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Hammer delayed....because of 333 Mhz bus Athlon...humm

M

Macro2

Diamond Member
AMD delays Hammer for desktops
By Michael Kanellos
Staff Writer, CNET News.com
September 12, 2002, 2:32 PM PT
http://news.com.com/2100-1001-957757.html
LINK
Advanced Micro Devices has pushed out the release of its highly anticipated Hammer chip for desktops by almost a quarter, and will delay the release of another Athlon chip.

The desktop version of Hammer, which is code-named Clawhammer and will be marketed under the Athlon brand name, will now ship to PC manufacturers in the first quarter of 2003 and will hit store shelves toward the end of the first quarter or at the beginning of the second quarter, said John Crank, senior branding associate at AMD.

Earlier, AMD planned to ship Clawhammer to manufacturers by the end of the fourth quarter and have it on store shelves in the first quarter.

Opteron, a version of Hammer for servers, will still come out in the first half.

Similarly, the company will postpone the commercial release of "Barton" a new version of the Athlon chip with a performance-enhancing 512KB secondary cache, from the second half of this year to the first quarter of next year.

The delays are occurring to accommodate the release of a new version of Athlon with a 333MHz bus, said Crank. Current Athlons come with a 200MHz bus and 256KB of secondary cache. Typically, a faster bus, which is the main data conduit between the processor and memory, means better performance. An Athlon with the faster bus will come out this quarter, he added.

Although it encountered few missteps in manufacturing in 2000 and 2001, AMD has been bogged down a bit by delays this year. The Athlon XP 2400+, originally due in the second quarter, is slated to come out this month. The company also redesigned the Athlon this summer to reduce energy consumption.

AMD lost two points of market share in the past quarter and posted a loss for the fourth straight quarter.

 
If this news piece is true, I think it would be more acurate to say that delays to Hammer and possibly Barton are causing AMD to release the 333MHz bus Athlons in order to remain competitive.
 
If true, it's not good at all for AMD....

The site is legit and the author is known, so it appears legit.

Not sure I buy the excuse about delaying the Hammer because of the 333 Mhz bus Athlon either...

Maybe there is still trouble getting the Hammer up to speed...
 
Hmmm, AMD sure is expecting a lot out of 333FSb if they are willing to delay HAMMER and Barton for it. I dunno if it is tho as one of you say, that Hammer is simply still having trouble.
 
The more I think about it the more pathetic the excuse sounds...
Seems like AMD is back to their old ways of slip -sliding-away again. I can understand Barton slipping because of outsourcing but since Hammer is slipping then maybe something is really wrong in Dresden...

Looks like Intel will have their way MHz wise and ASP wise for at least 4-6 more months. Lots more losses for AMD on the way I guess.

Mac
 
hey... maybe its just that AMD thinks the 333FSB Athlon is enuff to keep itself at a competitive position when looking at the Northwood P4. After all, its the 133 Mhz bus jump that took the crown away from the athlon. Maybe AMD thinks that the HAMMERs should be competitive with the prescott core, and there is no sense in rushing out a product that is too ahead(?) of its time...

So lets not predict anything till we see the results of all this.....
 
the best we can do is speculate what is really happening at AMD. until then we really don't know what is happening with the hammer. It is a new CPU so who knows what bugs they may have found or what feature they may want to improve.
 
I think that we are being a little negative. The new Athlon stepping 2400+ and 2600+ are reportedly overclocking VERY well. This leaves AMD some headroom on their current design, and time to optimize future ones.
 
Well, I know a lot of people were waiting for Hammer and will be disappointed. One could say that AMD doesn't want to have people waiting for Hammer and not buying the new 333 Mhz bus chips. Sure sounds like the new T-breds will scale a lot higher that we expected a month ago and will have some pretty good PR numbers but in this game ties go to Intel. So AMD needs hammer to leapfrog the P4, now.
OTOH, AMD could have still introed the Clawhammer on time but at a high price and now cannibalized the T-breds....

Mac
 
Can we say Palladium and Fritz?

Volume production wasnt expected until 1st half 2003 anyways, so its no biggie, although the only threat will be that Tejas gets another quarter in breathing room.
 
Originally posted by: dexvx
Can we say Palladium and Fritz?

Volume production wasnt expected until 1st half 2003 anyways, so its no biggie, although the only threat will be that Tejas gets another quarter in breathing room.
Click to expand...

There is no such thing as "Fritz". That is a name for some nebulous chip that doesn't exist that was made up by that British guy who's very anti-MS and anti-TCPA. I'm too lazy to look up his name right now, but he says in his "FAQ" that he's just calling the security chip Fritz because he doesn't like Senator Fritz Hollings.
 
Originally posted by: Accord99
If this news piece is true, I think it would be more acurate to say that delays to Hammer and possibly Barton are causing AMD to release the 333MHz bus Athlons in order to remain competitive.
Click to expand...

I'd say that's about 110% true, how many times have we heard AMD saying the higher front side bus is not abig enough speed boost to warrant the switch?
 
Originally posted by: BD231
Originally posted by: Accord99
If this news piece is true, I think it would be more acurate to say that delays to Hammer and possibly Barton are causing AMD to release the 333MHz bus Athlons in order to remain competitive.
Click to expand...

I'd say that's about 110% true, how many times have we heard AMD saying the higher front side bus is not abig enough speed boost to warrant the switch?
Click to expand...

Aren't they going to 512K cache, also? If they'd up it 256-bit, that'd be even better . . .
 
Bloomburg article on Hammer and Barton delay

According to the Bloomburg article and what they are reporting on other financial news sites, shipment of Clawhammer desktop processors will not commence until the end of the first quarter or early second quarter, with processor and systems availability by the end of the second quarter. That means we won't be able to buy Clawhammer processors until May/June, rather than early January as we had expected.

The Bloomburg article also reports that the first Clawhammer released "will perform at least as well as a 3-gigahertz Pentium 4 from Intel." Of course, the P4 3.06GHz is coming October 27...it's not entirely clear what frequencies Intel will be shipping when Clawhammer actually becomes available to the public. This is looking more and more like a Clawhammer and Prescott (PentiumV) showdown, rather than Clawhammer vs. the P4. The "Prescott" PentiumV is expected by most analysts to makes its debut in July.

AMD also updates processor roadmap

Previously, Clawhammer shipment was specified for 2H 2002 (public availability was expected January), and it is now listed as 1H 2003.

Ken
 
This really bums me out 🙁

AMD is slipping more and more everyday. They're going to end up losing a lot of the marketshare they fought so hard to get if they don't get their act together soon. I don't think they realize they need to stay AHEAD of Intel if they want to gain any market share. You can't just "stay competitive" and get anywhere. They may offer lower prices than Intel, but most people still see AMD as the off brand and as long as they continue to just "stay competitive" with a lower price point they look cheap to the average consumer. The cheap way out in other words. They need to BEAT Intel and reclaim the performance crown if they want to stay afloat. And when they make those better processors they need to higher the prices as to not look "cheap".

Clawhammer coming out so late is going to severely hurt them IMO, especially with the 2400+ and 2600+ still being a paper launch and the 3.06GHz P4 just around the corner to crush them even more than the 2.8 does. AMD is also shooting themselves in the foot in the mobile market with processors that take so much power and no good chipsets.

I am a big AMD fan, and have used nothing but Athlons and Durons in all the systems I've built over the past 3 years. I can't say that they're going in my next system if they continue to dissapoint like this, though.
 
the best we can do is speculate what is really happening at AMD.
Click to expand...
Agreed.
I think that we are being a little negative. The new Athlon stepping 2400+ and 2600+ are reportedly overclocking VERY well. This leaves AMD some headroom on their current design, and time to optimize future ones.
Click to expand...
I think you're right. AMD even without Barton, can get the T-Bred to competitive levels with the 2.8 P4 if they have to.
This is looking more and more like a Clawhammer and Prescott (PentiumV) showdown, rather than Clawhammer vs. the P4. The "Prescott" PentiumV is expected by most analysts to makes its debut in July.
Click to expand...
As far as I was ever concerned, the true showdown was always gonna be P5vs Hammer. Intel has hinted on more than one occasion that they might launch the P5 much sooner than the Q4'03 release date, and I always thought that if they had to, they would be able to pull off a Prescott launch in Q2 if Hammer was shipped in Q4 this year, and now with Hammer being delayed til Q2 next year, Intel will certainly prep for a Summer launch of the P5.

I am also going to add, current indication from certain sources (like Inquirer) point to very little from Intel in H1 next year. We all know how the Inquirer is, but, take a look at the current heat dissipation numbers for the 2.8 P4. The 2.8 is on average producing 68.4W of heat(not to mention runs at 1.525v), and for comparision, the XP 2600 produces on average 62W and the very last .18 Micron Williamette (2GHz), produced 72W on average. It is safe to say that the 3.06 will produce very similar levels of heat that the 2.0 .18 Williamette did. My point is that, after Intel jumping from 2.4 to 3.06 in the last lets see 6 months, we are going to see at best (I think) a 3.2 .13 micron Northwood in H1 of next year, and AMD can certainly match a 3.06 some time next year with a Barton at 2.5.

Enough of my jabber, is this a fall for AMD, yes, are things down hill from here? No will they recover? yes.
 
Maybe AMD is just suggesting that the hammer will be delayed, because they notice Intel adjusts their release dates specifically to stay ahead of them, as a trick to get Intel to slip.

Yeah, this is of course just wishful thinking. But I'd say its a lot more likely than the 333 MHz bus Athlon being the real reason for the Hammer delay.
 
While I can't say I'm terribly surprised this is certainly disappointing news.
The 2400/2600+ is still unavailable and Intel is set to launch a 3.06GHz P4 in late October. By then I expect the 3400/2600+ to be available and AMD will probably bump the AXP to 2700+ at that time, possibly 2800+ if they take the faster 333MHz FSB into account in their ratings.
A 2800+ if available reasonably soon after release should keep AMD vaugely competitive in the high-end, as it will match the Rating of what will then be Intel's second fastest Pentium 4 Processor. I figure by the holiday selling season a 2700/2800+ should be solidly available.

They'll almost certainly lose further ground in the enthusiast market, but that's of minimal importance as the enthusiast market is extremely small and accounts for less then 1% of shipped processors.

The Barton will come in early 2003, and should be able to push AMD to a 3000+ rating by that point in time. That should keep them reasonably competitive as Intel has no plans for anything faster then 3.06GHz until the 3.2GHz Prescott in Q2 3003. The Hammer should be available at least in limited quantities by then.

Given all of the above I expect AMD will be able to stay reasonably close to Intel though it'll be a rough time period and their certain to lose even further ground in the market.
The biggest damage though, is this ensures the Hammer will not have a very large leadtime before 667MHz FSB Prescott + Dual Channel DDR is available from Intel.
While the Hammer may well be competitive with the above this delay effectively kills any chance that AMD will solidly steal the performance crown for any length of time. Unless of course Hammer surprises and is substantially faster then 667MHz Prescott, but I find that unlikely.
 
RE:"The biggest damage though, is this ensures the Hammer will not have a very large leadtime before 667MHz FSB Prescott + Dual Channel DDR is available from Intel.
While the Hammer may well be competitive with the above this delay effectively kills any chance that AMD will solidly steal the performance crown for any length of time. Unless of course Hammer surprises and is substantially faster then 667MHz Prescott, but I find that unlikely. "


You are so right on the money it's scary. AMD needed that lead time to gain back market share. AMD only gains share when they have a clear performance lead. Ties, or "competitive" don't get it.
AMDs share is slipping now. T-bred-B at PR-2400, 2600 and 2800 can only slow down the slipping of share as Intel stays a couple hundred points ahead. Sad this is that if AMD doesn't ship T-bred-Bs in the higher speed range soon they will be only competing with Celerons on the low end. When Intel adds 256k cache to the Celerons it will even make it worse.
The fact that Barton and Hammer are delayed doesn't bode well for AMDs process...since they are yet to prove they can handle large cache chips well. This also effects Hammer. AMD uses modular design, any L2 size in Athlon/Hammer can be put together in increments of 64KB and validated very quickly. It follows that the delay of a 512KB L2 chip can indicate that they are still having a high defect density on their 130nm node. This is as bad as it can get and would also affect the Hammer.
 
I dont think this bodes well for AMD...The THG reviews show even with newer 2800-3000 tbreds the amd starts slipping to the p4 which like was mentioned should have a 3.06ghz out soon and only staying ahead by a decent margin. In ther THG review a 3000+ did not beat the p4 2.8ghz in majority of benches....

Also even anandtech and a few other sites have mentioned the 166fsb will not be a big boost at all for the the amd so don'texpect much...Amd would do likely better expanding the l2 cache.
 
I think it's more likely that AMD is pushing for 333FSB BECAUSE Hammer got delayed and not the other way around. Also notice the slide of Barton from Q402 to Q103 on the latest *OFFICIAL* AMD roadmap. Barton is now occupying the same slot that desktop Clawhammer used to hold, which was supposed to ship in Q402 and become availible in Q103.

AMD roadmap
 
I think the tbred and amd are going to be playing severe catch up until the barton can leap a bit....

currently you can only get a 2200+ which is beat by 4 of intels chips...2.4b,2.53b,2.66b, and 2.8b...which are actually out...

When the 2600+ actually arrives in beginning of Oct only 2 intel chips will be in the lead 2.66b, 2.8b....However intel will get out the 3.06ghz likely before amd releases (actual release, who knows if they will paper launch another chip 1-1/2 months prior to actual selling the chip) and that will mean again 4 chips over the top of the flagship amd....

Why does having 4 chips better then the best amd chip bode well for intel??? cause it means the intel p4 chip most equal to in perfromance will likely be sub 200 level and thus be very close to price as the best amd chip.

 
Hi,

I think that this is a marketing strategy because as you all know the last time after the release of AMD Athlon XP 2200+, they took a long break to revise the core and make some adjustments. I think that AMD is trying to get a new plan because they didn't expect Intel to release such fast processors.

I hope the wait brings us all fasttttt!!! processors, an option other than intel!
 
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