AMD waves goodbye to Duron

AMD is to stop making budget Duron processors at some point towards the end of the year, when it completes the conversion of Fab 25 in Austin, Tx from CPU production to flash memory-only. That's what Jerry Sanders told analysts and press in a conference call yesterday. This was far too late in the day for us to listen, so we'll refer you to Jack Robertson's account instead. There's good stuff on Hammer, manufacturing, and flash memory, and Sanders' testimony in support of Microsoft.

Here's some bullet points:

• AMD will concentrate all CPU production - Athlons and upcoming Hammers - at Dresden and in a UMC foundry in Taiwan.
• Outsourcing Athlon 0.13micron production to UMC will ensure a fast ramp-up for AMD's next gen Hammer family in Dresden.
• There will be one more Duron - a 0.13micron Appaloosa.
• AMD's 8m processors shipped in the March quarter is equivalent to 19...5 per cent market share by units. This is good performance, AMD says, especially, as it's locked out of Dell, the only growing PC maker. If Dell carries on growing market share, then AMD will find it very difficult to grow its CPU market share. ®