Advanced Micro Devices on Monday gave its Athlon 4 and Duron chips a performance boost.
The chipmaker announced a 1.1GHz Athlon 4 and a 900MHz Duron--both for notebook PCs--and said Compaq Computer will offer the new mobile chips in its Presario 1200 line. AMD also announced that it has begun shipping a 1GHz desktop Duron.
AMD's newest Athlon 4 represents a 100MHz jump in speed from the first chip in that series, introduced in May at up to 1GHz. A 1.2GHz Athlon 4 is expected in the fourth quarter.
The new Duron chips represent a more significant update because they are based on a new processor core--known as Morgan--with several enhancements over the current Duron. Morgan is essentially a lower-cost version of the Athlon 4's core--called the Palomino--with PowerNow power management added along with a prefetch level 2 cache.
Both cores offer the same Socket A packaging system, cache sizes and 200MHz front-side bus--the data pathway from the chip to system components such as memory--as Athlon's Thunderbird core, which is currently used only on the desktop. They also pack AMD's PowerNow technology and 52 new multimedia instructions in the form of Intel's Streaming SIMD Extensions, or SSE1. Those instructions were introduced with the first Pentium III chips to help them handle multimedia by breaking data into smaller chunks, which can be processed in parallel.
PowerNow serves to increase notebook battery life by lowering the clock speed and voltage. The technology features an "automatic" mode that continuously varies the chip's clock speed and voltages based on the demands placed on it by applications.
The Palomino/Morgan prefetch feature allows the cache to recognise patterns and automatically grab the data needed by the processor before it's actually needed. This way, the chip doesn't have to wait for the data when it comes time to perform an operation.
This month, the Athlon chip turns 2. During the two years that Sunnyvale, Calif.-based AMD has marketed the chip, it has seen wins with each of the 10 largest PC makers, except for Dell Computer. Despite a recent setback with IBM, AMD increased its market share last quarter from the midteens to 22.2 percent, according to Mercury Research. By comparison, rival Intel's had 76.7 percent share.
The younger Duron also has had its share of success. "Duron has become very well accepted in the marketplace, and we think it will continue down that path," AMD spokesman Ward Tisdale said.
The 1GHz Duron desktop chip should begin shipping later in the quarter. "We expect widespread availability around the time of the Windows XP launch in October," Tisdale said.
List price for the 1.1GHz mobile Athlon 4 is US$425, while the 900MHz mobile Duron is priced at US$130. The 1GHz desktop Duron US$89 for volume purchases of 1000 unit.
A 1.5GHz desktop Athlon processor is expected next month, completing AMD's move from its Thunderbird and Spitfire processor cores--the current desktop Athlon and the desktop and mobile Duron, respectively--to the Palomino and Morgan cores. Palomino and Morgan should continue into the first half of next year, when AMD will replace them with Thoroughbred and Appaloosa, similar processor cores based on a new 0.13-micron manufacturing process. Currently, AMD manufactures its chips on a 0.18-micron process with copper interconnects.
AMD is continuing court the government for technology contracts and foster awareness of its position in this market. Citing Dataquest figures, the company claims 32 percent of the U.S. government market for PCs. AMD also recently announced that the U.S. Navy will purchase 1,192 1.2GHz Athlon PCs.
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