Replies to post #32582 on Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD)

[jhalada]

petrsny,

What chances are that IBM will make K8 dual-core chips @ Fishkill?

Equal to chances of making single core K8 ;-)

Joe

[sgolds]

petrsny, I have long argued that IBM does have an interest in fabbing Opteron for its own products (single or dual core). I don't think they would want this for their foundry business, working out a deal that doesn't have channel conflict with AMD would be tricky.

I am a bit surprised at how few servers IBM has released with Opteron. HP and Sun are quickly passing them by, and IBM was the first! One possible scenerio is that IBM will introduce a raft of product concurrent with a fab agreement. My suspicion is that IBM does not want to overcommit to Opteron given AMD's track record in manufacturing, but by making the product themselves they resolve this problem.

IBM has worked closely with AMD on 90nm, and they are jointly developing 65 & 45nm. This can lead to two different outcomes that are favorable to AMD: Fab Opterons (as we discussed above) or trust AMD's 90nm process because IBM has inside knowlege of it.