The Hush Hush AMD Event

Recently, we told you that AMD was organizing a hush hush press event in Singapore. No one we talked to knew what it was about. So speculations ran a little wild from a Phenom event with benchmarks and other juicy details to a pre-emptive launch of the Quad-Core Opteron (Barcelona) processor.

Yes, we know AMD had already announced a Barcelona launch party at the Lucasfilm HQ on September 10, but you never know, right? After all, their representatives stressed time and time again that they would definitely launch the Barcelona in August 2007. Too bad we did not challenge them to a dare. Otherwise, we would have gotten them to eat a shoe or something.

Anyway, the event had come and gone. It ended yesterday with a 20-minute tour of the AMD factory in Singapore. The verdict? A total waste of time. Hey, don't shoot me. I'm just the messenger. That was the consensus of some of those who attended. Now, why is that?

What Was It All About?

For all the fuss, NDAs and secrecy, no one would blame you for thinking that AMD was going to announce something earth-shattering. At the very least, there could have been benchmark results for the Quad-Core Opteron processor, something they had been promising us for over a month now. Unfortunately, it was nothing earth-shattering... or even new, for that matter.

Instead, those who made the trip to Singapore were treated to news and information on AMD's future plans (think 2009-2010) like Bulldozer, Bobcat and Fusion. Now, that would have been really juicy news... if only it was July 2007. In late August, it was nothing but really stale news. US publications had already posted the same slides a whole month ago. No wonder many of those who attended were reportedly bored to death.

We were told that it was mainly a marketing event that espoused AMD's superior architecture and technology with quite a bit of Intel bashing thrown in to spice things up. Other than that, they were just going through slides we have all seen a month ago. They apparently refused to discuss the Phenom processors which are scheduled to be released by the end of the year, preferring instead to talk about processors 2-3 years down the road.

Did An Angry Journalist Walk Out?

Probably the only exciting part of the event may have been a reported walk-out by a Thai journalist. According to this blog post, a Thai journalist walked out of the event because he had to sign an NDA that required him to "send any stories to the vendor before his newspaper can publish it". He chose to walk out.

We cannot confirm the walk-out happened at the AMD event because we weren't there. Certainly, AMD is strongly denying it. This is what they had to say :

...it is inaccurate. We had a great session yesterday and the journalists came away with a better understanding and even more enthusiasm about our upcoming barcelona launch. Definitely no one walked out of yesterday's presentation.

We tried confirming it with those who attended. They remembered a group of Thai journalists but no one could tell if anyone actually walked off. So, this is an uncomfirmed rumour right now. But even if it was not at the AMD event, we still salute the journalist for his integrity.

Questions & Comments

Please feel free to post your questions or comments here!