NEWS
AMD has announced speed increases on three of its processor lines. The Athlon XP is now available in a 2100+ model for US$420, and the multiprocessing-capable Athlon MP now has a 2000+ model for $415. Also, AMD bumped up the speed in its mobile Athlon 4 line to 1600+, which goes for $380. All of the chips are still produced on a .18 micron process and have no architectual changes from their predecessors aside from a clockspeed increase. They are available immediately, except for the 1600+ Athlon 4 which will be "available soon" in a Compaq notebook. Read more in the AMD press release and ChipGeek.
Although AMD hasn't officially announced any .13 micron processors yet, it did make a statement on its .13 micron process progress. AMD plans to announce a new line of Athlon XP processors, codenamed "Thoroughbred," later this month (within 2-3 weeks). The chip die will have a size of 80 square mm compared to the current .18 micron Athlon XP, which is 129 square mm in size. AMD notes that the .13 micron Pentium 4 processor is 83% larger in size than the .13 micron Thoroughbred.
ROB'S OPINION
Although the on-track movement of the .13 micron process from AMD sounds good, I'm not sure that the company will have quantities of .13 micron chips available by the end of the quarter. That's unfortunate; but as long as AMD pumps out the press releases about progress of the .13 micron process and can get at least a small quantity of the chips on the market by the end of Q1, it has fulfilled its promise of bringing Thoroughbred to market by the end of Q1.
One disturbing aspect of AMD's newest chip releases is that it didn't even mention the actual GHz speed of the chips in the press release. That is really awful in my opinion, especially for those of us who care about such things, as we may have to troubleshoot complex timing issues or want to know the overclocking limits of a chip without doing arithmetic based on a formula that AMD doesn't specifically disclose. From previous trends, here are the actual clock speeds of AMD's newest chips:
Athlon XP 2100+ - 1.73GHz
Athlon MP 2000+ - 1.67GHz
Athlon 4 1600+ - 1.4GHz
AMD does correlate the speed ratings (numbers with the + at the end) to the actual clock speeds in FAQ documents, such as the Athlon 4 FAQ, but I think journalists would appreciate it if AMD put the speeds in a footnote in its press releases. |
