News AMD Shifting Away from "Clawhammer" :: ExtremeTech

ExtremeTech has the news that AMD seems to be moving away from the
desktop-centric "Clawhammer" project towards the server-destined
Opteron (formerly Sledgehammer) project. Is this a boon to the
enterprise market, a more solid challenge to the Itanium2 or bad news
for desktop power users?

"In place of Clawhammer, executives said, AMD's 2003 PC desktop and
mobile offerings will largely be driven by Barton, the delayed
followon to the Athlon XP. Neither Ruiz nor Rivet said the Clawhammer
was going to be delayed, per se, but they gave a strong indication
that if the Clawhammer is introduced, it may be only in the limited
quantities that have of late accompanied AMD product launches."

http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,3973,637644,00.asp

 

Hrm... I hope that is misinformation. If AMD does that, I think they'll screw themselves. I read that ClawHammer is still supposed to be out in 1Q '03, as is Barton. My understanding was that Barton's life cycle isn't that long.

Please AMD, don't make me buy an Intel chip again. I haven't had one since the original Pentium.

 

I work at AMD and have heard no such news.
I work on Server K8's. But the work on Clawhammers on OEM boards, which are being working on right next to me, hasn't slowed down.

Now I do not know any dates, nor timelines.
But I do know that Barton will be the money maker for a short while. I would not be supprised to see the sledgehammer before the clawhammer, but not very far apart.

I either case 64bit is needed more for servers than for PC's anyways.

 

Interesting. I've read reports that Claw would be out early in the 1H '03, whereas Sledge wasn't expected until late 1H '03.

Someone once said 640k was plenty of RAM too . I want my 64bits.

 

The sooner we have 64-bit, the sooner we'll have all kinds of software to take advantage of it, the sooner we'll want 128-bit.
The way it looks to me, the sooner they get the clawhammer out, the longer they'll own the market.