14 DAY TRIAL // If anyone was looking forward to AMD kicking things into high gear on the high-end CPU market, they will have to live with the disappointment of learning that nothing of the sort is going to happen.
That is not to say that the Sunnyvale, California-based company will completely stop making high-end CPUs (central processing units).
Nevertheless, the company revealed, during the Financial Analyst Day, that it would be slowing down the rate at which new such chips turned up.
Currently, the FX-series next-generation Vishera CPUs, based on Piledriver x86 cores, are scheduled for official availability in November-December this year, or a bit sooner, but still in the second half of 2012.
They will be faster than current FX units, thanks to a higher number of instructions per clock, and may or may not hold their own against Intel's Ivy Bridge.
The company did not cancel these plans, but it did make it rather clear that successors would not be launched in 2013.
That means that Advanced Micro Devices won't even bother trying to match Intel's Ivy Bridge-E and Hasswell chips. Knowing what kind of monster the 10-core Ivy Bridge-EP is, we aren't surprised at all.
The same tactic goes for the server market: AMD will not release any high-end server CPUs in 2013, and the 10-core and 20-core Opterons have already been cancelled.
At this point, it is quite obvious that most of the bets are being placed on the graphics and APU businesses.
The corporation will no doubt benefit the most if it can hold to its plans to make “fully” fused APUs by 2014.
Intel is doing its best to improve its graphics as well, though, so AMD will really have to stay ahead in this area.
On a related note, AMD has stated that it sees dominance in the graphics sector as critical for its future success. Stay tuned for more on that subject.