AMD Shipped Over a Million A-Series Llano Accelerated Processing Unit

From X-bit Labs: Advanced Micro Devices said on Thursday that it shipped over a million of its A-series accelerated processing units code-named Llano in the second quarter of FY2011. Even though the amount of chips that the company has shipped up to now is far from impressive, the chip designer hopes that the things will improve shortly.

"We shipped more than one million A-series APUs in the second quarter. Based on strong demand signals and SKU assortment for the second half of the year, we expect Llano ramp to outpace the Brazos ramp," said Thomas Seifert, interim chief executive officer at AMD during the latest conference call with financial analysts.

AMD initially concentrated to fulfill the orders on A-series chips by the notebook makers in Q2 2011, which is why despite of the relatively low number of A-series APUs sold so far, the company shipped the record number of mobile microprocessors (including C-series Brazos offerings and other solutions).

Given the fact that A-series Llano chips are aimed at different kinds of desktops and notebooks, it is hardly surprising that AMD expects them to ramp faster than Ontario/Zacate APUs, which were clearly targeted at netbooks.

For example, some people with knowledge of AMD's plans (who declined to be identified because the intentions are not made public), the share of CPUs in AM3 form-factor (Athlon, Phenom, Sempron) among the company's desktop production/shipments in Q3 2011 will be around 40% to 45%. However, the share of AM3 chips is projected to drop to roughly 15% in Q4 2011, whereas the share of FM1 (Llano) will likely increase to 45% - 50%, while the shares of AM3+ (FX-series) and FT1 (E-series) chips will be around 20% each. In the first quarter of next year Llano (FT1) will account for 60% of AMD's production, while the shares of FX-series and E-series will remain similar to the fourth quarter of this year.

Relatively slow ramp of Llano might be conditioned by lower-than-expected yield of chips produced using 32nm silicon-on-insulator process technology at Globalfoundries.

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