Tom’s Hardware: In several online stores, the less expensive AMD Phenom is outselling comparable CPU’s offered by the competition. Would you say the Phenom is enjoying a good reception in the market?

J. Polster: Yes, Phenom is very well received. We are continuing our strategy of being a little more affordable than the competition. With the Phenom CPU, we are offering products at a very attractive price.

Tom’s Hardware: Why did AMD drop the original X4 (and X3) designators from the Phenom product name at the last minute? Large online shops still list the processor under this name.

J. Polster: You see, we never intended to start any kind of x-core war that could have been reduced to a certain naming convention. You know, like “Who has the most cores”. From the perspective of the buyers and the users, processor designations are playing less and less of a role. After all, nowadays most people don’t even know what kind of a processor belongs to a certain designation.

Tom’s Hardware: Why are the new CPUs shipping at such comparatively low clock speeds?

J. Polster: As I said before, that is directly related to the market segments we are addressing. The mainstream segment is where the bulk of the quad-core CPUs are sold. There, we are ideally positioned with the Phenom models currently in the market. Of course we will still be releasing versions of the Phenom running at higher clock speeds.

Tom’s Hardware: Tell us about what is happening in the notebook, desktop and server segments.

J. Polster: In Western Europe, the notebook market in the consumer segment is seeing the largest growth, at 70%. Desktop sales account for the remaining 30%. Naturally, the server segment shows less movement. We are well-represented in each of these three segments. With the Turion processor, we have established ourselves in the notebook segment. We’ve already discussed the Phenom CPU, and the quad-core Opteron is our powerful and efficient CPU technology for the server market.

Tom’s Hardware: Would it be feasible for AMD to focus completely on the more profitable server segment?

J. Polster: No, absolutely not. We are a company that owns and operates its own production facilities, and these plants need to operate at full capacity. This is a direct result of the high investments required for a new fab. Theoretically it would be nice if we could focus on the profitable server segment, but that strategy will never work in practice. The volumes are much too low.