AMD

Earlier this month, Intel introduced their first dual core desktop CPUs - the Pentium D and the Pentium Extreme Edition. Coupled with extremely aggressive pricing designed to move the majority of the desktop market to dual core within the next two years, Intel's launch did not cease to impress. The ability to bring workstation class performance in multithreaded and multitasking environments to the desktop, at an affordable price, is something that we've been hoping for for years. Intel's launch was pretty interesting, but today, AMD has more bang.

AMD will ship a dual-core version of its 64-bit Athlon chip in the second half of this year, but it won't be targeted at the high-end of the market, the company has revealed. It will be demonstrated at AMD's headquarters later today.

In my architectural history of the Pentium line, I characterized the P6 architecture as crown jewel of Intel's x86 processor line. From its first incarnation as the Pentium Pro to its latest incarnation as the Pentium M, the P6 core has been an enormous success by both commerical and performance standards. Intel has the P6 core to thank for a large part of its market dominance over the past decade.

Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) will take on Intel’s dual-core desktop Smithfield processor by introducing a dual-core counter version, codenamed Toledo, in the third quarter of this year, according to market sources.

A number of vendors, including Hewlett-Packard (HP), Acer, Fujitsu Siemens, Sony and Gateway, have decided to incorporate the Toledo in their desktops, the sources noted.

Local authorities on Friday suspended a workshop that made fake, or remarked, AMD microprocessors in Taipei, Taiwan, and seized unprecedented number of chips of nearly one million units.

CHIP FIRM AMD has been prevented from advertising its NX bit as an antivirus panacea in the Netherlands.

Dutch site Tweakers.net reports that after a complaint to the consumer commission that the AMD advertising was misleading, the firm is being prevented from describing the NX bit as a cure for all forms of viruses, as it can actually only prevent some.

The Dutch advert said that "Because I have an AMD64 processor, I no longer have to worry about viruses."

Advanced Micro Devices plans to announce on Monday technology that will help its server processors run cooler when idle, a feature that could help customers grapple with electricity and air-conditioning costs.

Executives here at the company's annual analyst meeting on Friday outlined a strategy that will, ideally, allow AMD to take market share in the server, corporate desktop and notebook space as well as penetrate the consumer device market with chips based around the same so-called x86 architecture. "We're talking x86 chips down to a buck," said AMD CEO Hector Ruiz, who added that the chip markets AMD participates in should grow relatively well.

FOUR CORE SERVERS and eight core servers are on the way, a senior man from AMD told an audience of system integrators here in Dublin this evening. But while they may be on the way, there’s no way he would tell the INQ when, where or in what shape they would, er, take shape.
Pat Patla, enterprise server manager of AMD USA told the system integrators that his firm had as much as a 20 per cent advantage compared to its competition. We don’t think he’s talking about Via, here.

SOMETIMES AMD pulls a lion out of the bag instead of the proverbial cat. The Sempron family could have been seen by most reviewers as a bunch of rebadged Thoroughbred CPUs destined at helping the channel getting rid of the last batch of Athlon XP processors. That's what in a nutshell, most of them are, from the Sempron 2300+ to the last Sempron 2800+. Basically, 333MHz Socket A Athlons with 256KB cache, in some cases. Actually, some online retailers are even rebadging on the fly, Barton Athlon XP processors to Sempron 3200+.