14 DAY TRIAL // Chip manufacturer AMD have revealed their two-year product roadmap that features new CPU architectures to put an end to the company's miserable year. AMD promises to deliver their first eight-core processor oriented towards the server market as well as a new category of desktop-level CPUs to include their "accelerated processing units", the former "Fusion" processors.
Yesterday's meeting with the New York Stock Exchange analysts made it clear that the "Barcelona" quad-core server chip will not be shipped until the first quarter of next year, as the company had previously stated. There will be, however, some fixed Barcelona samples available in early January, but they will address a limited market.
Next on their roadmap, there is the "Montreal" processor, ready to see the market in 2009 as part of AMD's server platform, codenamed "Piranha". As far as details have emerged the platform would feature HyperTransport 3.0 and DDR3 memory technology. 2009 will mark another milestone for the company as it's alleged that the chipmaker will unveil their "accelerated processing units", the former "Fusion" processors - to integrate one or more CPUs with one or more GPUs for enhanced computing. The second half of 2009 will also bring the "Shrike" notebook platform, or at least that is what the company wants.
AMD also plans to launch a new project, codenamed " Bedrock", to develop standardized programming models that will support the Accelerated Processing Unit initiative. Moreover, in the video sector, AMD is secretly cooking a set of hardware development programs for building separate accelerator cards (included on the motherboard), known internally as the "Torrenza" program.
The company will start mass production for their 45-nanometer processors in the first half of the year. AMD have also made it official that they will begin working with IBM on the 32-nanometer processor node, alleged to become available until 2010.
On the finance playground the chipmaker is going to return to profits by the third quarter of next year, hopefully recovered after the last year's $5.6 billion acquisition of GPU producer ATI Technologies. Recently, the company admitted that they have pumped a little too much cash in the graphics processor manufacturer and that they will take a "material" charge for goodwill impairment.