Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD)

[Elmer Phud]

Economaniac -

re volume production. I don't think we can really read anything into these remarks.

I disagree. Assuming they are true, and that's unclear, it would indicate that AMD has yet to enter volume production. After 1.5 years of delays that would be horrendous. That means they don't yet know what problems they will incur in high volume. They don't know what problems they'll see with Athlon64 either. They just don't know. I can assure you, running small numbers of engineering wafers does not uncover all the issues that will crop up in volume production. We include "the phase of the moon" as one of the factors affecting yields, meaning the unknown factors that only show up over time and high volume. If (note this is an "if") AMD hasn't been able to start production as the AMD executive was quoted as saying, then this is terrible news and there's no way to put a good spin on it. It may not stop shipping small volumes of early production but it reinforces the fears that SOI was the biggest mistake in AMD's history. It has been discussed here that had AMD not chosen SOI, they should have been able to produce a bulk silicon hammer meeting the full frequency achieved by current shipping products. The expected fact that they will be only sampling small volumes of a significantly slower SOI hammer with reduced yields is a devastating indictment on SOI and is also exactly what just about everybody but "Where's mine?" Jerry predicted at the onset of the project.

Now let's see how this plays out. The quote of the AMD spokesman may be wrong. AMD may ship volume from the onset. All I've said here is based on a quote in an article that may not be true. We'll find out soon but my guess is that the quote was correct.

EP