AMD Ignoring The System Builder`s Channel: Report

[Nasgul]

Shah Gautam had a great deal of praise for AMD, but the president of Sunnyvale, Calif.-based custom server builder Colfax guessed that the channel was being pushed to the back of the line for the Barcelona rollout.

"They probably care more about their Tier 1 customers in the initial phase. Maybe that ramp-up has been faster than expected, so the channel is always the last, you know," he said.

Looks like a combination of tight supply with high end customers eating away at all available supply.

http://www.crn.com/white-box/202402138?pgno=1

[awdrifter]

Wow, the yields must be really bad.

[XS Janus]

expected unfortuneatly, after witnessing this ongoing "silence" in the online shops...

[flopper]

Silence from a company is bad news.
AMD are in trouble atm.
Its hard to draw any other conclusion unless they got an ace up their sleeves.
For a small company amd is doing well.

[naokaji]

i bet thats why phenom is so late... they need all the fab capacity to produce the server parts...

[DoubleZero]

http://www.techreport.com/discussions.x/13389

So, the 15,000 chips bought by that one company is all amd had?

That's one conclusion to have if you have reading comprehension dificulties.

- "There are no hardware conflicts and the power draw is as promised. They delivered on their technicals. On these high-performance compute and memory-intensive applications, they're kicking Intel's butt."

- The eight rack-mounted clusters Appro builds for $26 million will feature 48,284 four-socket, quad-core Opteron processors with Infiniband 4x DDR interconnects, Appro hasn't had difficulty getting what it needs from AMD


- Shah Gautam had a great deal of praise for AMD, They probably care more about their Tier 1 customers in the initial phase. Maybe that ramp-up has been faster than expected, so the channel is always the last, you know," he said.

- Right now it's running at a week or so lead-time on orders, which is to be expected. We can place orders and get product when we need it. From that perspective, just a few weeks after the launch, it's been a pleasant surprise

- Like his peers, Gautam was pleased with the product itself. And nearly every source ChannelWeb spoke with reported a great deal of interest in quad-core Opterons from customers.

- The AMD business is at a good healthy run-rate and we're definitely seeing interest from our system integrators for the new quad-core. Sales are coming in daily and the team is working hard to get the products to market.

- "The silver lining is that they have a rock solid product. The samples that went out, the benchmarks are great. The demand is huge.

The channel is upset with reason, but AMD giving 1 tier's priority is a nobrainer and techreport just become a 0 credibility site in my book.

[Jacky]

yep let's discredit anyone who says something bad about AMD.
You said yourself "The channel is upset with reason" so what's the problem about a news from techreport..

[LowRun]

Seems like bad news for the channel, good news for AMD.

[DoubleZero]

yep let's discredit anyone who says something bad about AMD.
You said yourself "The channel is upset with reason" so what's the problem about a news from techreport..

I think it's way obvious if you read the original article and then techreport, hell you didn't even had to read it, just needed to see the paragraphs i quoted, but since you didn't get it, let me explain, they basically used only what they could to make AMD look bad, completely manipulating and inverting a article that basically, in it's original form is 10x more positive then negative.

[perkam]

Wait, double zero, which article are your quotes from.

Perkam

[PhilDoc]

Here you go Perkam. It seems that the Techreport left out a few things. They just reported the negative aspects of the article

http://www.crn.com/white-box/202402138?pgno=1

[perkam]

Titled Changed

Ty for the proof PhilDoc.

Perkam

[Face]

There are 2 conflicting reports it seems. the first report says AMD is only delivering to Tier 1's partners, while the second report says exactly the opposite.

And now it looks like AMD has fallen into the same pattern, taking care of their Tier 1's and some favored partners, and turning their back on the channel," he said.

Did AMD Barcelona and Intel Tigerton really ‘launch’?

http://blogs.zdnet.com/Ou/?p=816

Experience with HP
HP was probably the easiest of all to get answers from. I went to HP.com and clicked on the live chat button and within a minute I was chatting with someone. I asked about servers and waited another few minutes to get redirected to someone who worked with the server products. The rep didn’t have immediate information on servers based on AMD’s Barcelona or Intel’s 7300 series processors so he had to do a bit of checking and asking around. After a couple of minutes, the HP rep tells me that servers based on Intel 7300 series processors were available for order now, but they wouldn’t ship until November. As for servers based on AMD “Barcelona”, nothing was known about the availability and there was no ETA.

Experience with Dell
I went to Dell’s website and had a relatively harder time finding a way of contacting Dell by chat or by phone. I finally found a phone number to call but when I called, I got someone on the phone who didn’t really seem to be the right person to be talking to. I kept asking about servers and he kept asking me “is that like a DSL router or something”. I said no, servers, you know, those things in data centers? Those things that IT managers buy? Can you transfer me to enterprise pre-sales? Finally after a minute or two the man transfers me but I got a recording asking me if I wanted printer ink cartridges. By this point I started wondering if this type of customer service has something to do with some of Dell’s problems.

I finally get a lady on the phone but she didn’t seem much better than the first guy but she finally transferred me to the right person. Unfortunately, this gentleman had a ton of questions to ask me like name, business, how many desktops I was expecting to buy next year and etc etc. I was getting annoyed and just wanted to ask about servers so finally after about 20 minutes on the phone, I was told that someone will call me in 24 to 48 hours. I got called the next day last Friday but it was my day off and it was a bad time to talk so I asked them to call back on Monday. I got called back Monday and I asked about AMD “Barcelona” Opteron quad-core based servers and Intel “Tigerton” 7300 series based processors. Dell’s rep told me that the Opteron quad-core systems were delayed and that more information would be available in November. The servers based on Intel 7300 series processors could be ordered now though an exact ship date couldn’t be given.

Experience with IBM
IBM’s website had an easy to find button that took you to a page where you could fill in your phone number for someone to call you back. No one was available that day since I spent too much time with Dell and it was already 4:30 PM Pacific time so I scheduled IBM to call me the next day at 12 noon Pacific but that call never came. I hadn’t heard back from IBM since.

Checking in with Sun
I also emailed Sun’s media spokesperson asking them about their AMD Barcelona servers and Intel Tigerton servers (I did not pose as a regular customer. I went through Sun’s press relations channels). Sun officially launched their 2U “Tigerton” 7300 series servers two weeks ago. Sun’s spokesperson explained that the Intel Tigerton 7300 series based 2U server would be available later this month. As for the 2U Barcelona servers Sun previewed at the AMD launch event, I was told those servers had not been officially launched yet and that no ETA could


Checking with Verari and Appro
I checked with two of the smaller server vendors Verari and Appro to see what they had to say and both gave me some carefully crafted answers. Appro’s Maria McLaughlin explained to me that they do sell Barcelona. McLaughlin wouldn’t say the Barcelona chips were in short supply but did say they weren’t abundant though she maintained that Appro had enough allocated to meet the needs of their customers. Edward Holden of Verari (primarily an AMD-based server vendor) also stated that they sell Barcelona servers. When pressed for an official answer on Barcelona availability, Holden stated that “Verari is seeing strong demand for Barcelona-based systems but we’re waiting for supplies to catch up with demand”. Holden also noted that there were no problems getting the motherboards and memory which is easily understandable since Barcelona quad-core doesn’t require a change in the platform from AMD’s dual-core Opteron line of products.

So this report says that the smaller vendors has Barcelona's available, while the bigger one's doesn't, and the original report says pretty much the opposite.(If I interept "taking care of their Tier 1's and some favored partners, and turning their back on the channel," he said" correctly, that is.)

It's not bright for AMD in any case, but hopefully they will regather soon.

Here you go Perkam. It seems that the Techreport left out a few things. They just reported the negative aspects of the article

http://www.crn.com/white-box/202402138?pgno=1

I strongly agree. It's always better to give out the original source and have a look at the whole picture, rather than just to give out [any] website interpenetration.

[perkam]

Very good point face.

Confusion ensues :p

Pekram

[BrowncoatGR]

Its George Ou, sharikou's blue eyed brother. 'Nuff said.

[red]

I don't see any similarity between Sharikou and George Ou.

[BrowncoatGR]

Ok maybe its a bit of an exaggeration, but his reporting is so one sided and contains so much fud that he is a totally unreliable source where AMD is concerned. What's worse this guy is actually posing as an analyst

[Zytek_Fan]

Ok maybe its a bit of an exaggeration, but his reporting is so one sided and contains so much fud that he is a totally unreliable source where AMD is concerned. What's worse this guy is actually posing as an analyst

It is quite the over exaggeration isn't it?

AMD lacks the manufacturing capability that Intel has, so of course they might delay a bit, to build up a nice stock

[Dainas]

Silence from a company is bad news.
AMD are in trouble atm.
Its hard to draw any other conclusion unless they got an ace up their sleeves.
For a small company amd is doing well.

Any company that would bother drumming up something as eventless as the X2 black edition, would not be able to keep their mouth shut if they had anything in the works that would unquestionably put them back on top.

AMD's and those around it, silent behavior is more like like men lined up before the firing squad consigned to their fate, than someone with something up their sleeve. Can not even get a wink out of them these days.

[Movieman]

Seems that people forget that the 'big dog eats at the table first" and everyone else eats after he's done..
Allways been that way and always will be that way..
Companies take care of the biggest customers first..

[Zytek_Fan]

There were some reports of serious talk at IDF Taipei of IBM snatching up AMD soon...
Is it more than just a rumour now?

[msimax]

newegg has had quad amds since late sept

[Zytek_Fan]

newegg has had quad amds since late sept

Just 2 models, now 4.

[Hornet331]

There were some reports of serious talk at IDF Taipei of IBM snatching up AMD soon...
Is it more than just a rumour now?

what they wana produce, powerpc chips?

certainly not x86, amds licence gets terminated if its bought.

And im sure intel will put a hefty pricetag on a new licence, so everyone is gona think twice befor jumping into the x86 market when amd is gone.

For myself, i think this is pure fud...

amd wont die that easy and is not going to be bought/sold... but we'll see.

[KTE]

Actually my boss had been told the same thing before these guys reported directly from large server vendors and smaller local custom builders. The 8347 servers were available in smaller supplies by late October by pre-order, but the rest of the Barcelona chips are either sold out everywhere individually or in server builds, or the vendors do not have any more availability of these chips left, neither for immediate order, as they have not been delivered any more chips for their builds, since all the large eaters have ordered and taken mass numbers of the first product offerings from both AMD and secondary vendors. Its true - very high demand and short supply now.

I "think" this is the reason AMD delayed all the desktop releases because they did not have the production capacity which is in demand and did not expect Barcelona to be this well with demand before December, so had initially put those chips on the roadmap but now pulled them far behind to fulfill Opteron orders. And now that they heard about very high demand for +2.0GHz parts, they need all the facilities rolling for Opteron production to gear up for Dec-Jan, because this is where the money lies.