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

To: Elmer who wrote (118456)	6/29/2000 8:53:00 PM
From: Cirruslvr	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1579121

Elmer - RE: "I don't think AMD can ship 1.1 or 1.2GHz product despite the hype. For one, there 1GHz volumes are low and secondly they have to jack the voltage up just to hit 1GHz. That's not the sign of a product with headroom. Yes the same could be said for Intel but we keep hearing about a new stepping. If AMD has a new stepping things could be different but so far, the signs aren't there." Man, aren't you behind the times... AMD has a new processor out. Its codename was "Thunderbird", but it now just referred to as "Athlon with new performance enhancing cache", or just "Athlon Classic." Thunderbird is the Athlon Classic with 256KB L2 cache on the processor's die. Like the previous Athlon, Thunderbird is made on a .18 process. Now, I'm not versed at all in processor manufacturing or design, but it would seem to me that if AMD puts L2 cache on the Athlon, the Athlon would require a slight redesign of the core and a new ramp. With this redesign, AMD would have an opportunity to make other changes to the core. If we compare the voltage required to run a 1GHz Thunderbird and a 1GHz "Classic" Athlon we might be able to tell if AMD made any changes to the Athlon: 900MHz - 1GHz Athlon Classic Thunderbird volts 1.8v 1.75v It appears to me that the new Thunderbird, which is 17.6% larger than the Athlon "Classic", requires .5 less volts, or 3% less, to run. This is in STARK contrast to Intel's new "C-0" stepping which requires a 600MHz Celeron's voltage to be "JACKED-UP" 13% EVEN THOUGH it 14% SMALLER than the previous stepping. And this Thunderbird case is even more different than the K6-III which came out last year that was approximately 40% larger than the K6-2 and required about 9% HIGHER voltage to run. Based on these cases, I think you would agree with me that the Thunderbird's core has been enhanced to require less "juice" to run, even though the processor is larger and does more than the previous Athlon core. Also, AMD has a new fab in Dresden, Germany. This new fab uses an advanced copper process and has 100nm gates vs. 120nm gates at AMD's fab in Austin, Texas, USA (United States of America). Admittedly, I don't exactly know how this improves the manufacturing of processors (and Yousef hasn't replied to my question yet), but I do know less is better. This new fab has been steadly ramping up capacity. Around the third week of April, it was at 600 wafer starts per week. Now, it is at 1000 wafer starts per week. This info comes from Jerry Sanders, AMD's long time CEO, and Hector Ruiz, AMD's new COO, respectively. Since it takes about 10-12 weeks, according to people who post on this thread, to go from wafer start to finished product, it would seem that current processors being sold were started on in April. As the weeks progress, more processors than before will be available, and it is normal to expect binsplits to get better as time progresses. To summarize: 1. AMD has a new processor, Thunderbird. 2. Thunderbird requires LESS volts than Athlon Classic to run. 3. Thunderbird core has some how been modified to do #2. 4. AMD has a new fab in Dresden, Germany that uses a more advanced process technology than AMD's fab in Austin, Texas, USA 5. This new fab is steadly ramping volume. 6. The current processors being sold are currently what was started 10-12 weeks ago. Based on all this info, I think what you wrote, which is quoted at the very top of this message, is outdated. ;) PS: Sorry if one or two things in this message sounds familiar to you. Judging by your response, I couldn't tell if you had been following AMD and its current product line up the past few months. jajajajaja PPS: Maybe you should do something like this to get your point across about better availability of higher MHz Cumines...