Another Non-Product? . . .

Next month, probably May 9, Intel (probably alongside a lot of partners) will introduce its Santa Rosa generation of mobile platforms.

There’s nothing earthshaking about it, but it incorporates a number of solid improvements to the Centrino platform. There’s also a few failings with it, most notably dropping, at least for the moment, what was initially supposed to be DX10 functionality.

Does AMD plan to do anything about this?

Well, they said they would, but . . . .

AMD said back in October that 65nm Turion chips were supposed to show up Q2 2007.

Back in early February, word leaked out about a new AMD platform named Trevally, which pretty much matches the Santa Rosa specs. AMD confirmed this at the end of March

In mid-March, AMD talked about the new CPUs that were supposed to go with Travelly, code-named “Hawk.”

In April, HKEPC got more specific about new 65nm Turion X2s to go along with Trevally, along with price cuts (AMD’s mobile line have not been getting the kind of price cuts the desktop chips have been getting.)

OK, so far so good, all signs up to this point would seem to indicate some new AMD mobile stuff should be out shortly.

Then suddenly, then we get this:

“Amato was very scarce with details about the 65nm versions of current Turion 64 X2 . . . “These [processors] will appear anytime soon to the market.”

“Anytime soon?” Who taught this guy English, Borat? I hope this guy isn’t dating. “What time are you going to pick me up?” “Anytime soon.”

It’s not the grammar but the vagueness of the overall discussion that’s the point. Why would somebody talk a lot about next year’s products but not next month’s, then top it off with a noncomment (nonsensical or not) as to when the product you don’t want to talk about is going to show up?

Remember, it’s not like this is some secret weapon to be launched against an unsuspecting Intel. AMD announced these things quite publicly months and months ago, with either stated or implied timeframes.

I just don’t understand these people. Don’t they realize they have practically no credibility left among anyone half-watching them?

For me, the interest isn’t just professional. I plan to buy at least three laptops, for myself and others, in May or early June. I was hoping for something a bit better than the current Turion offerings, but less expensive than the Santa Rosas, and I thought the 65nm Turion systems would likely do the trick.

So when I write this, I’m writing this hoping I’m dead wrong because otherwise, it’s going to cost me and others near and dear money.

But after all the troubles we’ve seen, this looks like another problem, another delay and yet another attempt to slick one’s way out of admitting it.

Ed


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