AMD's Duron is Dead

[BobyJo]

April 18, 2002
AMD to Kill Duron Chip
By Ken Popovich

Less than two years after it was launched, Advanced Micro Devices Inc. has announced it will phase out the Duron processor targeted at low-cost consumer PCs as the company revamps its product line and makes way for a new high-end PC chip.

AMD Chairman Jerry Sanders disclosed the move late Tuesday during the company's quarterly earnings announcement, saying that the manufacturing plant currently used to make Duron processors in Austin, Texas, will be converted to producing flash memory chips only by year's end.

Late this year, AMD will introduce a new processor, codenamed Clawhammer, that'll be targeted at the high-end PC space dominated by Intel Corp.'s Pentium 4 line. Shortly after launching the new chip, AMD's current top-end product, the Athlon XP, will be repositioned for use in low- to mid-range PCs, or systems generally costing less than $1,000.

Durons, first released in May 2000, were designed to enable AMD to more effectively compete with Intel's Celeron product line, which the company says is targeted at "value conscious" PC buyers. Like the Celerons, the Durons are offered with less on-die memory, slower bus speeds and at lower clock-speeds than the company's top performing product line.

Currently, AMD's desktop Durons are offered at speeds from 1GHz to 1.3GHz, and sell for between $64 and $84 a piece. By contrast, AMD's top performing Athlon XP 2100+ is priced at $330 per chip.

[dimmreaper]

Yawn . . . old news bud . . .

The good news is that the low-end Thoroughbred core Athlon XPs will be priced to compete with Intel's Willimate-128, the P4 based Celeron, and should perform much much better . . .

[BobyJo]

Gee, guess I have been asleep for a day or two.
I just read this news clip today.

[dimmreaper]

Well don't say I didn't warn you before you crawled under that rock

[BobyJo]

Thanks, I guess I had better find a way out from under this rock.

[akaBruno]

BFD

BRUNO

[cloasters]

I'm guessing that the slowest of XP's will be demoted in price after Thoroughbred hits the shelves. Nonetheless, I do like Duron's a lot. I have two Spitfires running, and a brand new 1.3 Ghz Morgan arrived via FedEx yesterday.

I'm sad to see them go. I've read that one more Duron with the new Appaloosa core will be manufactured before 2003. This tidbit doesn't make sense to me. AMD is chronically short of Fab capacity, I don't see how "just one more Duron" can compete with the more profitable Hammers. Yes that's right, I wrote "Hammers." I don't care what STUPID name AMD wants to dub them with.

Have an Opteronistic kind of day.

[dimmreaper]

Originally posted by cloasters
AMD is chronically short of Fab capacity

No they are not, but the expect to be next year, which is why United Microelectronics Corp. in Tiawan will be making the Thoroughbreds next year.

AMD hasn't dead set there mind on not making Durons next year, they just stated that they'd like to phase them out. If there is high enough demand for them next year, they very well could decide outsource Durons to UMC too.

I do however think it's most likely they will phase them out, but I wouldn't be surprised if the Duron gets moved over to UMC for the first half of 2003 before they phase it out.

[BobyJo]

AMD is definately closing the Austin Tx plant to cpu fab.
They are gonna make other devices at that location.
Man a lot of people work there.
Guess like Dell, they laid off hundreds of people a few months ago.

[robbie]

Weird I have seen Dell's popping up like crazy.
Everyone is getting one. We service them I'm sure. But I have NEVER got a call on one.

I guess that's says something for Dell.

Rob

[BobyJo]

From what I understand, Dell laid off most thier phone techs. They still operate the tech dept via e-mail.
The return tech support is not near as fast as it used to be.
This was an economy decline situation, and don't know if any of these people have been recalled or not.

[dimmreaper]

Originally posted by robbie
Weird I have seen Dell's popping up like crazy.

Yeah, a few folks I know have recently gotten Dell's. The last month or so Dell been advertising like crazy while at the same time seriously cutting prices on "main-stream" P4 DDR setups. A lot of folks just decided that it is time to trade that old Pentium in for a Pentium 4 I guess. They will be sorry when 6-9 months from now when folks like us start building gnarly K8 based system

[dimmreaper]

Originally posted by BobyJo
AMD is definately closing the Austin Tx plant to cpu fab.

The Austin fab is dated, and desperately needs to be modernized. It has always been AMD's plan to wind down Austin as Dresdan was wound up. Austin is schedualed to go back in to full swing in early 2004. Just what they be making from now 'till then I'm not sure. AMD plans to out source it's chipsets to UMC as well . . .

[cloasters]

Here's a new wrinkle about AMD I've seen on the Web recently. As Thoroughbreds are the next processor's slated to be released by Advanced Micro Devices, why are the Hammer's getting all of the PR?

I've seen nothing from AMD about Thoroughbred. Hammer this, Hammer that, Hammer with yet another STUPID brand name from AMD. Is it possible that the Thoroughbred is just a die shrink improvement over the XP's? Which may mean very little, performance wise?

I suppose that "keep 'em guessing" is a PR tool. But people stop guessing sooner or later, and vote with their wallets.

[Wa11y]

Originally posted by cloasters
Here's a new wrinkle about AMD I've seen on the Web recently. As Thoroughbreds are the next processor's slated to be released by Advanced Micro Devices, why are the Hammer's getting all of the PR?

I've seen nothing from AMD about Thoroughbred. Hammer this, Hammer that, Hammer with yet another STUPID brand name from AMD. Is it possible that the Thoroughbred is just a die shrink improvement over the XP's? Which may mean very little, performance wise?

I suppose that "keep 'em guessing" is a PR tool. But people stop guessing sooner or later, and vote with their wallets.

If they really want the Hammer to take off and beat down the PIV, they need to stop the funny sounding names and go with straighforward names like "Shaft" (It's one bad mutha... [shut yo mouth!] But I'm just talkin' 'bout AMD. [we can dig it!]) and "Bruce Campbell" (Alright, you Intel screwheads....THIS is my BOOMSTICK!). I mean, c'mon, with names like that, will Intel really stand a chance?

[dimmreaper]

Originally posted by cloasters
Is it possible that the Thoroughbred is just a die shrink improvement over the XP's? Which may mean very little, performance wise?

Um dood, that is what a Thoroughbred is, and that's all it was ever supposed to be. Remember AMD already uses strategically located .13u transistors in the Palomino core. Thoroughbred just switches everything over to .13u, which shrinks the die size to that of a Morgan core Duron, for economic purposes. AMD could probably get as much speed out of the .18u/.13u hybrid process that the Palomino uses as they will out of the .13u Thoroughbred. Later steppings of Thoroughbred(end of this year?) will more than likely get infused with some .09u transistors to help them scale a bit faster, but then you're talking a .13u/.09U hybrid process.

AMD plans to scale the Athlon to PR 2800+ by the end of the year(according to recent road maps), and they plan to continue scaling it throughout next year. The only way they will meet those lofty goals is to infuse smaller transistors.

Sooner or later K7 is just not going to sell(due to lack of X86-64 support), at which point AMD will release a value version of the Hammer, probably on a .09u CMOS(not SOI) process with 128K of L2 cache, likely only supporting a single memory channel(less gold pins is cheaper, and the crippling will help differentiate product lines).