Advanced Micro Devices Inc. is pitching staying power with a new brand of processor designed for the value PC.
The processor's name, Duron, was derived from the Latin word "durare," which means "to last." Duron was announced Thursday morning by Jerry Sanders, the company's chairman and CEO, at its financial analyst meeting in New York.
Duron, based on
It is expected that Duron will be available this summer in sub-US$1,000 PCs. AMD will offer the new chip at higher clock speeds than its K6-2, which has topped out at 550MHz, but is unlikely to charge much more than the 550MHz K6-2, which was introduced at US$187.
The consumer benefit, the company says, will be low cost and much higher performance.
"We want (consumers) to know they've got something good and solid and they won't have to spend another US$1,000 in six months or a year," said Mark Bode, division marketing manager for Athlon at AMD.
Similarities and differences
While Duron is a derivative of the company's Athlon processor, it will be aimed at value PCs. AMD will differentiate the chip from its high-end Athlon through clock speed, price, bus speed and cache size.
The chip will offer 128KB of on-die cache and will use AMD's new Socket A packaging. Socket A is a socket for attaching the chip to the motherboard. It looks similar to the Super Socket 7 used by the company's K6-2 chip.
Appearances, however, are where the similarities end. Duron will have a smaller Level 2 cache, lower clock speed and lower cost than the Athlon.
Duron is sampling to PC makers now. The chip is slated to begin shipments in June.
AMD did not disclose other details on the new chip. However, ZDNet has reported that Duron will offer a 200MHz system bus and will be available in a range of speeds from 550MHz to 700MHz with prices ranging from US$75 to US$175.
AMD will aim Duron, along with its K6-2 chip, squarely at competitor Intel Corp.'s Celeron chip. Duron will be based on AMD's 0.18-micron manufacturing process.
High demand
The Duron announcement comes at a time when AMD is facing supply tightness on its K6-2 chips.
"Virtually all of the K6-2 processors we're going to build this quarter are sold," said AMD spokesman Drew Prairie. However, "we're still taking orders on Athlon."
"The big picture is that I think we're seeing unseasonably high demand," Bode said.
AMD's previously announced goals are to ship 1.8 million Athlon processors this quarter, 3.6 million next quarter and 7.2 million in the fourth quarter.
Thunderbird coming
While AMD plans to sell a lot of Athlons, the company is also planning a revision of the chip for midyear.
Athlon's Achilles' heel, according to analysts, is its off-die Level 2 cache. The cache on higher-speed Athlon chips runs much slower than the processor, which holds back the performance of the chip. The cache on chips including the 950MHz and 1GHz (1,000MHz) runs at only one-third of the processor clock speed.
AMD's forthcoming Athlon with integrated cache, known by the code name Thunderbird, is expected to address this issue by moving the cache on-chip to raise the performance of the Athlon. Thunderbirds, as reported by ZDNet, are expected at midyear.
Road map changes
AMD has also made some minor tweaks to its processor road map.
The company had announced plans to create a corporate-oriented processor brand called Athlon Professional. The company has dropped that name and will market the Athlon name to both consumer and corporate buyers.
AMD's stable of processor brands will now include Athlon, Athlon Ultra, Duron and the K6 line of chips for value PCs and notebooks. Athlon Ultra is a forthcoming brand of processors with large Level 2 caches targeted at high-end, dual-processor applications. It is expected in the second half of this year.
AMD has also revealed a new code name for its forthcoming Athlon-based mobile processor. Nothing about the chip has changed. It will be based on the Mustang processor core and will use the company's Socket A packaging. However, instead of referring to it as Mustang mobile, AMD is now calling the mobile chip Corvette.
