Quad Sledgehammers out by June 2003 – AMD

Nailing down a release date for Hammer, AMD's upcoming x.86-compatible CPU, is harder than wrestling with jelly. In this week's Upside.com interview with Jerry Sanders (linked ad nauseum elsewhere), the AMD chairman refers to a 2003 launch for Hammer. This would represent a little bit more slippage.

However, the company has been a little bit more specific elsewhere. Speaking at CeBIT, an AMD exec called Mark de Frere told Ace's Hardware Johan De Gelas:

"It is very, very likely that we'll launch the Clawhammer in Q4 of 2002." Mark de Frere put up an even bigger grin when I asked about the SledgeHammer's timeline and commented: "It is going to blown you away." Well, Mark told us that we will see quad-processor SledgeHammer server motherboards in H1 2003, or most likely June 2003!"

According to the AMD reps, there will be tier one support for the Sledgehammer server platform in H1, 2003, but no names are mentioned. Ace's hazards a guess at Fujitsu Siemens as a supporter - and as this company is AMD's biggest customer in Europe, this seems like a reasonable guess to us.

De Gelas' scoop is contained in a six-page article on AMD and Intel at CeBIT, There's an especially good exposition of the Hammer architecture, some tidbits on Thoroughbred and Barton, and useful first run through Intel's new hyperthreading technology. You can catch the lot here. ®