AMD Barcelona logo arrives before processors
 

It has something of the donut about it

AMD, hit by certain executive departures among the latest troubles, at least seems to be getting the much-awaited Barcelona ready soon.
Most web sites, including us, have already reported the 1.9 GHz and 2 GHz part shipments by the end of September, with 2.3+ GHz limited edition HPC stuff "sometime before the year end".

That better be well before the year end, as Intel could easily send in a faster Harpertown Penryn anytime. And we need AMD standing proudly, not bent on its knees, in the performance battle against The Big One.

There were plenty of AMD presentations with some NDAs flying around here in Singapore today, trying to cover info which was mostly already shown on the ANALyst Day last month - but there is always stuff that somehow comes out, and somehow no NDA covers it.

For instance, we may have no Barcelona chips in hand, but we do have a "truly beautifully conceptualised" new logo for the Barcelona generation of Opterons, to be shown on 10 Sept announcement date - presumably not by Henri Richard.

Look at the environmentally friendly, greenish yet almost erotically shaped hole in that new-generation donut on the logo - its symbolism seems truly strong: either as a black hole for the cash poured into the current situation, or a space wormhole for Hector Ruiz to rescue AMD from the evil "Darth Vader" Intel, or instead maybe reshape AMD and re-start those abandoned original AMD K9/K10 projects some years ago to be in time against Core 2.

If, of course, he succeeded in either, the 'mystery donut black hole' could also be used to swallow Intel's Harpertowns, Nehalems and Sandy Bridges including the spans and foundations whole, with all the packaging, when it comes to the performance battle - that's what the ANALyst Day slides were hinting at in the first place, weren't they?

PS The industry needs AMD to succeed with Barcelona, Phenom etc - failure is not an option, as we'd have dangerously little to write/analyse/compare in a unipolar CPU world afterwards.


The INQuirer