CPU & Memory

Manufacturers - Advanced micro devices (AMD)

• Athlon
  • 900 - 1200MHz by Dec 2000

• K7 (Duron)
  • 700-800MHz by Dec 2000
  • 500MHz by Jun 99
  • AMDs new connector.
  • Hope to reach speeds of 1GHz by year 2000.

• K6-III (Sharptooth)
  • Due end 1998
  • 64KB L1 cache (twice Pentium !!!)
  • 256KB L2 cache (half P-!!!) but runs at CPU speed (P-III at half).Up to 2MB L3 cache on motherboard.
  • 2.2-2.5volts (P-!!! runs ar 2volts) and designed for Socket 7 motherboard.
  • 0.25 micron technology (like P-III), 21.3 million transistors
  • 400zMHz with secondary 256Kb L2 cache to chip
  • uses same socket 7 architecture motherboards as K6.
  • Saarinen, J (1999, Apr)

• K6-2 with 3D-Now!
  • 0.25 micron Socket 7 chip.
  • Runs on 100MHz bus, 10.5 million transistors..
  • 266, 300MHz (runs on 95MHz bus), 333 MHz, 350MHz.
  • 400MHz (mid 99)
  • 0.25 micron process technology.
  • 3D-Now! a set of floating point (FP) instructions that enables more than one FP instruction per clock cycle. (MMX increases Integer performance).
    • Means increased performance in 3D geometry, AC-3 sound processing and MPEG decoding - all of which use lots of FP instructions. Supported in microsofts DirectX 6.0.
    • Requires software to be optimised for it.
  • K6-2 with 3DNow! launches (1998, Aug), Uimonen, T (1998,Sep)

• K6/3D
  • 1998 300-350MHz
  • MMX-enhanced
  • MPEG-2 support & AC-3 sound.
  • Busse,T. (1997, Oct)

• K5
  • Initial versions approx 30% faster than Pentium 100.
  • Pin compatible with Pentium 90MHz and 100mhz.
  • Technique similar to Intel's dynamic execution means K5 doesn't need to process instructions in the order it receives them.
  • Instructions are translated into smaller Risc-based components, which are re-assembled into x86 instruction set.
  • 0.35 micron process technology.

  • Ref [111]NZ PC World May '95