Chuck, <Thunderbird would be the current Athlon with on-chip cache added on. And I wouldn't expect this cache to be of simple stuff. According to the Power Point presentation at amd.com these future Athlons will also have 1 and 2MB cache,>
Is it reasonable to assume that Athlon's on-die cache will just come straight out of the gate at 1 and 2 MB?
I don't think AMD can start off with one or two megs of on-die cache. Most likely, Thunderbird will feature 512K of on-die cache. A respectable amount, for sure, but not enough to attack the markets that Cascades will be serving. That's why I don't think AMD can compete against Cascades until Mustang.
<And as far as Mustang, you and I have no idea what the core enhancements will be so I don't see how you can say "Only AMD's upcoming Mustang core can hope to compete". AMD is probably adding these enhancements because Willamette is coming out around the same time so I wouldn't expect these enhancements to be simple stuff like enhanced 3DNow!...>
More enhancements. If they're instruction-set enhancements, then once again AMD is sticking to wishful thinking, the "Build it and they will come" strategy that failed for 3DNow. But as you said, you and I have no idea what those enhancements are, so we'll just have to wait and see. My WAG is that they're enhancements for the mobile market.
<The Athlon is only going to get faster and FASTER. You guys better get used to it.>
I'm still wondering how AMD is going to find the capacity to build all these Athlons, especially those with on-die cache. Athlon derivatives are all good and swell for bragging rights, at least, but it's hard for me to imagine that these new cores are not going to hurt unit shipments any. And AMD said that Dresden will soon become the sole manufacturer of Athlons, which makes me wonder even more.
Tenchusatsu |
