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Yet Another K6 Series From AMD
EricFenderson writes: "AMD has released the K6-2+ and the K6-III+ for use in notebooks. It's made with a .18 micron process, has on-die cache, and has new power-saving technology called PowerNow. Reports say it's only being sold to companies integrating notebooks, but Tom's Hardware says it would be great as a system upgrade, and AMD should also be selling to retailers. Petition?" If you're nursing along a Socket 7 system especially, this series should be intriguing. The long-awaited notebook chip is noteworthy for having 32 power levels to choose from - maybe those all-day notebooks will really appear.
The K5 and K6 units have pretty good integer performance, but the floating point blows. The numbering scheme isn't too difficult if one has followed the chip's life, but if you haven't, it doesn't really make much sense.
k5 = Socket 7 P54C pentium compatible - 16K instruction cache, 8k data cache
K6 = Socket 7 P55C(mmx) - 32K instruction cache, 20K predecode cache, 32k data cache
K6-2 = Super Socket 7 (mmx, 3dnow, 100MHz bus) - 32K instruction cache, 20k predecode cache, 32k data cache
k6-III = Super Socket 7 (mmx, 3dnow, 100MHz bus) - 32K instruction cache, 32K data cache, 256K on-chip full-speed L2 cache
Mobile K6-2+ = Super Socket 7 (mmx, 3dnow, 100MHz bus) - 32K instruction cache, 20K predecode cache, 32K data cache, 128K full-speed on-chip L2 cache
Mobile K6-III = Super Socket 7 (mmx, 3dnow, 100MHz bus) - 32K instruction, 20K predecode, 32K data, 256K on-chip full-speed L2 cache
The fastest the chip can go right now is 600MHz (6x100MHz).
The K6-III and the Mobile K6 series can all use a motherboard-based L3 cache of up to 2MB.
Hopefully this will shed some basic light on the K6 family.
Actually, AMD's naming scheme follows Intel's, but is a bit more consistent. A quick run-down of roughly comparable chips:
AMD Intel
K5 ~ Pentium (aka P5)
K6 ~ Pentium Pro (aka P6)
K6-2 ~ Pentium 2 (second rev of P6)
K6-3 ~ Pentium 3 (third rev of P6)
K7 ~
K8 ~ Merced (first IA-64)
So, with AMD, the naming scheme is Kx, with x being the generation number of the core, like x86 used to be. The numbers following the "K6" line represent revs within a generation. Intel started that trend and AMD followed it.
Things are a bit complicated by the fact that Intel doesn't *have* a new core to compete with the Athlon. Intel hasn't made a new core in years. The IA-64 was supposed to be here by now, but it isn't. In the meantime, Intel has been trying to keep up by rev'ing it's Pentium Pro core, which dates back to ~94. While not inspiring, it's impressive that they've been able to squeeze out as much performance from the aging P6 core as they have.
Another complication is the fact that the Pentium 2 and 3 date back to the Pentium Pro design, *not* the "classic" Pentium design. Further, the Pentium Pro was a completely different core than the Pentium -- not just a Pentium with added frills. This confuses quite a few people.
The industry is complicated, so it takes some effort to follow. Naming is the least of worries when comparing processors.
hope I shed some light,
--Lenny
The Crosue was listed as somewhere between 1W and 1.5W (for the faster Crosue part, the slower one ws .5W to 1W?). Tom's article put the K6-2+ at 3W-3W I think. I don't remember what the Moble P-III is rated at, it might be 25W to 45W, but I'm toataly not sure.
If you are compiing you are probbably spining the disk drive. If you are spinning the disk drive, that's probbably sucking more power then the Crosue or K6-2+, and maybe generating more heat too. Remember there is a lot of stuff in a laptop that isn't the CPU sucking power. I think the CPU is #1 in making waste heat (which requires a fan, which uses more power and makes noise), but it ain't the big picture in power draw. So the K6-2+ drawing twice the power of the Crosue isn't a huge deal for battery life. After all the Crosue drawing 10 to 20 times less power then the Intel part "only" extends the battery life from ~4 hours on a "normal" battery to "all day" (and I have a 500Mhz/650Mhz Intel laptop that will run all day on an extended battery, and the whole thing is porb only 5 pounds vs. the 3.75 that it is with the normal batt).