Sure, how about because they're rumours.
And, it makes zero sense to hamstring the future of the company to satisfy a few demanding enthusiasts. Curiously, the most vocal of those seem to be new users popping up on various forums around the net having fits and that they're going to head down to the store and buy a sandy bridge CPU. Well so what, go! Go fast! If you need the fastest gaming chip money can buy, why not do just that. It's not going to make AMD show their hand I can guarantee you that.
Anyway, as their tagline is "the future is Fusion", being a shareholder i'd be livid if they chose to sacrifice the future of the company and most lucrative markets to appease the demands of some self entitled enthusiasts, and a bunch of strategically placed FUD.
It's not that hard to understand.
-Brazos blew away AMD's expectations on demand and outrstipped supply.
-AMD has said about a billion times that the Fusion ecosystem is where the company is headed.
-Need to prioritize production.
-With the success of Brazos, only a fool wouldn't anticipate huge demand for Llano.
-They expect a 10% Brazos, 20% Bulldozer, 70% Llano product mix.
-Llano launches in 2 weeks.
-They currently have a respectable presence in desktop.
-The highest margin products are in server.
-Server Bulldozer schedule remains Q3.
-Priority to grow mobile and server market share.
-Zambezi is based on the same Orochi die as in Valencia.
-Llano much more appealing to OEM's.
-Focus on OpenCL.
-Common sense.
In my opinion, AMD desperately needs to make friends in the OEM arena. They have their foot in the door with Bobcat, but need to keep the pressure on. I think this is why they decided to hold off on Bulldozer until OEM demand for llano is met. I believe they were stuck with 2 options.
1) Split capacity at GF between llano and bulldozer and disappoint both OEM's and enthusiasts with low supply.
or
2) Satisfy OEM demand, keep them happy, and postpone Bulldozer until they have enough supply for the masses. I believe this option is more sound and could also give them some time to respin allowing for a better performing Bulldozer.
True, Llano isn't really an enthusiast gamer product. However Llano + 2 GPUs seems like it could be a solid OpenCL box. Not to mention I'll be less likely to flashback to the days when people arrived at Lan parties thinking their OEM i815 box would play games because "Intel chips are the bestest".
In my opinion, AMD desperately needs to make friends in the OEM arena. They have their foot in the door with Bobcat, but need to keep the pressure on. I think this is why they decided to hold off on Bulldozer until OEM demand for llano is met. I believe they were stuck with 2 options.
1) Split capacity at GF between llano and bulldozer and disappoint both OEM's and enthusiasts with low supply.
or
2) Satisfy OEM demand, keep them happy, and postpone Bulldozer until they have enough supply for the masses. I believe this option is more sound and could also give them some time to respin allowing for a better performing Bulldozer.
What OCguy said . A week ago BD was going smash BABY sb into piecies . 1 week later LLANO is the APU that will save the day . Its really hard to keep up with the AMDers. This is as bad if not worse than the BS by AMDers before conroe was released . I would also like to know how the server chip can possiably still be on time. First these guys are saying LLano is getting all Fab time . ON a RAMP up . Than whats going threw the fabs now. It should be BD cores if server is ontime . Nothing adds up to logic
I've collaborated with the author a couple of times and he's one of the serious writers out there. Any risk in this bit of information is left to what AMD PR people say to the press and what happens behind the curtain. So the AMD guy stated that this is a strategic decision. But if this is a stepping issue with BD, it might simply fit their current needs of pushing Llano. It's somewhat similar to when Llano was seen on the roadmaps more around 4Q10/1Q11 but Ontario has been pulled in due to "customer demand".This article seems to be a reasonable clarification, but I'm unsure if it is reputable or not.
http://www.planet3dnow.de/cgi-bin/newspub/viewnews.cgi?id=1306941618
Firstly, I have never and will never post that bulldozer will smash anything, until its available for testing and proves otherwise. Secondly, I never said llano will save the day. Furthermore, calling someone with an opinion about AMD an AMDer is offensive to say the least. I am brand agnostic, I have owned both and I buy whatever is best based on price/performance. I also never stated that bulldozer wasnt delayed due to bad yeilds or low performance. I merely suggested that llano demands were higher than expected and I still believe that to be the case.
I dont pretend to be an expert in the field of manufacturing, but from the computex presentation the slide said PIBs delayed till late summer 2011. I saw no mention of OEM chips.
Dirk Meyer
Customer systems based on Ontario are planned to be available early next year. Llano our Fusion APU offering aimed at the higher end of the client market is also generating positive customer response. However, in reaction to Ontarios market opportunities and a slower than anticipated progress of 32 nm yield curve, we are switching the timing of the Ontario and Llano production ramps.
Llano production shipments are still expected to occur in the first half of next year. In the second quarter this year we also taped out the first 32 nm product based on our new high performance Bulldozer CPU core. We plan to begin sampling our Bulldozer based server and desktop processors in the second half of this year and remain on track for 2011 launches. These new processors will deliver significant performance improvements to the AMD platform.
Advanced Micro Devices Inc. (AMD) Q2 2010 Earnings Conference Call July 15, 2010 5:00 pm ET
AMD always wanted Llano to be produced first and BD after and it seams GloFos 32nm process havent matured yet and perhaps they still have lower yields than what they were expecting.
Im pretty sure OEMs Llano APUs demand would have been significant much more than BD and so AMD concentrated on Llano first and BD later.
They have taped out BD for a year now so they had plenty of time to fix any performance related problems but I would bet that BD is much harder to produce than Llano not only because of the higher transistor count and if 32nm still have lower yields they would of make sure that Llano would be ready in Q2 first and BD later.
One more thing to consider, not even Intel release two new micro architecture design Chips at the same time in a new manufacturing process and they have 4-5 fabs at the time, not one like AMD.
Been an AMD'r since the 386DX40 BUT the Bulldozer debacle makes Intel's SandyBeach chipset problems look teeny in comparison. When I build next Big Blue gets a serious look. Tired of waiting. (sigh)
I always find this argument amusing. AMD's every bit as guilty as Intel of platform updates and incompatibility, they've just been minimizing mechanical incompatibility of late. Here's a nice comparison of sockets targeted towards consumers/enthusiasts since the two companies diverged at socket 7.
Code:Intel - AMD Socket 8 - - 1995 Slot 1 - - 1997 - Super Socket 7 - 1998 Socket 370 - Slot A - 1999 Socket 423 - Socket A - 2000 Socket 478 - - 2000 - Socket 754 - 2003 - Socket 940 - 2003 LGA 775 - Socket 939 - 2004 - Socket AM2 - 2006 - Socket F - 2006 - Socket AM2+ - 2007 LGA 1366 - - 2008 LGA 1156 - Socket AM3 - 2009 LGA 1155 - ? - 2011
That list has a few flaws, but I do agree with you that AMD changed their sockets way too often during the K8/A64 era.
First, Socket F and Socket 940 should not be included in this list as they are server sockets. (Though you could argue that they should be included as they both had FX series enthusiast processors.)
Second, I believe that Socket AM2 and Socket AM2+ shouldn't be exclusively separate sockets as AFAIK the vast majority of Socket AM2 motherboards support Socket AM2+ processors.
But that is all history and today's problem is that Intel is using separate sockets for enthusiast and mainstream CPUs and they are changing the sockets with every generation of CPUs. Take Socket 775 for an example of how it ought to be; Intel used the same socket (with different chipsets, of course) from P4 to P-D to C2D to C2Q, and it had everything from the extreme edition CPUs to the lowly Celerons. Why can't Intel do this today? I'm sure that they can, but they won't because AMD is in the $3!773r and they want to take advantage of this.
But that is all history and today's problem is that Intel is using separate sockets for enthusiast and mainstream CPUs and they are changing the sockets with every generation of CPUs. Take Socket 775 for an example of how it ought to be; Intel used the same socket (with different chipsets, of course) from P4 to P-D to C2D to C2Q, and it had everything from the extreme edition CPUs to the lowly Celerons. Why can't Intel do this today? I'm sure that they can, but they won't because AMD is in the $3!773r and they want to take advantage of this.