Delays and Debt

Asleep At The Wheel?

A number of places announced a couple days ago that AMD was going to be delayed a few months on 90nm.

Well, we told you that a couple weeks ago.

That’s not due to any great investigative journalism on our part; as you can see from the link, AMD said so during their analyst meeting a few weeks ago. They didn’t say so too loudly, but they made it clear enough to anyone listening. Guess some didn’t.

More importantly, how significant is the delay? Hard to say, given two other tidbits at Comdex.

First, AMD had a dual 90nm Opteron setup at Comdex, but refused to disclose the speed at which they were running. You might recall the last time they did that, they were trying to hide the fact that they only had 800MHz Opterons available.

Sorry, guys, but a few of us have memories. When the news is good, you blare it out; when it’s not so good, you duck and cover.

Second, the biggest news (at least for this audience) wasn’t what was at Comdex, but what wasn’t: socket 939 boards. There wasn’t even mention of them, as best as I can determine.

Given that AMD was supposed to make a few hundred thousand of them in the first quarter of 2004; that’s a pretty notable absence, and a strong indicator we’re not going to see them anytime soon.

Is the apparent delay in socket 939 related to the delay in 90nm? Maybe, maybe not, but a delay in socket 939 all by itself will hurt AMD sales early next year.

In for a Penny, In For A Euro…

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