AMD To Ship Six-Core Istanbul In May

Advanced Micro Devices plans to release its six-core Opteron server chip in May, and computers using the processor are expected to hit the market in June.

The new product had been scheduled to ship later in the year, but Dirk Meyer, president and chief executive of AMD, told financial analysts during an earnings teleconference Tuesday that the company decided to "pull in" the timetable.

AMD on Wednesday is holding a news event at its Sunnyvale, Calif., headquarters to discuss its Opteron road map.

Despite reporting on Tuesday the latest in a string of quarterly losses, AMD says it remains on track with an aggressive Opteron release schedule to counter Intel's latest quad-core Xeon processors based on the chipmaker's new Nehalem microarchitecture.

AMD reported widening losses in the first quarter, ended March 31, as revenue fell 21% to $1.8 billion. The company lost $416 million, compared with $351 million in the same period a year ago.

AMD didn't offer specific guidance for the second quarter, saying only that it expected sales to fall, due in part to the economic recession that has seen businesses pull back hard on PC purchases, AMD executives said. The current PC market is being driven mostly by consumer notebook sales.

In February, AMD stockholders approved the spin-off of the chipmaker's manufacturing operations, which is expected to reduce costs by focusing AMD's efforts on designing rather than making microprocessors.

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