7th Generation CPU

A new lease on life

AMD hopes to change all of that with the upcoming K7 CPU. In addition to providing a fully-pipelined FPU, the next-generation CPU promises performance that exceeds that of Intel's latest Pentium III, in both floating point and integer.

Being on the tailing end of the CPU race, AMD has always been aggressively pushing new technology, and their engineers are trying to take that to the next level with the K7. Notable features on this next-generation CPU are increased L1 cache size (to 128KB), variable L2 cache size and speed, the much-touted EV-6 64-bit bus, and so on. The processor and subsystem specs are included below:

K7 Specs

Speeds from 550MHz and up

200MHz 64-bit EV6 bus

128KB L1 Cache

L2 Cache from 512KB to 8MB

L2 Cache from 1/4 to full CPU speed

Chipset support for multiple RAM types

Fully pipelined FPU

3 floating point units

MMX Support

Improved 3DNow! Support

Don't let the simple numbers fool you. Underlying the basic specs, the AMD K7 has some major architectural changes, diverging greatly from both the K6 and Pentium family of processors. Some of these changes allow for faster or more efficient data transfer, others for greater expandability, but all are aimed at providing increased functionality and performance.

Where are you going to find 200Mhz RAM?

Take for example the much-touted 200Mhz EV6 bus. In addition to running at twice the speed of Intel's current 100MHz GTL+ bus protocol, it also makes use of a technology called "point-to-point topology." In simple terms, this allows the CPU and the chipset to be separated from the main memory bus.

How does this affect the K7? Well, currently it serves to reduce cost and maintain compatibility with current memory standards. AMD has hardly any influence on RAM standards, and thus they have to create their products around the market, as opposed to Intel. EV6's point-to-point setup allows the K7 to be used with any type and speed of RAM, as determined by the chipset.

This means that K7 systems will work with standard 100/133MHz RAM when initially released, and as new RAM standards (such as Direct RDRAM or DDR SDRAM) are introduced, the 200MHz EV6 bus will be able scale accordingly.