AMD delays Barcelona (again), turns attention to Brisbane

Oh AMD, you just can't keep it together, can you? Advanced Micro Devices, a company known for its share of "issues," has once again delayed its much-hyped, energy efficient Barcelona CPU. Apparently, a technical irregularity has caused the company to push back the release date for widespread availability of the chip until sometime early next year. The glitch, which causes the chip to fail, is just another line of setbacks on the product's path to release (originally set for mid-2007). John Taylor, a company spokesman, says, "We're continuing to ship it but only to specific customers." The company is offering a workaround for the chips until the problems are solved, though users will see an impact on performance. In other heart-wrenching (though seemingly unrelated) AMD news, the chipmaker has decided to re-up its older K8 architecture, refocusing on "Brisbane"-based chips, and even adding a few new models to the line. Over the next two quarters, the company will release 11 new 65nm chips based on the older format, while just three new entries will be made in the "Phenom" -- or K10 -- line. Look, Hector, everyone is pulling for you (except maybe Intel) -- just get it together, man!

[Thanks, Gary J]

Read - A.M.D. Delays Energy-Efficient Chip Again
Read - AMD Resurrects K8 Architecture for 2008 Roadmap

[ukickmydog @ Dec 6th 2007 2:40PM]

not looking good...

[Kurian @ Dec 6th 2007 3:24PM]

Why do they continue to release crap?

Just frigging come out with a Core 2 killer, or declare bankruptcy and embezzle the shareholders money by selling the machinery at the side.

Were not going to buy your crap which underperforms and is overpriced.

[melvz @ Dec 6th 2007 2:45PM]

Phenom is a disappointment... guess they gotta go back and milk the K8 for several more months...

AMD goes retro...

[jtc970 @ Dec 6th 2007 2:48PM]

Some people need to get fired in management and development.
I miss the old AMD, when the actually shook things up for tomorrow instead of riding on yesterday.

[Matthew Hilario @ Dec 6th 2007 4:28PM]

more like intel bought out the smart guys and they're stuck with...the guys you refer to.

[superman @ Dec 6th 2007 3:02PM]

Gah when are they going to revamp the mobile division for that matter if they are struggling so hard just to keep up with desktop. Turion x2 doesn't even come near the performance of T7500 and on newegg turion x2 even cost more to purchase oem. So amd basically has nothing going for them price or performance. I used to love amd so much, but on my next laptop build sad to say amd won't be part of it T_T.

[BananaBoat @ Dec 6th 2007 3:15PM]

They've been circling the drain ever since the Core 2 Duo came out. Instead of thinking ahead and coming up with a product that would put them back in the lead, they wasted time and money aquiring an underperforming ATI. This has been an incredible year for Intel and Nvidia because of AMD's failures.

[Matt @ Dec 7th 2007 6:30AM]

Woo! I live in Brisbane...

[andy @ Dec 6th 2007 4:10PM]

They need to take those older architectures, shrink them down to the newest process size (or even smaller), reduce the voltage requirements (natural product of shrinkage anyway), and sell them as mobile parts and for windows home servers. There's a lot of money to be made there for low power consumption devices with mid range performance. The intels are nice, but I still want longer battery life in my laptop, and lower power consumption from my mostly idle server.

That should buy them time to get phenom working properly and yields up. Which should be enough breathing room to figure out the next process size step for phenom, then the next architecture; the the next process size; then the next.....

[jon @ Dec 7th 2007 10:36AM]

That's what they're actually going to do.

[AdamRLeggett @ Dec 6th 2007 4:10PM]

It doesn't seem to have been mentioned anywhere - are AMD planning to ship all the unlucky existing Phenom and Opteron customers new CPUs when they become available (like Intel did back with the Pentium 60) or are they always going to suffer a 10% performance drop?

[Russ @ Dec 6th 2007 4:40PM]

How do you pronounce that Brisbane? Like Brisbane, Queensland, Australia? Or Brisbane, California, USA?

[kuthippie @ Dec 6th 2007 6:14PM]

the capitol of australia, or a super small town swallowed up by san fransico...take a guess.

[Austin @ Dec 6th 2007 6:42PM]

kuthippie, Brisbane is not the capital of Australia; Canberra is. And Brisbane, CA is a whole lot closer to Sunnyvale, where AMD is headquartered, so it has my guess.

[Wwhat @ Dec 6th 2007 6:06PM]

As for the good(?) news: seems the TDP of the barcelona has gone up 21% lately.
This could mean that once they fixed the TLB bug it might OC rather well.
Perhaps there is a light in the tunnel? or is that an oncoming freight train? Could also mean the thing just uses more juice than expected :/

[eieio105 @ Dec 6th 2007 8:45PM]

i'm still pissed from the time they screwed me over with the 939 architecture. it barely lasted for more than a year, until they became obsolete.

[RedBull Runner @ Dec 6th 2007 10:56PM]

Well, reading the article, It says they are bringing back some processor for the K8 (a.k.a. 939)

[jon @ Dec 7th 2007 10:36AM]

Uhhh K8 != 939. AMD killed off the 939 horse long ago. If they would do a 65nm X2, it'd be an AM2.

[palehorse @ Dec 7th 2007 1:41PM]

Unless they have some sort of Secret Project X going on, as an "enthusiast" and gamer, I don't think I'll be going back to AMD any time soon...

More quad Penryns in Q1 of '08 FTW!