AMD tight-lipped about chip futures

Jonathan Hou at Fullon3D has posted an interview with an AMD executive suggesting that its Dresden fab won't reach full capacity until early next year. That squares with our feelings but AMD is being particularly tight-lipped about its plans of late, as it seeks to supply the demand its K6-2s and K6-IIIs are generating. In particular, this AMD exec is very coy about chipset and motherboard infrastructure. We know that towards the end of this year, there will be motherboards supporting both Alpha and K7 chips but were warned last week by Robert Stead, European marketing director at AMD, that there is less to this Alpha relationship than we thought. Neverthless, over at JC's Pages there is a little detail about SMP (symmetric multiprocessing) chipsets for the K7. JC points to a post on Silicon Investor which expands our knowledge a little. And capacity? Well, if AMD pricks IBM Micro and gets it producing K6-2s and K6-IIIs, it has a real chance. While "real men have fabs" (copyright Jerry Sanders III), real macho men have more than two and a bit. And if the Great Satan of Tape Recorders is to take on Gorgonzilla big time, it had better get going. ®