Advanced Micro Devices today said its transition to 90nm fabrication process goes as expected and the first commercial shipments of microprocessors produced using the manufacturing technology are expected to arrive in the third quarter.

“We are on-track with our 90nm transition with strong yields, great power consumption and heat dissipation characteristics and expects to deliver products for revenue in Q3 2004,” an AMD spokesman told X-bit labs on Tuesday.

According to the recently unveiled roadmap, the Sunnyvale, California-based chipmaker plans to release a number of AMD Opteron processors code-named Athens, Troy and Venus, a Mobile Athlon 64 processor known as Oakville and a desktop Athlon 64 processor code-named Winchester produced using 90nm fabrication process in the second half of the year.

In the first half of next year AMD will release the successor of its AMD Athlon 64 FX chip with core code-named San Diego along with a lineup of mobile microprocessors. In the second half of the year the company will release dual-core chips. AMD believes that the current AMD Athlon 64 FX microprocessor made using 130nm technology will be able to scale for at least one speed-bin required to compete successfully with the rival Intel Corp..

According to unofficial sources, AMD’s Athlon 64 FX-57 processor at 2.80GHz made using 90nm Silicon-on-Insulator process technology will be released in Q2 2005. A slightly slower AMD Athlon 64 FX-55 chip at 2.60GHz will be available in Q4 2004.

In the second half of next year AMD will initiate production of dual-core processors for various market segments using 90nm SOI process.