Older architectures will be slowly phased out

Jan 19, 2008 10:12 GMT  ·  By

Chip manufacturer Advanced Micro Devices has begun the process of reconstruction after a tough year that spelled disaster. After having failed to launch two important quad-core processor lines that were to ensure the company's survival (the Phenoms and the Barcelonas), the company gets back on track and will finally unveil a new line of low-power quad-core Phenom and dual-core Athlon CPU.

The launch is scheduled for the first quarter of 2008, but delays might occur, and therefore, AMD is considering an early Q2 release, too. The first processor in the low-power lineup is the Phenom 9100e, slated for release during February or March.

It will feature a core frequency of 1.8GHz, DDR2 1066 memory controller and a thermal envelope of 65W. Sources at the motherboard manufacturers' labs are reporting that AMD will discontinue the 9100e during the second quarter and replace it with the 9150e. It seems that the 9150e version is based on the fixed B3 stepping silicon.

The 9100e and 9150e low-voltage quad-cores will be accompanied by thee low-power dual-core processors in the Athlon family: the Athlon 4850e, the Athlon 4450e and the Athlon 4050e. The 4850e will come with a core clock speed of 2.5GHz, 1 MB of L2 cache and DDR2 800 support. The 4450e will be a lower-clock version, running at 2.3GHz, while the rest of the specs are unchanged. Athlon 4050e will be the slowest in the series, with a core clock of only 2.1GHz. There is no word about their thermal envelope yet.

AMD will also launch two single-core CPUs with a thermal design power of 45W: the Athlon BE-1640 running at a core frequency of 2.7GHz with a L2 cache of 512KB, and the Athlon BE-1660 running at 2.8GHz. The former CPU is slated to arrive later this month, while the slower part will emerge in the second quarter.

When the launch is complete, AMD will start phasing out some of its older architecture, including the dual-core Athlon X2 BE-2400, BE-2350 and BE-2300, as well as the single-core Athlon BE-1620, Athlon 64 4000+ and 3800+ processors.