Microsoft said back in March that Windows 10 will be out this summer. More recently and precisely, however, AMD CEO Lisa Su said during an investors call, transcribed by Seeking Alpha, that it will be out at the end of July.
The statement came in response to a journalist's request to "help us understand directionally on the relative decline of your two segments, computing and graphics versus your enterprise embedded and semicustom segments," which I quote not because of any particular relevance but because I'm amused by such opaque business-speak.
Su's answer is also heavy with exec jargon, but keep an eye out for the relevant part: "I would say modestly up. Relative to the computing and graphics business, I think we will complete the burn-off of our channel inventory in Q2 based on the current pace that we see. And then on the ramp-up of Carrizo, we will start shipping—we started shipping actually in Q1 a small volume of units. We'll increase that as we go to Q2. What we also are factoring in is, you know, with the Windows 10 launch at the end of July, we are watching sort of the impact of that on the back-to-school season, and expect that it might have a bit of a delay to the normal back-to-school season inventory build-up."
Did you see it? No, not the bit about second-quarter channel inventory burn-off, the part about Windows 10 at the end of July. It's obviously not an official confirmation from Microsoft, but it's a safe assumption that, as the top banana at AMD, Su would have some advance insight into when the next Windows is coming. Be that as it may, Microsoft declined to comment on the statement.
"We have said that Windows 10 will launch this summer," a rep said in response to our inquiry. "We have nothing additional to share at this time."
In case you'd forgotten, this isn't the first time an AMD honcho has dropped the dime on what Microsoft's got cooking: In November 2014, AMD Chief Gaming Scientist Richard Huddy said DirectX 12 will not be released for Windows 7, in order to encourage holdouts to upgrade to Win10. AMD later said the statement was "speculative."
We've contacted AMD to ask for more information and will update if and when we receive a reply.
