Robert, Re: "Judging by the lack of overclockability of their current 0.13u releases it seems implausible, and could be why AMD declined to comment on the subject."
It seems to me that AMD would have declined comment either way. Also, the lack of overclockability in one processor stepping says nothing about how far they can get with subsequent steppings. Typically, a single stepping doesn't offer much more than a single speed grade (67MHz for AMD, 133MHz for Intel), but there are a few exceptions. After all, Intel is releasing a 2.8GHz Pentium 4 soon, which is 266MHz faster than their current champion. The 3.06GHz Pentium 4 will again be 266MHz faster than the 2.8GHz. So I can believe that AMD should be able to do something similar, and get a 133MHz jump, or even 200MHz. But 400MHz is simply outstanding, and almost implausible, as you say. But I wouldn't discount it entirely. There are sure to be some issues in this business that are real large limiters to performance. Lifting these barriers is often difficult, but surely not impossible. We'll have to see how this rumor turns out. I am not ready to discount it.
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