The K8 architecture will be the grounds for some products in 2008

Dec 5, 2007 16:49 GMT  ·  By

The fact that AMD is sitting on a timebomb is not a secret anymore. The company strongly lacks cash and their most recent products failed to impose themselves as quality standards. In fact, the Phenom line has done far worse, a third of the processors ending amputated at birth. I will spare you the teary introduction in order to jump to the facts.

AMD's chairman and CEO, Hector Ruiz claimed last week that it is time the company returned to profitability at once. Moreover, when he inaugurated the Bangalore Research and Development facility, he stated that "That is our number one goal right now". AMD is bound to do so, but how, since the Phenoms are not appealing to anyone?

It seems that the company is taking another approach at the market and is brushing the dust off their older K8 architecture. The chipmaker has scheduled no less than eleven 65nm K8 processors over the next two quarters, but they could only release two quad-core K10 Phenom processors over a whole year, while the two tri-cores are due to arrive in March next year.

AMD's salvation seems to be in porting the remaining Athlon 64 processor 90-nanometer node to the 65-nanometer technology. Of course, some other factors will slightly change, such as the frequency and a much lower Thermal Density Power (because the 65-nanometer technology reduces current variations in the core layer).

The first processor to be moved in the 65-nanometer sector will be Athlon 64 X2 5600+, estimated to wear a thermal envelope of 65W (as compared to the chip's previous 89W TDP), and will be 100 MHz more efficient. The movement to the "Brisbane" core will unfortunately reduce the L2 cache, so the updated Athlon 64 X2 5600+ chips will feature only 1MB of L2 cache.

The Athlon 64 X2 6400+ and Athlon 64 X2 6000+ high-end powerhorses will no longer be produced. Instead, AMD is to update the "Energy Efficient" series and will release three new chips, the AMD Athlon 4850e, Athlon 4450e, and Athlon 4050e in the second semester of the next year. The processor will bear a 45 W thermal envelope and will be based on the Socket AM2 interface, just as any other Brisbane chip.