PCWorld: what AMD has to get right in 2008

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Sumner Lemon writing at PCWorld ruminates on what AMD has to get right in 2008 to pull itself out of the slump its been in for much of the last half of 2007.

Over the next six months, there are several milestones that AMD must hit in order to get back on track. The first, and arguably most important, involves volume shipments of Barcelona, scheduled to happen during the first quarter. AMD desperately needs this chip to shore up flagging revenue from its commercial business and to take back ground lost recently to Intel in the server market.

Lemon also talks about Shanghai, the 45nm spin of the quadcore Opteron.

The first working samples of Shanghai are due out of AMD’s factory in Dresden, Germany, in January, according to recent remarks by Mario Rivas, executive vice president of AMD’s Computing Products Group. If these samples arrive late or suffer from unexpected technical problems, this could delay volume production of Shanghai to late 2008 or even early 2009. Conversely, working samples that arrive on schedule and meet or exceed expectations would give AMD an added boost.

The article is a good, quick read that I think is right in terms of what AMD has to fix on the execution side to put itself back on course. What Lemon doesn’t address is the softer side of AMD’s business: its public face. They need to spend a lot less time spinning their mistakes and whining in public, and more time taking responsibility for their own failings.