With Barcelona out, it's do or die time for AMD

17 Apr 2008 | 10:23 BST

By Paul Hales

THE BARCELONA DEBACLE hit AMD where it really hurt - in the coffers. Having lashed out money it didn't have on buying ATI, the chip maker needed to pump up the revenue streams to keep its bankers happy while the huge task of stitching both firms together began.

There can be no doubt that the ATI acquisition gives AMD technologies that are a natural fit with its core business in the longer term. In the shorter term, the alliance is in deep do-do. The non-appearance of Barcelona - the quad-core Opteron - at any time last year deprived AMD of one of its most lucrative revenue streams. Almost as importantly, it was a major public relations bungle. The image of the firm took a knock from which it is still struggling to recover. Product launches can be postponed, but then you're already struggling and your share price is tumbling, the postponement of a key revenue-earning product line can send the share price into free-fall.

The next few months will prove crucial to AMD's survival as an independent entity. It knows it. And it is coming out fighting. If Hector is ever really going to earn his salary of many noughts now is the time.

Last week, the firm choreographed its announcements tightly. Tuesday saw the official announcement of the job cuts we knew were coming. Once the reverberations eased, the fightback began in earnest on Wednesday, when Barcelona was officially back in business. Then, on Friday, Chief Technology Officer Phil Hester fell on his sword. Maybe he wanted to go at some point, but the timing of his departure leaves no room for doubt that he became the fall-guy for Barcelona's cock-up.

At around the time Hester was - unbeknownst to us - preparing to clear his desk, we were chatting Barcelona with AMD server channel man, John Fruehe.

From his desk in sunny Texas, Fruehe insisted that its prime customers for the quad-core Opteron proved ready and able to wait for AMD to get its chip in order. He claimed that, in the server world, customers are thinking two or three years ahead. He said that one advantage of AMD platform approach meant that customers already using dual-core Opterons could wait around for a while since the quad-core offering is designed to fit in the same platform. "They were more than willing to wait with their dual cores and pop in the the quads when they become available," he said.

With Barcelona a reality now, AMD is able to go back on the offensive about the chip. It's a shame we heard it before launch, at "launch" then finally months later when the chip eventually became available, but we'll run over it again here.

When the "competitor" brings out a new processor it essentially changes all the supporting architecture. AMD's "platform" approach means customers that commit to its server technology get to stay on the same platform for a number of revisions of the chip. It began with the Operton socket F revision that essentially allows dual and now quad-core variants of the chip to run in the same board in the same chassis, using - should you wish - the same cooler.

We're sceptical about how many customers will actually lever out an old chip to slot in a new one. But the idea of maintaining the same platform over a number of chip generations has it advantages in terms of support and familiarity. And you can pump up the processing power when - or if - new gene rations of processor are delivered.

"Our platforms have much longer life cycles. We will still be selling parts for our current platform in 2010, which is important for what some folks are doing today in the data centre today. Our competitor does tick-tock," said Fruehe, who gave our tick-tick-tick suggestion a straight bat.

Fruehe is now also able to mention the fact the Barcelona is what AMD calls "true quad core". "Don't forget our lead in power efficiency," he said. "We're more efficient and that's going to continue. With Barcelona we can throttle each core individually. Our competitor has to do it in pairs which is a waste of power. And when you're talking power consumption, a few quid here and a few quid there and pretty soon you're talking real money."

AMD is pitching Barcelona at the virtualisation market and is happily in cahoots with Microsoft, which will go virtualisation bonkers with Windows Server 2008. "Virtualisation loves multi-core," said Freue. "It's more parallel than serial and virtualisation moves the game away from brute strength." We noticed that Microsoft advertising dollars were supporting Barcelona's rebirth and that virtualisation market leader VMWare only announced its support for AMD's chip a week after the relaunch, when Dell also jumped on the Barcelona bandwagon.

While Linux, said Fruehe - somewhat grudgingly - "is ahead of the curve because of the way it is developed," Windows Server 2008 pitches Microsoft right into the game. "Virtualisation is an add-on on the Linux side," he said. And so Windows with virtualisation is not without merit.

With Barcelona out the door, AMD is now firmly looking forward to Shanghai - it's die-shrink of quad-core Barcelona to a 45nm process. Fruehe calls this "a dream come true" for those customers already committed to the Opteronic platform. He said Shanghai will be in production by the end of the year and will be the final iteration of the current platform before it's all change with the next generation architecture built around the chip codenamed Montreal.

Shanghai parts will be out there next year using the same architecture and same socket. It's a die shrink, bringing performance improvements but not requiring a platform changes, Fruehe said. "The big platform changes come with Montreal." We said we hoped the time-scale wouldn't return to bite him in the ass.

"It's going to be a good year for us in servers," Fruehe insisted, "We're feeling pretty good around here. We're poised, we're due."

Overdue might have been more accurate.

The current Barcelona is aimed at the largest chunk of the server space and is rated by AMD at 75 Watts in the new-fangled way AMD measures such things. A lower-power (55 Watt) part is due mid May, while a stonking, higher-end, 105 Watt 2.5GHz part is due in June.

AMD's latest results are due today. They might not look pretty. It's the next quarter's numbers that will need to stack up to ensure the Daamit fledgling will get a chance to stretch its wings. µ

See Also
Barcelona - a potted history

© 2007 Incisive Media Investments Ltd. 2007