AMD Conference Call Specifics
Here is the transcript of the call. It's lengthy, so here are some relevant excerpts:
65 nanometer
From Dirk Meyer's opening statement:
And later when asked for more detail about the 65nm rollout, Bob Rivet replied:...we are on plan to ramp 65-nanometer production in the second half of this year. We expect to do so at mature yields.
Nothing really new here. 65nm seems to be on schedule.We will start ramping the factory in the second-half of this year, and ship into the market our first parts by the end of the year.
Quad-Core
The first mention of quad-core is in Dirk Meyer's opening statement:
One of the analysts, Mark Lipacis from Prudential, picked up on this, and later asked:Leveraging the scalability of the direct-connect architecture, we also plan to demonstrate our next generation microprocessor core in a native quad-core implementation before the end of the year.
Meyer's reply:Dirk, I thought in the beginning in your comments, you talked something about a native quad-core, and I missed that. Would you be so kind as to review what you were talking about? Is that a change of the production schedule for quad-core?
The native quad-core that was discussed at the June analyst conference is K8L. So it sounds like K8L is still on schedule, with the quad-core to arrive first.High level is not really a change. It is really an amplification to what we said at the analyst conference in June. We have a new core under development. The first instantiation of which will be in a quad-core form, to be launched roughly mid '07. What I said is we will demonstrate that by the end of the year.
There was no mention of any rev. G quad-core. But maybe....
Secret Q3 and Q4 plans?
If you want something fun to speculate about, consider the following eyebrow-raising exchange, starting with a question by Krishna Shankar from JMP Securities:
Henri Richard's reply:My follow-up question is, everybody read the reviews on the competitor's new product line. Do you folks have any comment on what you have seen in terms of the trade reviews and what your upcoming AMD two socket will do in terms of the advancement in performance and power?
Richard implies that there are as-of-yet undisclosed Q3 and Q4 plans, possibly having to do with core and/or platform improvements. I wonder at what point in time he will disclose them.Of course we are looking at all of those reviews. As you know, the main feature that the AM2 socket is bringing to the market is the support of DDR2 memory. We have never presented it as a performance improvement.
We are going to continue to provide faster products to our partners. I am not going to disclose at this point in time our Q3 and Q4 plans. We are looking at what the competition is doing and they seem to be innovating at the core. We are going to continue to innovate, both at the core and at the platform level.
Some More Points (Perkam's)
- 45NM will start to come into production 18 months after release of 65nm. That would be Mid 2008.
- K8L To Be Demonstrated in 2006
- Intel's Moves Desktop Market will affect AMD's Q3 and Q4 Outlooks --> Referred to as "Challenging Environment" in second half of 2006
- Fab 30 Running at Full Capacity
- Reason for price cuts in Q4 is to sell inventory made in Q3
- Fab 36 will ramp to 65nm with 20K 300mm wafers a month till the end of 2007 and continue onwards in 2008
- Fab 30 converted to 65nm during 2007 with 2008 it starts producing 65nm chips (Building seperate building to flip the tools from 90nm to 65nm)
- Fab 30 will never go below 50% capacity and Chartered will be picking up the Slack
- Mid 2008 50,000 300mm Wafers a month
- Admits AM2 was never a "performance improvement"...just a DDR2 jump
- Dell will start to ship Opteron Server based products by End of 2006 (will pwn Sun Micro lol)
- Native Quad Core(K8L) to be demonstrated in 2006 coming Mid 2007
- All funding for conversions from operations and cash from balance sheet
- 65NM Chips coming in Late 2006 will be from Fab 36 which is only being utlilized at 50% so products coming out will be coming out at a premium
- 300MM wafer yields 30% advantage compared to 200mm wafer in terms of yields
- All heck will break loose in Q3 because BOTH (Surprising) AMD and Intel have Inventory levels up by ~20% (AMDers can stop pointing the finger at Intel now) with words like "lots of aging inventory" being used by Hector Ruiz
- AMD believes there is no fundamental change in Intel's OEM vs. distribution price structure.
- Says that most of the challenge will lie in Desktop with little instability in demand for current and upcoming mobile and server products
- Looks like a lot's riding on 65nm for AMD. Willing to take lower performance in multiple quarters to stay on track for ramp to 65nm
- End of Year shipments for 65nm On track
- Damn it, someone FINALLY asks about Socket F prices and they're high on "its too soon to tell".
Otherwise quite informative.
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Originally Posted by alayashu
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