Socket Athlons by early next year?

webslacker writes "That's what it looks like, according to the private eyes over at Sharky Extreme. The Athlon Select series, as it will be called, will be aimed at the low end and will use a new ZIF standard called Socket 423 (the number of pins). Oh, and get this... plans are being laid to integrate an 8MB L2 cache. "

Comments

Cache, not always a good sign

[Anonymous Coward]

8mb, hmm.

Remember that cache is a fix, it makes up for the shortfall in the speed of memory and the bus architecture. I think this just indicates how far behind the rest of the x86 system is falling behind processor developement. I'd much rather have faster main memory and a better bus architecture than masses more cache. Cache is expensive and doesn't always give the benifits you would think. Remember the Celeron had only half the cache of the comparative PII but could equal it in performance because it's cache ran at full processor speed.

Its not size that matters, its how you use it and what you put around it that counts

It doesn't work that way

[aheitner]

Cache is not something you get to control directly in code.

When you read a dword from main memory (i.e. not already in the cache) and then do operations on it, the cache controller takes advantage of a free memory bus to go ahead and read the rest of the cache line. Assuming your code is well optimized for cache performance, the next things you read should already be in the cache.

If you're doing a lot of kernel stuff, large chunks of the kernel will be in the cache, as you would want. And if you're running Quake 3, Quake 3 will be in the cache. It's exactly what you want.

I just love standards! ...

[Inoshiro]

There are just so many to choose from :-)

Seriously:
"Socket 7"
Gee, for all you with Pentuim 1s, Pentuin w/ MMXes, and older K6s. Super 7 (just a minor mod) for K6-2 and -3. I expect the genuine socket 7s are dead now, with the Super 7s gone by next year.

"Slot 1"
It's already dieing because the Pentuim IIs/IIIs are outrageously expensive, compared to their performance (especially those damned PIIIs with their serial number ickyness). Celeron is in the cheaper Socket 370, and you know people love those things :-)

"Slot 2"
If you think a PIII is too cheap, buy a Xeon PIII and one of these babies. Considering Intel's SMP design forces the CPUs to share the same bus, Xeons with 4mb of cache will not scale well past 4 or so CPUs, so why bother with the expense when Athlons are cheaper? This spec can die like the "Socket 8" of the PPro.

"Socket 370"
Perhas usefull, but the Celerons are ludicrously locked at a 66Mhz front side bus. I mean, Intel is embarrassing enough because their first-string proccessors (PIIs/IIIs) have a half-clocked L2 cache. Pathetic! They've hobbled the Celerons, and are just trying to prove they control the customer's demands.

"Slot A"
Well, seems OK. I mean, you can plug in an Alpha proccessor package of an Athlon package in the same Slot A, and you do get the benefits of fast bus speed, at chipspeed L2 cache, etc.

"Socket 423"
I guess this was inevitable. I doubt you'll be able to plug an Alpha into this, but the PGA format is a bit cheaper to make than ye olde cartidge (can you say SNES cartridge looking?) CPU packages. They are probably cheaper, and I know they're probably easier to stick into one of those wonderful Kyrotech units :-)

Anyways, I know I'll be buying more AMD. I love that company :-)