Advanced Micro Devices, the world’s second largest producer of x86 microprocessors, confirmed in an interview at Consumer Electronics Show that its AMD Phenom central processing units (CPUs) with four processing engines with performance higher than that of currently available chips will be delayed and will emerge only in the second quarter.

AMD publicly stated late last year to its customers, journalists as well as financial analysts that it would be able to offer quad-core AMD Phenom 9700 and 9900 microprocessors with fixed erratum as well as at higher clock-speeds in Q1 2008, which would allow the chipmaker to target higher price-points with new products and ultimately improve its profit margins. Unfortunately, this is not going to happen, as undisclosed AMD representatives said in an interview with Ars Technica web-site that the new Phenom chips are now only scheduled for the introduction in Q2 2008.

Instead of releasing high-performance AMD Phenom microprocessors in the first quarter, AMD will offer certain energy-efficient microprocessors based on the new-generation micro-architecture with lowered power consumption. Earlier it was reported based on unofficial information that AMD will be able to offer quad-core Phenom 9100e chip (1.80GHz) as well as triple-core Phenom 8600 and 8400 – which are all based on the B2 stepping with TLB errata –commercially in March, 2008.

It remains to be seen whether the delay of mainstream AMD Phenom 9700 and 9900 microprocessors also automatically means postpones for higher-speed models, including AMD Phenom FX models. Previously the new enthusiast-class FX chips from AMD were projected to become available “in the first half of the year”, which usually means late second quarter. However, with postponement of the mainstream-class chips it seems doubtful that AMD manages to increase clock-speeds of the new version of its AMD Phenom processors shortly after the launch of the models 9700 and 9900.

The delay of the advanced AMD Phenom microprocessors to Q2 2008 will slowdown AMD’s revenue growth in the first quarter, as currently available AMD Athlon 64 X2 processors are not competitive against higher-end Intel Core 2 chips and the world’s second largest x86 processor maker will have to concentrate on selling primarily lower-end CPUs that have low profit margins.