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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: kapkan4u who wrote (60774)	6/7/1999 2:37:00 AM
From: Paul Engel	Respond to of 1572970

Kal Kan - Re: "So which one is it? Does K7 run at 2.5v or 1.6v internally? " SCUMbria and Steve Porter know - but they don't want to tell you ! My guess is that the K7 will run at 2.5 volts but a few circuits may be regulated down to a lower voltage - such as the PLL - for "reliability reasons". Dirk Meyer will soon reveal ALL over his Pasta Meal to the MACKEREL and me ! Paul

To: kapkan4u who wrote (60774)	6/7/1999 5:20:00 PM
From: fyo	Respond to of 1572970

Kap: So which one is it? Does K7 run at 2.5v or 1.6v internally? That is indeed a good question. All my sources tell me that only the PLL runs at 2.5V, the rest (including all the functional units) run at 1.6V. I'm afraid that's the best I can do on this one :(. However, if you take a look at the Alpha 21264 Processor Data Sheet, you will find that while it consumes enough energy to cover the energy budget of several small countries, it only uses 2.2V. Since the K7 takes much of its architecture from the 21264 (and indeed several engineers) I find it fairly reasonable that the K7 would use only 1.6V. What I am trying to point out is that having a LOW VOLTAGE is not the same as having a GOOD PROCESS. Sure, with a given CPU/architecture, the lower the voltage the better the process, but the K7 architecture is much different from both that of the K6 and that of the P6. Take a look at this AMD patent: 164.195.100.11 My understanding is that 2 of the (6) metal layers run at the higher voltage, the rest at the lower. Unfortunately, I do not have such detailed knowledge of the production/design of a CPU so as to speculate which layers do what. I tried asking Drew Prairie, but he had absolutely no clue as to what I was talking about. --fyodor