Chips

It looks like AMD will raise the curtain on its Barcelona server processor at George Lucas' office on September 10.

The company's PR firm sent out invitations to "the most anticipated premiere of 2007," which I would have thought was The Simpsons Movie (go see it, it's better than I thought it would be), but which for AMD is most definitely Barcelona, its long-awaited quad-core server processor.

AMD needs Barcelona to get its server division back on track. The company has been forced to cut the prices of its dual-core Opteron chips to compete with Intel'… Read more

Apple's long shadow over the flash-memory market might help it avoid serious problems in the wake of Samsung's production outage.

The second half of the year was already shaping up to be tight, as flash-memory companies switch over to new manufacturing technologies. But, of all things, a power outage in South Korea Friday could really make things difficult for companies that are depending on flash memory chips from Samsung this holiday season.

Analysts estimated that 15 percent of Samsung's output in the third quarter could have been lost because of the power outage. Not only will Samsung … Read more

Nvidia painted a pretty picture in the graphics market during the second quarter.

The company's market share soared by 81 percent compared with a year ago, as it overtook AMD's ATI division and erased some of Intel's lead in the market for PC graphics, according to new data from Jon Peddie Research. Intel held 37.6 percent of the market in the second quarter, while Nvidia garnered 32.6 percent and AMD had 19.5 percent.

Intel holds the lead in graphics by virtue of its integrated graphics chipsets, which ship with low-end desktops and lots of … Read more

AMD has managed to push past the effects of a disastrous inventory problem last quarter, but not all the way.

Mercury Research reports that AMD gained back four of the six points of market share it lost in the first quarter after an inventory screwup. Intel shipped 76.3 percent of all x86 chips for the desktop, notebook and server markets in the second quarter, while AMD shipped 22.9 percent. Intel hit 80 percent in the first quarter of this year, but that was an anomaly based on AMD's supply-chain troubles, said Dean McCarron, principal analyst at Mercury … Read more

Intel's legal team will be very busy for the next 10 weeks.

That's how long the world's largest chipmaker has to come up with an explanation for business practices that the European Commission has declared "abuse of a dominant market position." The Directorate-General for Competition on Thursday sent Intel a "statement of objections," which sounds like a polite way of doing business but is quite serious.

The EC cited three examples of objectionable conduct after it investigated Intel's practices and the European PC market at the request of AMD. First, it said … Read more

While AMD isn't giving away any information on its future fab plans, a major chip foundry is gearing up for a big new customer.

TSMC, the largest chip foundry in the world, is apparently planning to take on a new customer that wants to use the high-k dielectrics and metal gates introduced earlier this year by both Intel and IBM. Sumner Lemon of IDG News Service sat through a TSMC earnings call in which company executives mentioned a mysterious new customer would be coming on board in the second half of 2008.

There are not a lot of folks … Read more

SUNNYVALE, Calif.--Apparently sometimes, you just can't say no, even when you know it's going to hurt.

That seems to be where AMD finds itself, as it tries to reconcile a draining price war against the high demand for its chips. Intel has been squeezing AMD's margins for over a year through processor price cuts, but AMD has still managed to expand its foothold inside customers like Dell and gain new customers like Toshiba.

The problem is that much of that growth is coming at the low end of the market, where less profits can be had. … Read more

SUNNYVALE, Calif.--AMD's Fusion chip will come in two varieties, one for PCs and servers and another for consumer electronics devices.

Bulldozer is the code name for the Fusion chip that will be designed for everything from servers to handhelds, said Phil Hester, AMD's chief technology officer. Bobcat is the name for a sub 10-watt x86 chip that AMD believes can power ultramobile PCs, cell phones and existing consumer electronics chips using the ARM or MIPS architectures.

You call in a bulldozer when you need a lot of earth moved in a short amount of time, Hester said. … Read more

SUNNYVALE, Calif.--AMD will unveil a new chip design in 2009 for the server market and faster versions of its Barcelona quad-core chip later this year, company executives said Thursday.

AMD's near-term goal is to get its Barcelona quad-core chip out into the market. The company has already said it plans to launch Barcelona chips at 2GHz later this quarter, but it also plans to ship faster versions of those chips in the fourth quarter, said Randy Allen, corporate vice president of AMD's server products division, at a technology analyst meeting at the company's Silicon Valley headquarters. … Read more