AMD Promises Imminent Supply Relief

In an effort to quell unrest among system builders, Advanced Micro Devices said Nov. 9 it expects all the issues related to availability of its processors to be resolved within a month.

Channel partners should start seeing some improvements this month and a complete resolution in December, said Steve DiFranco, worldwide vice president of consumer channel sales at the Sunnyvale, Calif.-based chip maker.

DiFranco attributed the processor restraints that have caused consternation among partners and customers to a combination of factors. Those include but are not limited to misjudging the amount of processors demanded by consumer PC vendors.

Selling dual-core machines running Windows XP resulted in AMD not having enough processors to meet demand from system builders selling both desktop and notebook systems worldwide, he said.

In addition, AMD’s traditionally delicate balance between supply and demand was adversely affected by Microsoft’s decision to push back the release of Windows Vista by three months, DiFranco said.

This created a set of market conditions in which consumer PC manufacturers aggressively pushed low-cost AMD-based PC systems running Windows XP to make up for the shortfall in anticipated demand for higher-end systems running Vista.

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Other factors that contributed to the short-tem shortage included the fact that dual-core processors result in fewer processors being manufactured and a general increase in worldwide demand among white box manufacturer and resellers, he said.

“We apologize for not doing as well as we would have liked,” said DiFranco. “But we’re doing a better job of balancing the OEM versus channel mix in time for the critical end of the fourth-quarter season.”