AMD "stops" shipping Barcelona

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pxc

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According to http://www.techreport.com/discussions.x/13721 and somewhat confirmed by AMD:
An industry source at a tier-two reseller told The Tech Report that the TLB erratum has led to a "stop ship" order on all Barcelona Opterons. When asked for comment, spokesman Phil Hughes said AMD is shipping Barcelona Opterons now, but only for "specific customer deals."
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B3 stepping isn't supposed to be available in quantity until the end of Q1.
 
Yup...I can concur...IT SUCKS BIG TIME.

I will say that companies have had POs on the books for these chips since early this year, and to have them snatched out of their hands yet again after they are supposedly shipping is causing great pain throughout the channel. This is definitely NOT a green Christmas.
 
I know there will be a lot of people wanting to gloat, which is pointless. But yes, the WORST possible scenario has happened for AMD... no doubt.
 
Why isn't there a public recall ? Imagine partner opinion on AMD's reputation.

If it were Intel , we'd have the Intel HQ assaulted by the US Marines.Yet , AMD is given a free pass.
 
vista_blista said:
I know there will be a lot of people wanting to gloat, which is pointless. But yes, the WORST possible scenario has happened for AMD... no doubt.
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Actually, this is worse than the worst possible scenario I had previously envisioned. I never thought that things could have turned so bad that a stop shipment would have occurred. I don't know what more to say at this point.
 
This is not going to put AMD out of business by a long shot, but that said, this is probably the worst possible thing that can happen to a product in their market. Intel can update it's microcode on it's chips after they are shipped. AMD can't.
 
What is bad for AMD is bad for everybody. Since this happened, Intel has no reason to hold competitive prices on their new processors (except against their own current line).

The fact we all can buy a Quad core processor for under $300 is because of AMDs field dominance up to this point. Without a competitor, that same processor would have easily been another $100 more. It's not about who is faster; it's about price competition.
 
Boltaction said:
What is bad for AMD is bad for everybody. Since this happened, Intel has no reason to hold competitive prices on their new processors (except against their own current line).

The fact we all can buy a Quad core processor for under $300 is because of AMDs field dominance up to this point. Without a competitor, that same processor would have easily been another $100 more. It's not about who is faster; it's about price competition.
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You're preaching to the choir in this thread, for now. I'm sure there will be a few along shortly to vehemently disagree with you. :)
 
vista_blista said:
You're preaching to the choir in this thread, for now. I'm sure there will be a few along shortly to vehemently disagree with you. :)
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Time to open the flood gates and put on the ol' flame suit.

Things go from bad to worse for DAAMiT. Not good at all.
 
hardwarephreak said:
This is not going to put AMD out of business by a long shot...
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Maybe not, but with every setback AMD is becoming less relevant in the industry. If the company falls back to being as relevant as it was in the earlier years of the 90s, it's essentially going to fall off the map for enthusiasts. AMD's saving grace may be its video division, which seems too be gaining some momentum with every new product release.
 
hardwarephreak said:
This is not going to put AMD out of business by a long shot, but that said, this is probably the worst possible thing that can happen to a product in their market. Intel can update it's microcode on it's chips after they are shipped. AMD can't.
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the article has been updated to state that the bios workaround that yields a 10-20% performance hit includes the updated microcode:mad:
 
Well the BIOS microcode update has been talked about ever since the problem was first reported with the Phenoms, so there is no shocker there. It's just a huge problem that they don't have the ability to update the microcode on the CPU after it has been fabbed.

The thing is, this problem is very very limited in scope in terms of who it effects. But it is a big enough problem within that scope to start this whole shit storm.

I just want to find out what they are now going to talk about at their Power Tour thing. I mean, you want to tout stuff that is actually shipping and isn't getting kicked around in the tech press for having errata issues.
 
Boltaction said:
What is bad for AMD is bad for everybody. Since this happened, Intel has no reason to hold competitive prices on their new processors (except against their own current line).

The fact we all can buy a Quad core processor for under $300 is because of AMDs field dominance up to this point. Without a competitor, that same processor would have easily been another $100 more. It's not about who is faster; it's about price competition.
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True,this is bad no matter how you look at it. :(


hardwarephreak said:
Yup...I can concur...IT SUCKS BIG TIME.

I will say that companies have had POs on the books for these chips since early this year, and to have them snatched out of their hands yet again after they are supposedly shipping is causing great pain throughout the channel. This is definitely NOT a green Christmas.
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There is alot more going on behind the scenes with the channel partners,then has been reported as yet (most of it bad).


savantu said:
Why isn't there a public recall ? Imagine partner opinion on AMD's reputation.

If it were Intel , we'd have the Intel HQ assaulted by the US Marines.Yet , AMD is given a free pass.
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As to AMD's rep in the channel,its been damaged to be sure,as I have alluded to over the last few months.Long time friends of mine,who work for Ingram Micro,etc... tell me they have been having HUGE problems with even the most basic allocation.

I dont know about that,but yes Intel would be getting hammered in the press,not so much on Wallstreet.


vista_blista said:
Time to switch to a chip without errata.
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Thats months or more (likely more) away at the rate they are going.AMD is having big problems at all levels,especially with errata and yields on all forms of K10h.As Anand said a few months ago,internally AMD's fab division is in panic mode.I would think that now that panic has escalted into something more.I am surprised this is not on the front page !
 
I'm going to guess that AMD will prefer not to (honestly) talk about the extent of the bug, ever.

It does kind of make sense now. None of the large OEMs have even announced a ship date for Barcelona servers. That was suspicious because those are the companies that move 80% of Opteron chip sales.
 
so my question now is at what point can we actually trust buying a Phenom/Barcelona?...
 
savantu said:
If it were Intel , we'd have the Intel HQ assaulted by the US Marines.Yet , AMD is given a free pass.
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My bosses only go with Intel. So much for the lowest bidder.




Seriously through, i love AMD, but come on. Really? Really? Dont let it end this way.
 
hardwarephreak said:
Everyone is just waiting the next 24 to 48 hours to see what the green team is going to do.
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The company seems to be imploding at nearly all levels now,minus the 'new' graphics devision,which actually has thier shit together,and is at least trying to ship competant product to the channel in a timely fashion.


The stock price,is now flirting with the 9 dollar level !
 
Uh, oh. Even more bad news: http://www.techreport.com/discussions.x/13724

We don't yet have a BIOS with the workaround to test, but we've already discovered that our Phenom review overstates the performance of the 2.3GHz Phenom. We tested at a 2.3GHz core clock with a 2.0GHz north bridge clock, because AMD told us those speeds were representative of the Phenom 9600. Our production samples of the Phenom 9500 and 9600, however, have north bridge clocks of 1.8GHz. Because the L3 cache runs at the speed of the north bridge, this clock plays a noteworthy role in overall Phenom performance. We've already confirmed lower scores in some benchmarks.

Given everything we've learned in the past few days, our review clearly overstates Phenom 9600 performance, as do (more likely than not) other reviews of the product. We can't know entirely by how much, though, until we can test a Phenom system with the TLB erratum workaround applied.
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to anyone that might try to make the "well you never buy version 1.0 of anything anyway!" point, I have to ask: didn't version "1.0" (that is, the first systems with C2Ds) have any real early adopter problems? As far as I can tell, the early adopter C2D people are the luckiest CPU owners in a long time.... they have something that stayed on top for a long time and will probably last many, many years....

keep in mind its been 1.5 years exactly and the initial C2Ds still really cant be beat unless you count the quads. thats longevity! The people that held out for AMD's response really look like a bunch of suckers now.... the guidance that AMD is giving now suggests that patched up K10s wont ship in quantity until the END of Q1 2008 (so we're talking next April 1st?). I dont think anyone's said it yet, but this is *effectively* a PAPER LAUNCH. Sure there was some product shipped, but thats stopped now and now we have to wait 3 1/2 months for the real deal..... wtf AMD.......

of course I guess nobody will seriously try to make the point i mentioned :p

This sucks for *ME* especially believe it or not. I'll come off looking like an idiot, but I'll say it anyway: the Phenom logo kicks ass! I want to buy one *just* because of that logo dammit! Alas though.... I jus can't if Intel remains to far ahead :( Come on AMD.... make Phenom even remotely competitive, or sell the logo to Intel.... I want my next processor box to have that logo on it!
 
Boltaction said:
What is bad for AMD is bad for everybody. Since this happened, Intel has no reason to hold competitive prices on their new processors (except against their own current line).

The fact we all can buy a Quad core processor for under $300 is because of AMDs field dominance up to this point. Without a competitor, that same processor would have easily been another $100 more. It's not about who is faster; it's about price competition.
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That's true but at this point, it doesn't matter what everyone thinks, whether everyone here is hoping that AMD will bounce back or fall into history, it will not change a thing at all. It's 100% up to AMD and they once again, shot themself in the foot.

We as consumer, we get the best chip for our money out there. We cannot continue buying AMD CPU just to support them. If they fall, then they fall, even if its bad for us as consumers, we can't do anything about it.

We can only hope, but our hope and wishes will not change anything.

AMD will survive this, but whether or not they can undo all this damage to get themself back to the top is anyone's guess right now.
 
How AMD even competed toe-to-toe with Intel for so long is amazing to me. AMD literally has 1/7th Intel's manufacturing capacity, and 1/24th their market cap, and 1/5th the manpower 16,719 employees vs. 94,000 employees. That's is why Intel getting so soundly beaten by K8 was such an embarrassment to them. However, you cannot expect a company with less manpower to continue to outperform the top dog, and industry expectations. That's just unrealistic.

In fact, the best thing currently about AMD is them trying to forge a separate identity, and create more realistic demands and expectations.
 
vista_blista said:
How AMD even competed toe-to-toe with Intel for so long is amazing to me.
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They never really did, unless you had amnesia before 2003. :p In the big scheme of things, AMD had one good round and the fight is not going to be decided by a split decision.

AMD's biggest accomplishment that even comes close to parity is in 4S servers where AMD had 50% of the market, and that's only vs Intel x86. Months ago even Itanium had crossed past Opteron server sales in dollars, just to give you a little perspective from what the ignorant call a "failure." And just by looking at the other AMD "strong hold," HPC servers, shows that Intel has already crushed AMD on the top 500 server list.
 
I was referring to K8 with the toe-to-toe comment. That was a good 2+ years that AMD was on top. But yeah, other times AMD was right there in the price/performance range.
 
pxc said:
They never really did, unless you had amnesia before 2003. :p In the big scheme of things, AMD had one good round and the fight is not going to be decided by a split decision.
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What? Who has amnesia?

It wasn't K8 that garnered AMD notice in the industry, it was K7. Athlon was competitive with Intel products since the commencement of the decade, if not earlier. K7 wasn't always on top, but attained performance levels comparable to the fastest Intel processors.

"Athlon Classic launched on June 23, 1999. It showed superior performance compared to the reigning champion, Pentium III, in every benchmark."

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Athlon
 
Hornet said:
That's true but at this point, it doesn't matter what everyone thinks, whether everyone here is hoping that AMD will bounce back or fall into history, it will not change a thing at all. It's 100% up to AMD and they once again, shot themself in the foot.
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In the foot ? It would seem to me that some in the engineering dept,were aiming for the head with this latest stuff ! My god I do hope people are fired for this crap.

Poeples confidence in this corporation is in freefall,as is the stock.I ordered my Asus AM2+ mobo on Monday morning to later in the day find out about this.Sounds to me as though AMD has a lot more people on vacation then just 'errata man'
 
APOLLO said:
What? Who has amnesia?

It wasn't K8 that garnered AMD notice in the industry, it was K7.
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Well, it's easy to reframe the subject, as you just demonstrated. Read back up a couple of posts, this wasn't about "notice." :p

How AMD even competed toe-to-toe with Intel for so long is amazing to me
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K7 competed briefly, at the time between the P3 1GHz fiasco and Northwood, which was not an amazingly long time. K7-based laptops and servers were not big sellers and the K7 was soon relegated to bargain basement status.

K8 was where AMD grabbed profitable market share and had competitive/dominate products across their entire line, especially after dual core products were released. That's a pretty good definition of "toe-to-toe."
 
pxc said:
Well, it's easy to reframe the subject, as you just demonstrated. Read back up a couple of posts, this wasn't about "notice." :p
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So, what was it about? Performance? Sales? Market share? IP?
 
http://finance.yahoo.com/q?s=amd

Ouch :(

I really hope that AMD can pull something off. I'm a huge fan of Intel right now, but that's purely because they got their shit together. If AMD can finally release the Phenoms and have them compete with the C2D/Quads, I'll be looking to them for a new build.
 
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