From the Register:
theregister.co.uk
AMD's Corvette a funky little goer
By: Mike Magee
Posted: 18/07/2000 at 09:26 GMT
Roadmaps from AMD that The Register saw last week, and which indicate that the firm will hit 1GHz on the mobile front early next year with its Corvette chips, also show the firm is working on PowerNow II. [Surely that should be PowerThen I? - Ed.]
The second generation of PowerNow, formerly codenamed Gemini, will allow software control of CPU pipelines, with an expected maximum power of less than six watts when the Corvette mobile chips are released.
In battery saver mode, according to the roadmap, we will see a minimum frequency of 300MHz and PowerNow II will also allow maximum battery run time, as well as automatic mode.
Clock multipliers used will be 3.0x to 12.5x in 0.5x steps, the roadmaps say.
AMD has prepared the "Thresher" mobile evaluation platform which uses Socket 462, Twinlight Northbridge and ALi's 1535 mobile Southbridge, with a 4x AGP slot, two PCI slots and a Phoenix BIOS. Thresher will fall into AMD's customers' mitts this quarter.
There is no doubt that AMD will use its 1GHz and close to 1GHz Corvette mobile designs to target Intel at the high end.
One bullet point tells its customers: "Target the existing Pentium III notebook chassis and upgrade the thermal solution where necessary."
Another slide we saw, said: "The mobile Athlon... will be AMD's leadership vehicle for the performance/commercial notebook market. Performance leadership versus Pentium III on the desktop today! First seventh generation x86 mobile processor. Largest L1 cache, 200MHz system bus..."
The firm seems to suggest its Corvette mobile chips will run like wildfire. ® |
