AMD hits back at Cyrix 'No. 2' claims

"I don't mind being slagged off but it would be nice if Cyrix compared like with like," said Richard Baker European marketing manager at AMD. "The K6 is going out of the door as fast as we can make them and we sold almost a million in the last quarter. Also, we sold over 300,000 K5 parts plus we sold older chips for use in embedded systems. If attacking AMD is Cyrix's marketing strategy, Cyrix won't get very far."

"He was comparing their total output with our K6 but we're happy that they've got their act together and are selling a lot of product," said Rana Mainee, AMD European market planning manager. "I still think we've done well and there's a huge demand for our product. We know that in a year's time we'll be in a very strong position."

Earlier today, Cyrix UK managing director Brendan Sherry had claimed that its 1.3 million chips shipped in the last quarter made it the world's number two maker of X86 devices.

Baker added that AMD was not going head to head with Cyrix, saying AMD's strategy was to sell to corporate PC vendors as well as through smaller operations, and citing Digital's Venturis as a key line to that effect. Baker also said that it was working with direct sales vendor Elonex on sales to the Ministry of Defence.

AMD is exepcted to ship a 266MHz version of its K6 processor in the next few weeks.