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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices
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To: Paul Engel who wrote (36692)9/3/1998 2:24:00 AM
From: Tenchusatsu  Read Replies (3) of 1571120
 
Paul 'n all:

Without the K6-3, AMD's K6 and K6-2 will not get commensurate system speed improvements as their internal CPU clock speed increases - BECAUSE THE EXTERNAL L2 CACHE IS DEADLOCKED at a FIXED 100 MHz !

Good point. Very good point.

AMD isn't just developing Sharptooth because they think on-chip cache is hip. They practically *need* it in order to get any meaningful performance benefits above 350 MHz.

The timing of Sharptooth's release is very key, since Intel is as usual a moving target. My estimates (and OEM estimates, I think) is that a Sharptooth will be the equivalent of a Pentium II which is 50 MHz faster, i.e. a 400 MHz Sharptooth will be equal in performance to the 450 MHz Pentium II. I forgot what the initial speed of Sharptooth will be, but if they can release it at 450 MHz, Intel may have some serious problems in Q1 1999.

Kind of makes you wonder whether AMD will go back to that PR rating again if Sharptooth is indeed faster than an equivalently-clocked Pentium II. But of course, if you listened to Jim's words, "People don't care about performance; they care about MHz!" (quote taken severely out of context.)

On the other hand, it's not like Intel is sitting on its hands or anything. Just recently, Microprocessor Report said this about the "whirlwind development effort" of Mendocino,

"Originally expected to ship late this year, the product was pulled into an August release. Although most processors take two or three tries before they can be shipped, the first silicon of Mendocino was so clean that Intel is using it to begin volume shipments."

Wow.

Tenchusatsu
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