For many years AMD has played catch-up with Intel. As of late, Intel's inability to meet customer demand for processors, and AMD's timely launch of the Athlon processor, coupled with availability and technically a superior product, AMD ensured it's status as a level player with Intel. We feel if AMD continue to design, manufacture and meet customer demands with it's supply chain, then it is only a matter of time before it commands a pole position in the Desktop processor arena.

What features makes this "NEW" AMD Athlon different from its predecessor?

Integration of super-fast on-die L2 cache
While AMD were close to Intel with the original Athlon processor launch, Intel did have a slight technical advantage over AMD in as much as the new "Coppermine" Pentium III processors have been using super-fast on-die L2 cache for some time, while AMD Athlon used the slow off-die L2 cache. It became an absolute must for AMD to design and release a processor with super-fast on-die L2 cache, to keep pace with the Intel Coppermine processors. Essentially integrating on-die L2 cache reduces heat and helps reduce power requirements, in addition to increasing the processor's overall speed. The original Athlon processors L2 cache was 512K and ran at 1/2 the CPU speed under 900Mhz and 1/3 for CPU's over that speed. The New Thunderbird Athlon processors cache has been reduced to 256K, and runs at the same speed as the processor unit. Finally, the integrated L2 cache tags improve performance by quickly indicating whether critical application data is located within the L2 cache. The updated Thunderbirds core contains an astonishing 37 million transistors, compared to 22 million in the previous Athlon's.

Aluminium and Copper Connectivity
All the "New" Thunderbird Athlon cores are now manufactured using .18-micron geometry as opposed to the .25 process used in the previous Athlon processors. The Thunderbird cores are manufactured in two places currently. AMD's Fab 30 Dresden, Germany and Fab 25 Austin, Texas plants. There is a twist however, both fabs manufacturer different processes, at the Dresden plant the cores will be manufactured using copper interconnects while at the Austin plant cores will be manufactured using aluminium interconnect. However, there will be no performance difference between the two manufacturing processes, the copper interconnect is the future way forward. Copper had better electrical properties than aluminium, allowing for higher clock speeds for the future. Intel has yet to jump on the copper bandwagon, and has indeed stretched their aluminium technology to 1GHz already, and to the best of our knowledge is still continuing this method for the Willamette series of processors. How do you tell the difference between copper and aluminium core? It is important to appreciate it makes no difference whether the core is aluminium or copper at this stage; however, it is relatively easy to tell the difference, the copper core manufactured in Dresden will have a blue tint, and the aluminium core manufactured in the Austin fab, will have a green tint.

The NEW "Socket-A" Solution
It seems the current "Slot-A" days are nearly over. Intel has moved all their Coppermine Pentium PIII's and Celeron's to socketed configurations. Socket-A is AMD's new-socketed interface and is designed to support both AMD Athlon Thunderbird and AMD Duron processors. This has been made possible by integrating the super-fast on-die L2 cache (as described earlier). The Socket A interface consists of 462 pins, and its dimensions are 50 x 50mm.

Alas, it never seems easy does it not? AMD have also allowed the Thunderbird to be launched as a Slot-A solution, what!, we hear you gasp!, only for a short period so as to enable the transition to be a smooth one over to Socket-A. As we write today Socket-A solution based processor will not be available in large quantities until the 3rd or 4th week in July. So do not rush out and buy a Socket-A motherboard yet.

Chipsets for the NEW "Socket-A" Solution
Which chipsets will support the new Thunderbird Athlon and Duron processors?
The Socket A Thunderbirds are to be supported with the new KT133 chipset from Via Technologies Inc. The upcoming AMD-760 chipset, featuring a 266Mhz bus, the Aladdin K7 from Acer Labs, and the new SiS730S chipset from Silicon Integrated Systems Corp.

Our Verdict
After nine months of Intel related stress with processor and chipset shortages, and to add insult to injury the recalling of the 820i SDRAM chipset, we are pleased a company of AMD's calibre is around the corner. The Thunderbird announcement is a sigh of relief. We must not take anything away from AMD technically the product is superb, we hope when we have the opportunity to carry out a full labs test the chipset's are as good if not better than the processors. It is rather early without carrying out a "hands on" review to give a definitive opinion. Early signs are this is a processor for the year 2000.

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