Buggi, AMD's Barcelona die will be low volume for a while. AMD will make a few hundred thousand units, primarily for servers, but I doubt they'll hit the 1M unit number until mid-08.
Of course, they don't really need volumes to be that high, either. AMD's tactic with the original K8, and also with dual core Toledo, was the same thing. They introduced a bunch of skus, but priced them high enough that they only needed desktop parts in the high tens of thousands of units to satisfy demand. Of course, tens of thousands of units at >$300 ASP gave AMD a lot of incremental revenue with K8 and K8DC. Then again, Agena does not have the same beneficial environment that its predecessors had. AMD can only compete in the high end if they have better performance. It's hard to predict how AMD will address this. Pricing it below $250 to beat Intel's quad core pricing will mean continued low margins. Costs will go up, but ASPs will remain flat.
Also, as you said, the real volume battle will be fought in the dual core market, and Intel will have much higher frequencies with Penryn. Instead of 3.0GHz at $266, they'll have 3.33GHz at $266 and 3.0GHz at $189. You can't compare AMD's future products to Intel's current products. |
