AMD Athlon (K7) Ships

Sir-Techlot writes "AMDs wed site has a page saying that the Athlon will be shipping today (6/23/99). Tells a bit of info we already know also. "

Comments

Re:Xeon?

[Anonymous Coward]

Err...a damned good one.

First off, there's the 128k of L1 (4x that of every Intel P6, including the Xeon).

But, of course, what you're implying here is that the K7 can't run with the Xeon because the Xeon has up to 2MB of L2-cache--very important for, well, server type stuff (big databases, etc.)--and, most ominously, it runs at the same speed as the CPU (for comparison, the PII/PIII has 512k running at half speed; the Celeron has only 128k but it's full speed...and they're about as fast at equal clock speeds, depending on what you're running).

Well, the K7's that shipped today only have 512k of L2, and that only at half clock speed...

However, AMD plans on shipping K7's with both half and full speed L2-caches, ranging in size from the aforementioned 512k all the way up to an absopositively humongous 8MB.

Wow.

Of course, it's gonna cost AMD a chunk of change to fab a chip with 8MB of full-speed L2-cache ( Wow ), but if you think they're gonna be tacking on the same exorbitant markups that Intel sticks on the Xeon (a PIII Xeon w/2MB L2 is $3400 at pricewatch)...well, I sorta doubt it.

But, you may stammer, the Xeon is better for SMP?

Hardly. The Xeon, while technically capable of up to 8-way SMP, only sells in 1, 2, and 4-way configurations so far (I think). 8-way K7's should be up and selling quite soon, and I've heard talk of a 16-way chipset. Oh, and if you're wondering why no one's bothered to make an 8-way Xeon box, it's because the communication between the chips in a multichip Xeon server has to go through the 100Mhz system bus; not only is 100Mhz not so fast, but adding chips means less bus bandwidth for everything else. Long story short, you don't get anywhere near linear performance gains by adding Xeons, and in fact an 8-way box might not be any faster than a 4-way. Luckily, the K7 fixes that little problem by providing a dedicated path for the chips to communicate to each other.

So unless AMD has problems fabbing such massive caches, it looks as though the Xeon's in a bit of trouble...

Re:But the name...

[substrate]

If I ever quit my present job and work on microprocessor circuits I'll do my best to kill names like Pentium or Celeron or Athlon and stuff. They all sound either very similar or just aren't very beefy sounding. They sound like they're picked by focus groups. I hate focus groups.

Instead I'll pick names that are more in your face, much like 60's and 70's sports cars. These chips are powerful and they suck up as much power as old sports cars suck up gas. They deserve names with guts. Names like the Vindicator, maybe with performance specs right in the title, the way sports cars used to proudly display their number of cylinders and engine displacement. The Vindicator 128 1 gig.

Forget dancing femme-boys in gold lame bunny suits, open up a early 70's Popular Mechanics sometime. Thats how advertising should be. Scantily clad girls draped across the vehicle. Chips are small, there won't be any draping across them. Maybe a gorgeous blonde in a string bikini. The camera pans in to her feet and slowly makes its way up her body. Caressing every last inch of her perfect legs and thighs. Just above the bikini line is the chip. Slowly the camera zooms and focuses in on the chip and its name. The Vindicator 128 1 gig. Fade out. No text, no boring announcers. Maybe the wa-wa guitar track from a porno flick. The viewer knows if he buys one of these babies he's getting some!

Ah well, maybe not. The management didn't think adding tesla coils, jacobs ladders and a full height lava lamp to our big servers was a good idea. Even after I explained the concept of retro-computing.

Prices

[nd]

Check out the prices, they aren't half bad.

600mhz - $699
550mhz - $479
500mhz - $324

Also, from browsing the AMD website, I came across this K7 FAQ. It's actually pretty interesting and gives some new information.

Re:Will AMD survive until next year? Prob. not...

[Upsilon]

Actually, that huge loss wasn't due so much to lowered revenues as it was due to them spending so much money preparing for the K7. And that loss does not even take into account the fact that they sold their Vantis division for $500 million.

Sure, it looks bad right now. But Q3 will show a huge change. They will go from a $60 ASP to charging $500 and more for their processors. Now, if they were able to make a profit with an ASP below $100 (which they did for the last couple quarters of 98), think about what they can do with that kind of ASP. Also, their Dresden facility is nearly complete (should be online this year, but I don't know if it will be in Q3 or Q4), so they will finally be able to acheive some real volumes. Their .18 process in on schedule, and the K7 is really getting some promising press. Even Dell will be making K7 systems. In case you don't know, Dell is currently the only one of the top 10 PC manufacturers that doesn't use AMD chips in at least some of their systems.

Sure, there is less demand for high-end systems. But there is certainly still enough demand to sustain a company. Especially since AMD is so much smaller than intel, they can sell everything they make to this market. And the K7 is really a bargain anyway. I don't think lack of demand will be a problem for the K7 at all.

Upsilon