, the executive vice president of AMD&#39;s Computing Products Group, responding to a question about Shanghai during a recent interview with CRN.Whether that means AMD will release Shanghai in mid-2008 as promised remains to be seen.Shanghai is a 45-nanometer &quot;shrink&quot; of the problematic Barcelona chip, which is produced using a 65-nanometer process. These numbers represent the average size of the smallest feature that can be created on a chip, and smaller is generally considered better.Moving to a more advanced production process offers chip makers several benefits, such as reducing unit production costs by making the chip smaller or adding more features, such as additional on-chip cache. But the move to a more advanced process also carries risks, such as the possibility of lower production yields that can result in limited availability or chips that run at lower clock speeds than expected.Along with these issues looming over AMD, there are questions about the future of Hector Ruiz, the company&#39;s CEO and chairman. As head of the company, Ruiz ultimately bears responsibility for the company&#39;s recent performance problems and the impending write down of goodwill from the ATI acquisition. For months, there has been speculation within the industry that Ruiz would be forced to step down from his current position.However, that&#39;s unlikely to happen, according to a Reuters report citing comments made by Ruiz in a television interview to be aired by CNBC Europe later today. During that interview, Ruiz named AMD President and COO Dirk Meyer as his successor, but scotched speculation he plans to step down next year, the report said.
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At a conference this week, AMD will present more details about how its Barcelona line improves performance and energy efficiency over the competition.