AMD Offers Smaller Quantities To VARs

The MT-37, MT-34 and MT-32 Turion models, three of AMD’s lower-end Turions, are now available in what the company calls a Mobile WOF, a processor in a box without a fan. Those processors include a three-year warranty, up from the one-year warranty available with volume buys, said Matt Mazzantini, marketing manager for AMD’s mobile division.

The low-volume offering comes in response to requests from the chip maker’s top partners, Mazzantini said.

AMD, Sunnyvale, Calif., previously offered processors only via higher-volume trays, which usually contain 60 processors. Such volume purchases were difficult for system builders serving the relatively slow whitebook market, Mazzantini said.

“System builders don’t sell 10, 20 or 30 [whitebook processors] at a time. They sell one, two or three at a time,” he said. “They were having to sit on processor inventory they didn’t sell.”

The new packing allows system builders to buy the processors through distribution in very low quantities, he added.

However, James Huang, a product specialist at Amax Information Technologies, said the system builder already buys Turion processors in “ones and twos” from distributors and saw no advantage in the boxed offering. “We already buy from distribution with no quantity commitments,” he said.

An AMD spokesman said many distributors actually are not willing to break out trays, repackage processors and ship them to system builders. AMD’s boxed offering was specifically designed so that distributors could avoid such labor-intensive tasks.

He also said the extended warranty is another benefit that comes with the boxed option, a contention Huang acknowledged. “A longer warranty is better for us because we offer three-year warranties on our whitebooks,” he said. “Government and education accounts require a three-year warranty.”