14 DAY TRIAL // As always, conference calls with financial analysts are proving to be troves of valuable information, even more so than the financial report itself, however long and detailed.
Having learned the “bad” news as it were, that AMD will indeed be firing people in order to make up for money losses, we now get to the “good” news.
According to what the company revealed during the financial call, there are already working chip prototypes for many products expected to launch in 2013.
The “Kabini” accelerated processing unit is one of them. As a system-on-chip meant to replace Brazos 2.0 low-power platforms, it will debut in the first half of 2013.
Equipped with up to four x86 cores (Jaguar micro-architecture, not Bobcat), Kabini has a new-generation graphics adapter and integrated input/output capabilities, plus a memory controller.
Curiously, Advanced Micro Devices completely skipped mentioning the Kaveri chips (for the high-end).
Powered by the Steamroller x86 architecture, they are going to be the heart of AMD's strategy when they make it to market. It is odd that no report or leak is in sight, seeing as how the last significant one happened all the way back in June.
In this context, the “savings through layoffs” strategy that AMD has adopted can be considered one of two things: either a means to stave off serious financial troubles until Kaveri comes to save the day, or early evidence that the company is not completely confident that the next-generation products will be as successful as they should.
But this is all conjecture. Right now, Kabini's relevance is greater, since it actually got AMD to mention it by name.
“We already have working silicon for many of our new 2013 products in house, including our next-generation 28nm Kabini APU, which is the successor to our highly successful Brazos platform and our first true SoC design,” said Rory Read, chief executive officer of AMD.
“We are making good progress with the bring up of Kabini, which remains on track to launch in the first half of next year.”