AMD

David gains on Goliath

Despite the non-event that Comdex has turned out to be, a few companies still managed to make the most of a bad thing. AMD didn't bother having a booth on the ground floor, same with Intel, so we met with them in their meeting room on the second floor of the convention center.

New Stuff Now

Release-wise, the magnitude of AMDs press releases weren't exactly mind blowing after the recent barrage of CPUs that have been coming out. Nevertheless, on the 12th AMD released the 1.2GHz mobile Athlon 4 and the mobile 950MHz Duron.

Until the upcoming release of the Pentium 4 laptops, the AMD lineup is gathering quite a bit steam. This recent release helps to push AMD to the forefront in the portable scene. Currently, Compaq is expected to release versions of their laptop incorporating the new processors later this quarter. The mobile 1.2 GHz Athlon 4 is expected to cost about $525, with the mobile 950MHz Duron coming it at $160 in quantities of one thousand.

Future Releases

Looking at AMD's roadmap we can see quite a few additions. To end this year, we've already seen the release of the Athlon XP processors. For the first half of 2002, AMD will release the .13-micron Thoroughbred processor and .13 Appaloosa; AMD will also release multiprocessor versions of the two. Once we hit the second half of 2002, Barton is released, with its new-fangled .13 micron and SOI (Silicon-on-insulator) manufacturing technologies. Right as we jump into 2003, sampling of Clawhammer begins. Clawhammer will be AMDs eighth-generation processor, it too will be produced with .13 and SOI. This processor is also to serve as the bridge into 64-bit computing. The core is supposed to run 32-bit applications very well, as well as serve as the precursor to 64-bit processing.

AMD Processor Roadmap

Jump into the first half of 2003, AMD will have full production of Clawhammer and the long awaited Sledgehammer, both of which will be built on .13 and SOI. Clawhammer is to take over the single and dual CPU configurations, while Sledgehammer pounds its way into server land with four and eight way configurations. Once we drop into the second half of 2003, Clawhammer will move to the .09 micron manufacturing process, thus reducing power consumption and die size amongst other things.