Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) was recently said to be planning to postpone the launch of its K8 processors from October to December and is likely to make some specification changes in the products. However, K.J. Chou, general manager of AMD Taiwan, said that so far they have not received notice from headquarters about the schedule or specification changes and they are still planning to introduce the new K8-based Athlon in the fourth quarter, with the workstation/server-use Opteron following later.
Chipset companies said that they would not be surprised if AMD delays the product introduction to December, as a gap between the company's product launch and volume deliveries is not uncommon. As for the new products' market presence, chipset designers said that the K8 processors are not expected to gain a significant foothold in the marketplace until the first half of 2003 at the earliest, judging from the current yield rate of AMD's 0.13-micron process, the company's policy to ship products first to brand-name PC companies and market cycles. Moreover, AMD may not be able to produce more than tens of thousands of processors by the end of 2002.
Regarding the rumored specification changes, it's believed that they are most likely to be alterations to AMD's integrated memory controller design. So far, chipset designers VIA Technologies, Silicon Integrated Systems (SiS) and ALi Corporation have all announced their K8-supporting chipsets will be ready by the end of the third quarter, with no delays expected. Changes in the processor architecture would force companies to redesign their products completely and endanger these schedules.
To enhance performance, AMD integrates the memory controller into its K8 processor. However, the design has raised questions in the industry. Sources said that although the K8 processor supports the mainstream DDR333 platform, the product may encounter a compatibility problem as it hits the market in 2003, when the memory mainstream is expected to shift to the new DDR II or twin-bank DDR standard.

Source: DigiTimes

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