VIA, SiS consider K8 delay good for business

Taiwanese chipset designers VIA Technologies and Silicon Integrated Systems (SiS) expressed little disappointment regarding yet another delay by Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) in launching its K8-core Athlon 64 processors, stating that the postponement may in fact help maintain chipset prices as well as their profits.

Responding to the schedule change, VIA and SiS have both decided to add new products and increase output of their K7 chipsets to meet potential demand for the next six months. VIA is planning to introduce one new discrete chipset, while SiS is set to launch an integrated product.

Having already pushed back the launch time of its new-generation K8-core processors from the fourth quarter of 2002 to the first half of 2003, AMD on January 31 announced another postponement of its desktop and notebook-use K8 products, which will now be introduced in September. The Opteron, AMD's K8-core processor for servers and workstations, however, will be released on April 22 as scheduled.

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