Advanced Micro Devices Inc. says it is on the cusp of shipping its triple-core Phenom 8000 series processors.

Whether AMD is about to ship the chips or has already begun to ship them is a little unclear. Industry reports suggested major OEMs Dell and Hewlett-Packard would use the Phenom 8600 for respective lines of business desktops.

Regardless, AMD is shipping triple-core Phenoms and the other channel players should expect to see the chipsets within a couple of weeks.

"We launched Phenom with our 3800 series graphics cards back in November . . . we had OEMs with systems on shelves globally in January. We got good reviews on the processor but there was certainly a desire for additional frequencies and we're going to meet that need in March," explained Leslie Sobon, director of product and brand management for AMD desktops. "We've gotten a lot of feedback from the channel and our OEM customers wanting to design sleeker, smaller systems especially in the desktop space."

Warren Shiau, associate partner, lead IT analyst, The Strategic Counsel, said there's a solid consensus that Phenom isn't going to be taking back the performance crown for AMD. Moreover, the whole avenue for marketing and sales through price/performance reputation doesn't, and hasn't worked for AMD and its partners for quite a while.

Not that anyone says AMD's design path is bad -- conceptually many experts believe AMD has the purer design philosophy.

"The major problem it seems is the effectiveness of the design for mass volume manufacture," Shiau said. "The word is that AMD simply can't get a high enough yield for its Barcelona-based products at the clock speeds it needs to be competitive with Intel.

"Meanwhile Intel is pressing ahead moving over to a 45-nm process and a quad-core line-up; Intel is already ahead of AMD pretty much throughout its entire line with 65-nm dual-core; so when AMD gets things sorted out it's still going to be playing catch-up, maybe even more so than currently."

Sobon said AMD won't have the highest frequency quad-core chip on the market.

"Will it outperform the top product from Intel? No. What we have is a very good line up that beats on price-performance for quad-core. So where we're focusing the effort isn't in technology . . . it is a focus on the mid- to high-end mainstream part of the market with good profitability and high volume," she said. "We'd rather focus in that area and frankly focus our direction on low-power 65-watt quad-core versus going to get a 3.5 or a 3.8 Gig quad-core.

"In terms of the nanometer process . . . our competitor has historically started first. But when you look at when we've converted 100 percent over, we're roughly around the same time. Yes, they started 45-nm before us, we'll start shipping product in the back half of this year in 45-nm. If history proves [correct], we'll be 100 percent converted around the same time they will be."

Shiau added everyone's pretty much given up on AMD staging a miraculous comeback. The great hope now is AMD targets its opportunities and maintains its' position.

"The big OEMs are never going to want to be beholden to Intel like they were before getting AMD in there, so they're going to keep AMD-based product lines around," he said. "The server shops that have gone the AMD-based route are going to stick with AMD. And there's always a portion of the channel that'll stick with AMD too."

Regarding the channel and Phenom, Shiau said there would be great Phenom-based machines available. "It's far less of a pickle than what the channel would have been facing if Phenom had been delayed out to say Q2 or Q3. And it looks like AMD is going down the route of developing lines that are specifically consumer (and channel) targeted."

However, he added Phenom is more channel relief than channel opportunity at the moment. As the new products come out from AMD, the opportunity isn't necessarily going to be enterprise (which had always been a big push before).

"It's back to AMD's consumer roots for the channel," Shiau said.

"From a channel perspective, initially that's true," Sobon remarked. "You will see commercial grade CPUs coming from us both in triple and in quad for the commercial market in the channel next quarter.

"For the products that are launching in a couple of weeks, those are consumer-focused."

"A lot of them are driven by applications," said Gary Bixler, director, worldwide channel development, AMD. "The reality is for quad-core products, the applications that are leading the way have been multi-threaded, more to the entertainment applications such as gaming.

"As quad-core products become mainstream, which they are very quickly, we're positioned very well to do well in the mainstream space with those products and they'll then begin to penetrate into the commercial space."

SOURCE: 13 March, 2008.  By Liam Lahey.   www.echannelline.com