AMD chip shortage hits local builders

Local system builders are up in arms over a severe shortage of Advanced Micro Devices’ Athlon 64 X2 processors, which has been largely blamed on the chipmaker’s global OEM agreement with Dell.

Jeff Li, managing director at Pioneer Computers, said he has been having trouble for the past two months in getting his hands on AMD chips because chipmaker has a “similar production problem that plagued Intel not so long ago”.

He claimed that Dell was buying 50 percent of AMD chips globally. “Local builders can’t get AMD chips because Dell has taken the market share. I can’t believe AMD is no longer for the channel,” he said.

“When the customer asks us to build them a product with AMD chips, I have to tell them to change to Intel. They have no problem with that,” he added. Greg Schroeder, marketing communications manager at Compucon, said the builder was also turning customers to Intel because of AMD’s shortage.

“Our customers are happy to switch from AMD to Intel. If our SMB customers don’t get their first choice then they will be happy with their second choice,” he said.

Schroeder said the demand for AMD-built products has dwindled and the builder was getting a higher percentage of requests for Intel-based products.

“This is disappointing because there is a group of hard-core AMD users who get very passionate about the product,” said Schroeder.

Caleb Leung, country manager at AMD Australia/New Zealand, said the chipmaker was “definitely trying to resolve the situation”, but could not comment further. AMD has acknowledged a shortage but said that it was not tied to Dell’s demand on its supply.

“The advantages of AMD’s product offerings, combined with our relationships with system builders and OEMs, have hampered our ability to fully meet the demand of some builder customers. The situation is slowly but steadily improving.”