AMD To Ship 32nm In 2010

InformationWeek had the chance to have a 30-minute interview with chief executive of AMD Dirk Meyer who revealed some of AMD's long term plans.

Most notably was that AMD won't begin production on 32nm chips until mid-2010. High scale production however isn't slated to start until 4Q 2010. While not out of the ordinary, this means that they will continue to be about six months behind Intel, who plans on starting production of 32nm towards the end of 2009.

Meyer also let it be known that it doesn't plan on entering the netbook market for at least the next few years. As the prices on these devices are so low, the profit margin just isn't high enough to attract AMD yet.



AMD seems to think that their hot spot in the near future will still be in the mobile market however, just on the faster and slightly more robust notebooks. AMD plans on following up the Yukon chips with those codenamed Congo, Nile, and Ontario.

While AMD's CPUs are slightly slower from Intel's, Meyer's is hoping that the platform they can deliver combined with the ATI technologt that they acquired will provide a better graphics and video experience.

While ATI over the years has cost AMD billions of dollars in charges that has drastically reduced profits, AMD is confident the graphics technology it obtained eventually will pay off.

"The way in which consumers and businesses ought to gauge the value of the PC or notebook shouldn't be in performance benchmarks, because those benchmarks do not reflect what people do with the PC," Meyer said. "It's not just about the CPU. People can get distracted by how fast is the CPU, and then have a lousy graphics experience when they get home."