Santa Clara (CA) - AMD sent out an email last night to let TG Daily know that they are on track to previous guidance given during their Q3 earnings call. This guidance included shipping "hundreds of thousands of quad-core processors into the server and desktop market segments during Q4".

Hardware error AMD has experienced a hardware errata in their current quad-core processors. Specifically, the Translation Lookaside Buffer (TLB) in Barcelona and Phenom has at least one known major issue. AMD was able to issue a BIOS fix before the product’s release. It resolved the erratum, but our early understanding is that the fix partially disables the faulty TLB, thereby reducing performance. According to a report today in the New York Times, the chip could, under rare circumstances, "fail to function".

Big performance drop According to a benchmark of the BIOS fix at Tech Report, the performance drop is significant. It’s an overall average of 13.9%, with some benchmarks, including a Firefox benchmark exceeding a 57% decrease in performance. If synthetic benchmarks are also considered, the average performance drop increases to 19.8%. No official guidance has been given by AMD as to the impact on performance from the BIOS fix, or what that fix involves. According to Tech Report, a disabled TLB and partially disabled L3 cache is the fix, resulting in the decrease in performance. Documentation from a Linux kernel patch has also revealed an alternate software fix for the OS which has less of an impact.

Fix planned AMD has plans to fix their quad-core Opterons in hardware in the Q1’08 timeframe, so the BIOS workaround will no longer be required. Originally, AMD was reporting that only the 2.4 GHz part had the errata. However, we’re learning now that all Barcelonas have it. Until The Q1’08 timeframe, they will delay or cancel shipments of Barcelona products to all but select commercial customers, and regular end-users.

Limited distribution until fix AMD stated they are currently shipping quad-core Opterons only to "specific end-user installations where customers have had the opportunity to validate the stability and robustness of the solution where it leverages the BIOS fix or some other potential software workarounds." This, according to Phil Hughes at AMD. They also indicated they are experiencing strong Phenom demand and are shipping parts to that channel. These include system builders and OEM customers.

Strong demand AMD continues to see strong demand for both dual-core and quad-core processors. AMD’s marketshare increased 3.4% in worldwide 4P server sales from Q3 to Q4. AMD’s overall marketshare increased 0.6% to 13.9% in Q3’07, though they remain down from the 16.8% they held in Q3’06.

Common problem CPU bugs are a extremely common. No system as complex as a CPU is without them. In fact, both AMD and Intel have documented literally 100s of CPU bugs. Some of these were extremely minor and never had any fixes planned. Others, like the well known Pentium FDIV bug, and other far more serious bugs which very few people ever knew about because they only were brought about in extreme conditions, are far more dangerous and damaging to data.

The thing which makes this particular TLB and L3 errata damaging to AMD is that the fix significantly undercuts performance; by up to 20% on average, and nearly 60% on at least one benchmark. With AMD’s current clock speed limitations, decreases in performance only further amplify their lesser performing x86 offering, relative to Intel’s mature 45nm Core architecture based products.

Author’s opinion I am going to refrain from publishing the opinion piece I had written. I am only going to say this: I think everyone watching the ongoing AMD saga unfold knows what is happening to the company. ATI is looking less and less like a good investment. AMD’s native quad-core design is looking less and less like a desirable first offering, meaning Intel’s dual dual-cores in a package now seems like the better solution.

In truth, with these continuing financial losses per quarter, a product that is not living up to very many of its expectations, and is clock speed limited, now with errata whose fix significantly decreases performance while, at the same time, forcing AMD to limit distribution until the hardware fix is made, I cannot imagine Hector Ruiz being the CEO of AMD for too much longer. How many consecutive quarters can you lose so much money while failing to deliver significantly competing products?