Het hele verhaaltje:
2007 has not been kind to AMD. The company saw its workstation market share slip, has taken on $2 billion of new debt, lost almost $1.2 billion over the past two quarters, has been unable to close the gap with Intel when it comes to CPU performance, and has been the subject of recent rumors that Barcelona will be delayed. AMD has been in cost-cutting mode for the past several months and, according to IDG News Service, is considering getting out of the fabrication business.
Currently, AMD operates two fabs: Fab 30 and Fab 36. Fab 30 is in the process of being fitted to handle 300mm production, and when the transition is complete, it will be rechristened Fab 38. It hasn't come cheaply, either—the chip maker has invested over $2.5 billion to expand its 300mm capabilities. AMD has also been talking up a new 45nm plant in Malta, NY, that would come online in 2009.
Speculation is building in the analyst community that AMD will attempt to further cut costs by outsourcing more—or all—of its chip making as early as 2008. One Citigroup analyst is predicting a "transformational move" that would result in AMD's lower-end CPUs being manufactured by a third party and possibly selling off part or all of its Dresden, Germany facility. Another report from Goldman Sachs outlines the investment firm's belief that the company will leave manufacturing completely in the hands of third parties.
Currently, Chartered Semiconductor handles some of AMD's manufacturing, and AMD told Ars Technica last fall that its plans called for Chartered to eventually manufacture CPUs on a 65nm process. AMD also has a long-standing partnership with IBM under which AMD gets to use Big Blue's East Fishkill, NY, plant for R&D and manufacturing.
An AMD spokesperson told Ars Technica that the company is looking to extend a model that it already has in place to other parts of the manufacturing and supply chain. "For instance, on the process technology side, we have a joint development agreement with IBM," AMD spokesperson Drew Prairie told Ars. "We use their 300mm R&D facilities right now. One extension of that is looking at taking some of the assets that are currently on our books off our books." We also asked whether AMD was head in the direction of going completely fab-less as part of its asset-light strategy. "At no time did we signal that going fab-less was part of the discussion with asset-light," said Prairie.
Getting out of manufacturing is certainly a plausible—if not likely—scenario for AMD. It would allow AMD to drastically cut costs and possibly stave off a private equity buyout. Outsourcing chip manufacturing would save the company a large chunk of money, and other semiconductor manufacturers—TI and Sony come to mind—have taken steps towards a fab-less existence.
But it's a different story for CPU makers. From a technical perspective, ditching your fab capabilities is an iffy proposition as it introduces a separation between design and manufacturing that could ultimately stretch out development times. AMD would no longer be able to design CPUs with its own fabs in mind, as both it and Intel currently can. AMD may be confident that its history of successful partnerships with the likes of Chartered and IBM will allow it to overcome the obstacles inherent in becoming a fab-less company and that it would be better off selling its own manufacturing facilities to free up cash.
Het lijkt er dus op dat ze helemaal niet van plan zijn fabless te gaan. Het lijkt mij helemaal niet slim. Zeker niet als je wil concurreren met Intel. Dan doe je dat niet alleen door een goede architectuur maar ook een goed productieproces. En dat heb je dan niet meer in handen. AMD's fabs lopen super als je kijkt hoeveel chips ze uit die twee fabs gooien. En volgens mij wordt het dan moeilijker om dingen als SOI te implementeren omdat je dan afhankelijk bent van die 3e partij. Dus mocht AMD fabless gaan denk ik dat ze alleen nog maar low/mid range cpu's gaan verkopen en dan intel het dan definitief gewonnen heeft.
En AMD heeft een 3e fab op komt die moet in 2009 klaar zijn en met 45nm gaan beginnen. Dat is misschien wel wat aan de late kant gezien het feit dat intel al over gaat naar 45nm in begin 08. Maar ja die hebben dan ook heel veel fabs ik gok 3-4x zo veel als AMD als niet meer.
En Fudzilla heeft weer wat negatief nieuws:
Multi CPU Servers
If you are planing to upgrade your server with a new miraculous Quad core from AMD, codenamed Barcelona and if you want a multi socket machine, you might have an issue.
Barcelona, the first of many K10 chips won’t support HyperTransport 3 and this intercommunication protocol is suppose to speed up the inter chip communication and boost the multi chip system performance.
Well, Barcelona comes without it and approximately one quarter later, here comes the Budapest which will be a similar core, but with HyperTransport 3.0 support.
But Barcelona K10 won't be
AMD still keep its mouth shut about the fact that it will delay K10 until Q4 2007, but we learned that despite the delay, the servers will be ready on time. This is not a shocker, as even the old server boards can take care of Barcelona, all they need is a BIOS update.
There is a bunch of Opteron based servers than can take care of K10, especially Barcelona and the old chipsets, mainly the Nvidia professional 3600 chipset can support K10.
As far as we know, this chipset doesn’t support HyperTransport 3.0, but we are sure that Nvidia will have a chipset to accommodate this interchip protocol once it's ready.
The good news is that Barcelona or commercially known as the Opteron 2200 series will be out before Xmas and so will a few Agena FX based Phenom FX processors.
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Voor 14% gewijzigd door
Astennu op 20-06-2007 11:01
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LET OP!!! dyslectisch Dus spelling kan verkeerd zijn!!! -- RIP CJ, The ATi Topic wont be the same without you.....
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Vooral Analoog erg slecht op onboard sound omdat je dan veel ruis hebt. Maar digitaal is ook niet alles. Heb me Z-5500 aangesloten op de SPDIF maar dat is geen succes bepaalde geluiden vallen helemaal weg en het klinkt leeg. Dat had ik bij de X-Fi niet.:strip_icc():strip_exif()/u/136848/rsz_pure2.jpg?f=community)
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of even een andere VGA kaart er in die op MXM gemaakt zijn 
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Dacht het niet (weet het niet 100% zeker), Griffin is de opvolger van de K8L.
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Kan iemand dit toelichten ?/u/71029/crop58da4685795df_cropped.png?f=community)
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