Xy,
And yet another press release from AMD. This looks like great news for AMD and very very bad news for Intel. I wouldn't be surprised if the Intel Stock took a big dump on this news. AMD significantly ramping production. 300MHz production. 15 million processors in 1998. Gee.... I wonder if they've solved that nagging yield problem?
Profits
CeBIT News
AMD to Introduce 3D Processor in May
By Aaron Ricadela
Hannover, Germany
12:00 p.m. EST Mon., March 23, 1998
Advanced Micro Devices will debut its K6 3D processor in May inside PCs priced from $1,300 to $1,700 and configured for games, said company representatives attending the CeBIT Hannover Fair. AMD's second-tier vendors will be first to market at the official launch on May 27, and Compaq, IBM and Acer will follow within weeks in the United States, said AMD's European marketing manager, Robert Stead.
AMD's new chip, tentatively called K6 3D, but likely to launch under a
different name, will initially appear in 266MHz and 300MHz versions,
said Stead. The processor adds 24 instructions designed to enhance
multimedia performance to the company's K6 processor. According to
Stead, AMD will position K6 3D against Pentium II as offering a richer
configuration at comparable price points.
Exploiting K6 3D's promise of fast, smooth graphics on processor-intensive applications like games and DVD playback, AMD is
encouraging vendors to bundle 3-D graphics accelerators, games and
DVD-ROM drives with PCs featuring the chip. K6 3D delivers its best
performance when used in conjunction with a 3-D graphics accelerator,
Stead said, and a 100MHz bus adds about 15 percent better performance
than AMD's "classic" K6 delivers. As reported by CRWi, AMD plans to
position the classic K6 chip against Intel's Celeron processor this
spring.
AMD's vendors will price PCs using the 266MHz K6 3D from $1,300 to
$1,400, and PCs using the 300MHz processor from $1,500 to $1,700,
according to Stead. AMD is encouraging vendors to bundle 3-D
accelerators based on NVidia's Riva chip and 3Dfx Interactive's Voodoo 2 chip, he said. Some SKUs could also ship with an OEM version of the
flight combat game Incoming, by English developer Rage, he said. AMD
demonstrated Incoming here. The company is also pushing for a "super
SKU" with 64MB.
AMD has begun production of K6 3D chips, and "tens of thousands" of PCs using it in will appear in the channel at launch, Stead said. These would be from "upper tier-two" vendors, according to Stead, presumably including CTX International. PCs from Compaq, IBM, Acer (and Fujitsu in Europe) will arrive shortly thereafter. "Last year, it took them about nine months to start shipping [K6] in serious volume," he said. "This time, we'll see the heavyweight guys get there even faster."
Production of the new chips will pick up steam in Q3, when AMD plans to manufacture 3.5 million K6 3D chips, followed by production of 4 million to 5 million in Q4, Stead said. By the end of the year, AMD plans to have reached production of 15 million K6 3D parts, or half its retail market processors for 1998. |
