AMD skips IDF, 4X4 has to wait
Culver City (CA) - Several major companies are hurriedly preparing products and announcements to coincide with next week's Intel Developer's Forum (IDF), but traditional gate-crasher AMD will be missing. For the first time in several years, AMD will not be luring journalists away - and it will not preview or announce its Core 2 Quadro competitor "4x4".
AMD's presence at the Spring and Fall IDF had become a tradition in recent years, as the company leveraged the enormous amount of tech journalists for its own briefings. AMD held official briefings and announced new products during the IDF show.
Initially, AMD used a small tent just outside the convention center and gave away free shirts and CDs, but the company became bolder in later shows, eventually starting a shuttle service to off-site meeting rooms.
This year, Intel is expected to focus much of the product briefings on the upcoming mobile Santa Rosa chipset platform for the Core 2 Duo T5000/T7000 series as well as the first quad-core processors Core 2 Extreme QX6700 ("Kentsfield", desktop) and Xeon 3200 ("Clovertown", 2P server), which would be an ideal stage for AMD to steal some of Intel's thunder with its own dual-dual-core platform 4x4.
However, the company today confirmed that it will not be making such an announcement and will not be at IDF this time around.
"AMD will not have a presence at Fall IDF," said Ian McNaughton, Product Manager for AMD's Athlon 64 FX division. McNaughton told TG daily that company officials are happy with how communications are going with customers and the media at this time. McNaughton added that web-based communication is becoming more important and pointed to AMD's Virtual IT Experience which is currently available online.
Despite AMD's no show, industry sources told us that there is currently no reason to believe that AMD's 4X4 platform will be delayed. AMD announced earlier this year that 4X4, a solution that will enable enthusiast users to use two dual-core processors on one motherboard, will be available in Q4 of this year.
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Humphrey Cheung was a senior editor at Tom's Hardware, covering a range of topics on computing and consumer electronics. You can find more of his work in many major publications, including CNN and FOX, to name a few.