A week ago AMD officially changed its plans and set the new processors to be launched one quarter later than it was originally expected (see this news-story). Different rumours started to appear around the web in regards the delay and most of analysts agreed that AMD has numerous technology problems that cause the company to postpone the release of its new microprocessors. Richard Heye, vice president of platform engineering and infrastructure at AMD, confirmed on the 20th of September that problems with launching the new CPUs are mainly technical and concern both difficulties with SOI technology implementation and UMC’s technology process tuning.

Apparently, Silicon-On-Insulator was harder to use, that AMD thought a couple of years ago. Moreover, current design does not allow the x86-64 CPUs to be clocked highly enough, hence, AMD now needs to make some additional work and redesign the processor’s core. Richard Heye said that the ClawHammer code-named products will definitely be available in the first quarter or 2003 in limited quantities and the Sunnyvale based company will start to mass-produce the newcomers. According to the statement, by the end of 2003, the ClawHammer CPUs will be cheap enough to make a PC, priced less than $1000.

What is interesting, Richard Heye told that Barton processors will be made using SOI technology and advanced 0.13 microns manufacturing process. The first processors with 2800+ and 3000+ model numbers will be available in the first quarter 2003. I believe these CPUs will be actually made on the Fab30 based in Dresden, since currently AMD challenges a lot of difficulties with launching the production lines at UMC. According to the current plans, UMC will start to make AMD’s processors during the first quarter of 2003.

To sum up, I have to say that AMD postpones everything they promised and that is both the problem of technology as well as execution. Of course, I can think out loads of reasons why AMD does its business in the way it does it, but from my point of view as observer, I simply have to say what I see. In fact, the stock always mirrors the current state of the company – this week AMD hit its 52-week’s low and the price of their shares continues to fall.