Global Foundries ready to step up production for AMD

Following yesterday's announcement from Intel that there is a problem with the chipset necessary to support the 2nd generation Core processors, codenamed Sandy Bridge, a lot of eyes have turned to AMD. KitGuru's been asking the important questions.

Yesterday, we were all struggling to remember the last time that Intel had any kind of problem, with any of its parts, that might actually slow the giant down.

Over the past 5 years, we couldn't think of any. Essentially, since the launch of Conroe and the Tick-Tock/Copy-Exactly strategies, Intel has delivered product more regularly than a midwife in an NHS hospital.

While the company's main efforts have obviously been focused on the CPU itself, a bug in the supporting chipset was missed and Intel is now working to rectify that. You can't say that it's lucky to have a problem when you transition to a new chip, but it's probably as good a time as ever. More on that angle from KitGuru a little later, once we've spoken with industry analysts.

OK, so Intel has mis-stepped on the stage. Momentarily, all eyes now move to AMD. Honestly, if they had the Bulldozer parts launching now, then it would seem like Xmas/New Year and a World Cup/Superbowl/Stanley Cup (delete as applicable in your region) winning moment for them, all rolled up into one.

But that isn't the case. What AMD has is some great 6 core products centred on the Phenom II X6. The next question must be, if AMD is able to sweep through the market and make additional sales, while Intel is working furiously to recover, then can they actually produce enough product.

KitGuru has spoken with Global Foundries and the response was unambiguous, “We're confident that we can support AMD's CPU and APU capacity requirements for 2011”.

So there you have it, straight from the horse's mouth. If AMD can capitalise on Intel's wobble, then Global Foundries can guarantee supply.

KitGuru says: All eyes move to the AMD sales teams – and we'll be watching the Q1 results like hawks to see if they did manage to take advantage of this rather unique set of circumstances.

Comment below or in the KitGuru forum.

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