AMD Details Quad Core Processors
HARDWARE posted on 17 NOV 2005 by Sean Drummy
Thought a dual core processor would be neat? Try doubling the number of cores by 2007.
Gaming and enthusiast CPU manufacturer, AMD, has announced their plans to develop and hopefully begin to sell quad-core processors by 2007. According to statements made by company executives at AMD's annual analyst conference and compiled by tech guru site EETimes.com, the quad core processors are also expected to come with bells and whistles like a 32 socket interface, and often ommited L3 cache, improved memory controllers, and an interesting technology EE Times refered to as Fully Buffered DIMM (FBDIMM). AMD's has already announced their plans to release a quad core processor in the near future, but their timetable originally stipulated a 2008 release. Intel then recently announced that their quad core line would be shipping sometime in 2007 and AMD "adjusted" their timetable accordingly.
An analyst with Insight64 optimistically commented that if AMD "gets aggressive" the timetable for the quad core release could be bumped up to some time in 2006. The improve release time, he continued, was contingent upon how quickly AMD could bring their 65 nanometer maufacturing plans into full swing.
If some of you are starting to move the mouse towards the "Back" button in the browser because I may as well be speaking Yiddish, this 65 nanometer technology I mentioned refers to how small the components within the CPU are. As one might expect, smaller is better and the 65 nanometer switch represents a decided improvement from the still new but fast obsolete 90 nanometer architecture. In order to produce these smaller, more intricate 65 nanometer chips, AMD built an entire new wing of their manufacturering plant in Germany. The speed at which AMD "brings up" their 65 nanometer processes was in reference to the swiftness with which they can begin to implement the new equipment being setup/tooled up in the new 65 nanometer section of the plant.
If you're really geeky, check out the EETimes.com article for more information.
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