AMD's Response to New Celeron (Willamette-128)
Thanks go to Maui_dude for the link.
Appaloosa, which is a direct successor to the currently used Morgan core doesn’t have any architectural differences from its predecessor and feature 64KB L2 cache.
At that time AMD is going to announce Duron 1600+, 1700+, 1800+. These three CPUs will feature the actual clock frequencies of 1.4GHz, 1.46GHz and 1.53GHz respectively. This way the Duron processor rating will be calculated from the same formula as Athlon XP processor rating.
Yeah - same ratings, same formula, different performance. It's nice to see that AMD isn't afraid to set their "performance" rating to values other than "performance", just as long as it suits their needs. It looks like this could give Intel plenty of ammo to fund more "papers" and run more "seminars".
I'm sure Intel is "thankful" to AMD for shooting themselves in the foot.
xbitlabs.com
Posted 4/03/02 at 1:07 am by Rat
It has been no secret for anyone for a long time already that Intel is going to move the entire value Celeron family to a new Willamette-128 processor core. The new Celeron processors, which are to be announced so time after May 20 will have Pentium 4 architecture with smaller 128KB L2 cache, will work in Socket478 and feature the initial core clock frequency of 1.7GHz. This will be no happy turning for AMD, because Celeron (Willamette-128) will work at much higher clock frequencies than the budget solutions from AMD Duron family.
Therefore AMD has to undertake something in response. Luckily, a new 0.13micron Appaloosa core is to come soon, and it is intended exactly for Duron processors. However, Appaloosa, which is a direct successor to the currently used Morgan core doesn’t have any architectural differences from its predecessor and feature 64KB L2 cache. It means that by simply shifting the whole Duron family to a new 0.13micron Appaloosa core AMD will not solve the problem.
As a result, AMD will undertake a number of marketing moves. Firstly, as soon as Duron migrates to Appaloosa core, all the CPUs will start supporting faster bus. All Duron processors working at over 1.4GHz core clock frequency (these will be the ones to start using new core) will support 266MHz bus. Secondly, in order to enable the users to compare adequately the performance of the new Duron (Appaloosa) and Celeron (Willamette-128), the new low-cost AMD processors will acquire the same performance rating marking as Athlon XP have. The Duron name however, will stay.
The first Duron (Appaloosa) with 266Mhz bus and marked with a new rating are preliminarily scheduled to appear in early Q3’02. At that time AMD is going to announce Duron 1600+, 1700+, 1800+. These three CPUs will feature the actual clock frequencies of 1.4GHz, 1.46GHz and 1.53GHz respectively. This way the Duron processor rating will be calculated from the same formula as Athlon XP processor rating. And it also means that AMD rating will no longer be any means of characterizing processor performance but will completely turn into an empirical means of comparing the chips with the competing solutions. Later on, when this info gets more confirmation, we will try to figure out if this way of using performance rating is justified at all.
Speaking about AMD’s ongoing plans in terms of Duron promotion we should point out that the company is not going to fall behind Intel and in Q4 they will announce a new Duron 1900+. Then in Q1 ’03 we will see Duron 2000+. So far, AMD doesn’t plan to use 0.13micron SOI technology for its Duron processors.
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