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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices

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To: Mani1 who wrote (117459)	6/24/2000 1:47:00 AM
From: THE WATSONYOUTH	Read Replies (2) of 1579059

Re: "I think a 700 MHz K62+ is VERY unlikely, but something could be up.This line in the ZDNet article has not been discussed,"the company's focus is expected to be on notebook processors with its PowerNow battery-saving technology." So AMD will concentrate on its K62+ line and not the Athlon in this very important PC Expo. Hmmmmmmm, any idea what it will be about?" Well I could speculate on a scenario which would allow a 700MHz K62+. It doesn't seem likely though and even more unlikely that they could have kept it quiet. I never could quite rationalize the device design in the K62. The spec. sheets list a part up to 550MHz at 2.3V and 15W typical power. The 2.3V implies a gate oxide thickness over 30A and certainly is not representative of a device you would expect in a full .18um groundrule process. Perhaps they only recently had the time to revisit the K62+ for laptops. If so, they logically would have scaled the gate oxide down to perhaps 23A at perhaps 1.7V and used a much more aggressive device design at MUCH reduced channel length. This could increase performance to 700MHz from 550MHz while reducing power at the same time. Perhaps they used the device design from the upcoming Mustang. Also, they might have gone to a partial shrink to .15um groundrules as Milo has suggested. Given what I saw on the Austin K7, what AMD would call a .15um groundrule process would be only perhaps 10% smaller than an .18um IBM process. I always thought of the K62 MHz problem as analogous to the problem with PowerPC at IBM. Both were/are limited in freq, by the short pipeline design. For what it's worth, the G3 PowerPc in a good .25um process (device + groundrules) is limited to 500MHz to perhaps 550MHz. The same design at .18um scaled to 700MHz to 750MHz. At .13 it will likely go to 950MHz. So, perhaps we will be pleasantly surprised Mon. Again, 2.3V in a laptop doesn't make sense. Howewever, even a best case scenario would only get to 700MHz or 750MHz even in an aggressive .15um process. (device + groundrule) But, I'd take it! all speculation, THE WATSONYOUTH

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