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AMD Planning 1GHz CPUs

Posted by Roblimo on from the battle-of-the-optimistic-marketing-departments dept.

idan writes "This ZDnet article article indicates that AMD is opening a fab that will produce 1GHz Athlon CPUs." I'm sure it's pure coincidence that AMD is making this announcement so soon after Intel announced their "real soon now" 1100 MHz "Athlon Killer". Do we get to call this one the "Athlon Killer Killer"?

5 of 200 comments (clear)

  1. AMD was first to announce by LocalYokel · · Score: 3
    ... and this was also reported in The Register. Check the dates!

    (my apologies to The Register staff for 'deep linking'...)

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    E2 IN2 IE?

  2. ZDNet's intelligence... by The+Musician · · Score: 4

    A micron is a 1,000th of a meter

    Last I checked we called that a millimeter. Can you even image a chip done in 0.18mm?

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  3. Athlon Killer Killer by Mike+Hicks · · Score: 3

    Reminds me of the BBS quote wars (remember?)

    > this
    > > is
    > > > getting
    > > > > out
    > > > > > of
    > > > > > > hand
    > > > > > > > !

    :-)
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  4. Motherboards, The Meaty Vegetable by Christopher+B.+Brown · · Score: 3
    It's pretty typical for the CPU not to be the main bottleneck on a computer system, at least these days.

    Sun's SPARC provides nice evidence of this; they are selling lots of systems for high end database and web applications not because the SPARC architecture is vastly superior to its competitors, but because the rest of the system is fast.

    On a PC, the real "critical component" is the motherboard, as that tends to be a determinant of such things as:

    • The speed of the memory bus, and how much RAM can be added to the system;
    • IDE/SCSI controller(s), and their quality/speed;
    • In the old days, how many bytes of buffer you had on your UART was pretty significant; RS-232 has pretty much gotten maxxed out since then...
    • The move from ISA and EISA and (less so) VESA to PCI was as much a signal of better performance in and of itself than the move from 80486 to Pentium...
    • I can't decide if AGP is actually a good thing; it makes it harder to build multiheaded systems...
    • These days, graphics cards have more RAM, and presumably more processing power, than one used to have on a 486 box for the main CPU. (These days, I have more cache on my CPU than I had disk space on my Atari 400... That's the most frightening ratio to compare...)
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    If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the precipitate.
  5. Sorta old news... by Keeper · · Score: 4

    The rumour mill is feeding this post, so take it as you will.

    AMD has been working on their Germany plant for quite some time (last couple of years). From the moment I've heard of it, it was always AMD's goal to produce chips in huge quantities using state of the art technology (being .18um and copper interconnects right now). They've been producing samples of K6-2/K6-3's using a .18um process using copper interconnects for the last few months.

    Within the last few weeks, rumour had it that they had been producing sample K7's the Dresden plant and sent stuff back to Austin for "verification" (ie: look over each nanometer [or whatever they do] to make sure everything is good).

    To me, this article seems to indicate that everything is looking good in the verification process, and they're confident enough to start ramping up to full production (or begin preparations to ramp up).

    Word is soon after the 733mhz cuMine process is released AMD will drop prices (which I think they just did actually...) and release a 750 mhz version. This, incidentally, is still on the .25um process (I find it remarkable that they were able to get to 700 air cooled).

    Kryotech has systems running at 900mhz using current .25um chips; it is VERY reasonable to expect AMD to be able to produce 1ghz chips soon after bringing Dresden online.

    My 2c.