New Chips Coming

Intel this week is set to release its Itanium 3GHz Pentium 4 chip, while AMD is ramping up for large volumes of its next-generation Athlon.

In an exclusive interview with CRN, AMD CEO Hector Ruiz stopped short of saying when Athlon 2600 XP processors will ship, but said the Sunnyvale, Calif.-based company would have high volumes of the chip this quarter.

"The Athlon is coming along incredibly well," Ruiz said. "The Athlon 2600,that's a highly desirable product. We'll have close to 4 million units this quarter."

Ruiz said he does not expect AMD to sell all 4 million units in the quarter but added that the company's ability to produce that quantity should put to rest doubts about its ability to execute.

AMD has been under pressure on Wall Street due to recent profit disappointments. Last week, the company announced plans to take a charge of several hundred million dollars to reduce costs and also said it will implement layoffs.

The CEO defended AMD's decision to postpone the launch date for the desktop version of its 64-bit Hammer platform while releasing the server version,to be called Opteron,in its original time frame. "The technology for Hammer is incredibly leading-edge, state of the art," Ruiz said.

Despite solution provider surveys that show that only a fraction plan to migrate to Hammer over the next year, Ruiz said he believes the market is ready. He added that he expects conditions and timing to soon be right to spur volume adoption of the platform. "I believe 2003 is a perfect year for this to occur," Ruiz said.

While AMD is bringing a 64-bit processor to market two years after Intel, Hammer, unlike Itanium, will be optimized to also run 32-bit software on its architecture.

Only slightly more solution providers said they plan to offer Itanium-based solutions in the coming year than those that said they plan to offer Hammer-based systems. "I don't see an uptick on any Itanium-based platforms today," said Sean Aryai, director of OEM marketing at Systemax, a Port Washington, N.Y.-based systems builder. "Next year should be interesting. I think Opteron will help push the 64-bit processor to center stage, but without software support, it will not be able to flex its muscles."

Intel partners said they have been told by the company that it will launch its 3GHz Pentium 4 processor this week,a move expected to result in lower pricing throughout its product line. Intel executives declined to confirm the ship date.